Oh My.

The worst Obama appointment yet can you believe.

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Norm on Obama’s Cairo Speech.

Some reactions to the Obama speech

Some strange reactions is what I mean. A Times leader this morning:

He did not, sadly, address the issue of democracy.

I could swear I heard him doing so: ‘the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose’; ‘there are some who advocate for democracy only when they are out of power’; ‘government of the people and by the people sets a single standard for all who hold power: you must maintain your power through consent, not coercion; you must respect the rights of minorities’; and so forth. The Times’s own correspondent, James Hider, also noticed. Stranger still, here’s a researcher for Human Rights Watch for whom what Obama said about human rights was less satisfactory than what Condoleezza Rice said four years before him in the same city. Obama, she thinks, didn’t go beyond generalities. No, but the burden of them was entirely clear. What is more, one of those generalities sounded pretty much like this, the words of none other than Condoleezza Rice: ‘America will not impose our style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, to attain their own freedom, make their own way.’

Then there is the suggestion that merely by including a reference to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa in the same speech as a discussion of Israel and Palestine, Obama might be taken to have licensed the Israel/apartheid analogy. He did no such thing. The South Africa reference came in a passage designed to illustrate the point that violent resistance is ‘a dead end’ – nothing more. Otherwise we should have to conclude that Obama sees the situation of the Palestinians as similar to that of the Jews during the Holocaust – on the grounds that, not merely in the same speech, but in two consecutive paragraphs, he spoke first of the Holocaust and then of the plight of the Palestinians. These are whimsical interpretations.

Finally Ahdaf Soueif, for her part, was waiting for Obama to assume global leadership; but ‘[h]e did not; he remained the President of the United States.’ Welcome to the real world.

I suppose it was inevitable, since Obama was trying to bring greater understanding to issues that have divided people, and this meant that he spoke, and spoke forthrightly, on more than one side of the issues – inevitable, consequently, that there would be those who would fasten on to some particular and miss what they had no appetite for. For my money, this was one very impressive speech – hard to improve upon, in fact, given everything Obama was trying to do with it – and an exercise in international leadership indeed.

Norm doesn’t have comments so I e-mailed him:

Hi Norm, How can a speech be deemed good when it contains such as this.

As Obama has said, ‘words have consequences’. If the words are misinformation then the consequences will not be good.

I got this reply:

I wasn’t rating the speech as a piece of history. As a political intervention, and on key questions like Israel-Palestine, war on terror, attitude to human rights and democracy vis-a-vis sovereignty, etc, I think he struck a good balance.

and replied:

Hi Norm, I take your point but at that level to perpetuate these myths doesn’t bode well for the future and in the ME history and politics are so interwoven that to sound reasonable on one and misrepresent the other ain’t gonna work in the long term, Was it a ‘good balance’ or was it moral equivalence?

Obama has the lawyers’ slippery way with words, they can mean whatever anyone wants to read into them, he is not to be trusted as his record between his words and his actions shows.

I expect you know about this but just for interest….

It’s difficult for the likes of me to argue even briefly with a respected prof from Manchester U, so am I missing something or is he? I don’t expect a further reply from him.

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Wislawa Szymborska.

It’s been a long time since I posted one of my favourite poems, here for you to enjoy, one of Wislawa Szymborska’s.

A Few Words on the Soul
by Wislawa Szymborska
translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

We have a soul at times.
No one’s got it non-stop,
for keeps.

Day after day,
year after year
may pass without it.

Sometimes
it will settle for awhile
only in childhood’s fears and raptures.
Sometimes only in astonishment
that we are old.

It rarely lends a hand
in uphill tasks,
like moving furniture,
or lifting luggage,
or going miles in shoes that pinch.

It usually steps out
whenever meat needs chopping
or forms have to be filled.

For every thousand conversations
it participates in one,
if even that,
since it prefers silence.

Just when our body goes from ache to pain,
it slips off-duty.

It’s picky:
it doesn’t like seeing us in crowds,
our hustling for a dubious advantage
and creaky machinations make it sick.

Joy and sorrow
aren’t two different feelings for it.
It attends us
only when the two are joined.

We can count on it
when we’re sure of nothing
and curious about everything.

Among the material objects
it favors clocks with pendulums
and mirrors, which keep on working
even when no one is looking.

It won’t say where it comes from
or when it’s taking off again,
though it’s clearly expecting such questions.

We need it
but apparently
it needs us
for some reason too.

Isn’t that fabulous? So simple on the surface, so deep below.

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D-Day.

D-Day: The Battle for Normandy: fear and cruelty in sun-dappled orchards
Charles Moore reviews ‘D-Day: The Battle for Normandy’ by Antony Beevor.

A timely book for the 65th anniversary of D Day. [I can remember it! I was eight years old and can remember writing the date on my bedroom wall in a little square stuccoed farm house with 12 inch thick walls, that was at Wiblings Farm just outside the village of Graffham in West Sussex.]
Much in the book about the ‘heroic’ resistance of the Germans and the consequences of that resistance, inc delaying the inevitable end of the war thus giving the Russians more time to advance into Berlin and the heart of Germany. If the Germans were as smart as they think they are they would have surrendered as soon as the Normandy landings were successfully accomplished and let the allies take over before the Russians got anywhere near. Sometimes you can understand the peaceniks’ revulsion of all things military except they are even more stupid than the Germans were since by their lights the Germans would have had free rein and then they’d know unending horror.
I like this from the comments recognizing the contribution of the Canadians. In too many accounts you’d think they weren’t anywhere near Normandy in ’44.

#

I would like to pay tribute to the Canadians who fought in the Battle for Normandy.

All too often their contribution is lost – or forgotten – although the battle could not have been won without them. The Falaise Gap could not have been closed without them. In consequence Paris would not have been liberated in August and the war in Europe would have dragged on past the following May with potentially disastrous consequences.

The Canadians have always been with us. They are the most valiant, honourable, steadfast allies and we all too often forget that.

It is time that we remembered and honoured their sacrifice.

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GWB’s Big Idea……….

…….is gaining ground in the Middle East.

From The Wall Street Journal:

The results of Kuwait’s elections last month — in which Islamists were rebuffed and four women were elected to parliament — will likely reinvigorate the movement for greater democracy in the region that has stalled since the hopeful “Arab spring” of 2005. It also puts pressure on the Obama administration to end its deafening silence on democracy promotion.

Now if only Backwards Obama doesn’t blow it the intervention in the ME by Bush after 60 years and more of failed policy is bearing fruit. Another little sign, Syria in order to assist its moribund economy is seeking more commercial ties with Iraq whose economy is thriving. In my understanding at the time this is what the whole invasion of Iraq was about, to start the process of changing the Islamic ME and bring it into the post medieval era. A hell of a tall order, no wonder we saw so much scoffing and pessimism from the bien pensant elites, otherwise known as clever dicks with no balls.

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