I finally read it, the June 4 Cairo speech, and read it carefully. I’ve also seen lots of comments on it.

I could either have a lot, a whole lot, or a lot less to say about it, depending on how much time you have, oh dear reader. But basically, I think the speech was pretty good, and may well have accomplished what the President wanted to accomplish by it. That’s the right measure, not whether he said some things that were not strictly true. Which he did. 

That said, I have lots of criticisms, many of them small, some of them a little larger.

First, addressing “the Muslim world” and equating it to America is unfortunate. That sets up the ummah as a political actor and diminishes the authority of the state. It speaks al-Qaeda language and cedes the vocabulary to the bad guys. This is not a very smart thing to do, and would worry me a lot more if I worried a lot more about the power of this enemy.

Second, some of what he said was culturally clueless. Like speaking out loud what you know to be so in private being a virtue. This is not how Middle Easterners see the world. They will see a statement like that not as noble but naïve.

Third, he was a little too much fawning. Using the word “revealed” for Islam and quoted Quran 4 times. That’s fawning.

Fourth, relatedly, he missed the subtle difference between being modest (which is good) and being humble (which isn’t good). You never apologize.

Fifth, related to the first comment, there is something a little awkward about conflating a sermonesque delivery to the Muslims with a point-by-point policy review (Afghanistan, Iraq, Arab-Israeli, etc) because you’re bound to leave something out, (Lebanon,eg) giving the impression that you don’t really care about it. That also accounts for the seemingly pathetic “deliverable” part, about the programs we’ll run and the money we’ll spend. It mixes tones, and it gives the whole a disrupted, rocky feel. The “deliverable” sounded like a box-checking exercise, but it need not have had the front of the speech not been so abstract.

Sixth, at one point early on he referred to the speech (anticipation of it) in the speech. You never do that. It’s not Presidential and it breaks frame.

Seventh, at one point he referred proudly to the democratically elected government of Iraq, but given his criticism of Iraq as a (wrong) war of choice, it was a little too obvious that had Sen. Obama’s views prevailed, there would be no democratically-elected government of Iraq.

All that said, it was a strong speech and in many ways brave. As I said, I think it did in the region what he meant it to do --- hit a kind of re-set button, not be preachy or threatening, and especially not be so self-referential and self-possessed. That’s not “manly” in Arab culture, and Bush did way too much of it — it was all about us. I think Obama was wise not to use the “T” word. He was explicit that we did not seek permanent bases in Iraq or a lock on Iraqi oil, something Bush could have said on umpteen occasions, should have, and foolishly never did. He mentioned justice twice and dignity four times, and those are the right vocab buttons to push. 

I also reject the accusations that he equated the Holocaust and Palestinian displacement; he did not.He merely pointed out that both peoples carry historical baggage that affects their perceptions. Anyone who denies that has to be some kind of imbecile. Really, too, from a Jewish point of view, anyone who had trouble with this speech was looking for ways to have trouble with it. I reject the accusation that POTUS made the U.S. “neutral” in the Arab-Israeli conflict; most of what he said on that score could have been cribbed from any number of speeches given by former Presidents and SectStates.

So what am I really saying? That it could have been a lot worse, and that I could have written it better.  Sure as hell I could have, too.  But not bad; pretty good; in some places brave; in a very few really masterful.