The best criticism of Obama's Cairo speech

President Obama's Cairo speech was a good idea. I suspect, however, little will come of it. I think reaching out to Muslim nations and trying get greater cooperation a good thing. It doesn't hurt to try. But the real problem in the Muslim world's relationship with the West, and Obama knows this, is primarily within Muslim societies. The West can adjust some of our policies, but the Muslim world needs to adjust the cultural and political tectonic plates. Getting them to actually shift and deal with these problems is very problematic if not almost impossible. My biggest criticism of the speech is that the President didn't address the real problem with Iran and the danger it poses to the security of the region and the world. But looking through a number of speech reviews, I think Steven F. Hayes has the best criticism yet:

In a speech about freedom and democracy, America and Islam, Obama glides right past the most remarkable development in the region in decades: "Iraq's democratically-elected government." He mentions it only in passing, to note that he's keeping his campaign promised to remove troops.

Iraq today is a model for many of those things Obama says he hopes to see in the region -- women right's, religious freedom, the defeat of "violent extremism," economic development and opportunity, and, yes, democracy. It's an imperfect model, to be sure, but it's a model nonetheless. And the president does himself and the country -- in particular our soldiers -- no favors by ignoring that reality. No one is asking him to defend a war he opposed. But the fact that he can even use that phrase -- Iraq's democratically-elected government -- might have caused him to acknowledge that America's intervention there, despite the tremendous difficulties, has made Iraq a country that practices many of those things that he seeks for the rest of the region.