If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
The Blog
America, both Democrat and Republican, is now abandoning the post-industrial age of bogus financial products and going back to its industrial prowess, the source of its world supremacy.
The interests of the United States are best served by a consistent policy supporting basic freedoms and expanding free market principles that have proven to improve lives and lift nations out of poverty.
The youth of the Middle East and North Africa are as talented as entrepreneurial as the youth in any other region. That is why President Obama in his recent address on the Middle East placed so much emphasis on providing opportunities for young people.
I thought of "Blowin' in the Wind" recently when Dr. Cornel West made comments critical of Obama. One may not agree with all of his words, but Dr. West is a tuning fork for justice.
In history, we're used to seeing events on an extended timeline: where a few years, or a few decades don't mean very much. In current affairs, that's harder to swallow.
Is the Arab Spring really an "American" Revolution? According to President Obama and his speechwriters, the answer is, surprisingly, yes.
Reactions to President Obama's speech on developments in the Arab World were a striking reminder of just how deep and troubling the disconnect in the U.S.-Israel-Arab relationship, and how dysfunctional politics in the U.S. have become.
There remains a sense in the Arab world, and the international community at large, that America has lost the will or perhaps the ability to shape events. At present juncture, Obama seems to be content to recap the obvious in lofty rhetoric.
We have heard all of this before -- in Cairo, at the Nobel ceremony in Oslo. The overall composition, as well as its individual ingredients, is designed to play on feeling rather than to engage thought. Certainly not critical cognition.
President Obama's address needlessly stepped on its own core message by opening yet another inopportune rift with the Israeli government on the eve of Benjamin Netanyahu's meeting with the president.
President Barack Obama has finally delivered his much anticipated speech on the Middle East, however, it fell short of expectations on two major issues.
Contrary to the hopes articulated by some Arabs and Israelis, Obama's speech did not amount to a "game changer." There is little the Obama administration can do to change the status quo. Why pretend otherwise?
No doubt some of Obama's advisors are telling him that doing anything on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at this point in his term, other than seeking to placate the American Jewish right, is a losing bet. They are mistaken.
On Thursday, Obama will "reset" American policy in the Middle East with a major address. But barring an almost inconceivable policy shift, all signs indicate that the Pentagon will quietly maintain antithetical policies.
Obama's "pragmatism" is based on a process of muddling through the path of least resistance, under which pressure from powerful political players, and the impact of the media, end up determining the final policy decision.
The revolutionary wave in the Arab world is a stroke of good fortune, creating circumstances wherein we can restore our standing as the "good guys." Obama and his minions seem to have no awareness of this whatsoever.
