Many on the right are left, as we've seen time and time again after a very good Obama speech, as sputtering obstructionists.
Some are just making stuff up. Others (like Hewitt) are bemoaning that Obama has abandoned thuggish neo-con foreign policy so publicly. These people confuse the fact of Obama speaking on Muslim issues in a Muslim country with him seemingly agreeing with Islamists--they are looking for the codes, in other words.
His actual speech, however, lays out, to a Muslim audience very solid and non-controversial policies: The case for a two-state solution to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict (while taking a direct shot at Holocaust deniers), telling Muslims that they have a responsibility toward peace (loved this line: "America will align our policies with those who pursue peace"), telling Iran they cannot have nukes, and so on.
The difference Obama brings is the same one that got him elected: The willingness to negotiate through respectful interactions instead of pre-conditions, presidential war authority as a negotiating tactic, and the recognition that diplomacy works, by and large, by getting people to concentrate on the mutual goals rather than on the concessions to get there.
This speech, the latest of a series of speeches of the century by Obama, is one I'm thinking over in light of a fantastic Ambinder column I've been mulling over for the last day or so.
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