Today, June 4, 2009, Yahoo news featured this headline:
"As of 9:18 a.m. PDT •
"Can Obama win Muslim hearts and minds?
"Bin Laden threat"
Presumably, the writer of the headline thought that some chance existed that President Obama , in his Cairo speech, could indeed “win (a large number of) Muslim hearts and minds,”. Keep in mind that Muslims have harbored hostility towards the West, the Jewish People, and Christians generally since at least the Crusades, the last of which ended about A.D. 1296, if not longer.
Said differently, the headline seemed to presume that the President had at least a fighting chance to achieve what one could arguably call a miracle. Let us hope the writer was not educated in the United States; however, your correspondent remains dubious about that possibility.
Fortunately, in his Cairo speech, the President cautioned everyone, worldwide:
“I know there's been a lot of publicity about this speech, but no single speech can
eradicate years of mistrust nor can I answer in the time that I have this afternoon
all the complex questions that brought us to this point.”
Perhaps someone should caution the President against the dangers of excessive humility. After all, if he keeps saying things like that, the entire world could lose all hope for the future.
OK, that last paragraph was somewhat tongue in cheek. At the same time, it did seem to capture the general tenor of the President’s words; particularly since, instead of saying, “years of mistrust,” the President should have said, “centuries of mistrust.”
The most disturbing thing about the President’s remarks was that he seemed to feel compelled to include them in the speech at all. Of course, we do have that disturbing headline. Still, including the lines must say something about the President's view of the American People, the people of the world in general, his own powers of persuasion, or some combination of the three.
Regardless of his view of the hearers of his speech, one hopes the President believed his own cautionary words.
DJ
