Obama Plans Major Address in Islamic Capital

I will be praying for our new President. It will take real moral courage for him to do this, and it's long overdue.

Elyas said: "But at the least it shows that Obama has the courage to attempt to be a transformational president. Bush in many ways played it safe. He could have reached out more to Muslim parts of the world..."

This is actually quite wrong. Bush was, if anything, a high-stakes risk taker.

Does no one recall the full court press President Bush applied on the autocratic states throughout the Arab world to democratize?
NO American president ever pressured Arab governments the way Bush did. Clinton certainly didn't.

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=aid...

Alas, the result was an old story.
The Islamist parties are the best organized in most of these countries...they win elections...but they are also hard-line anti-Western and anti-Israel.

So the realists in the Bush administration won out...and the idealistic democratizing was put on the back burner.
I recall many bloggers crowing that the Obama administration marked the Return of Realism. Realist policy accepts autocracy and the balance of power. Bush was anything but a realist (unlike his father).

I would argue the problem with Elyas argument...and with Obama's idea...is that speeches are largely worthless. You are mistaking rhetoric for reality.
I recall reading JFK's cynical comment about this fact in a conversation with an aide, after being congratulated on a fine speech he made on labour policy.
JFK said the speech was just words, and he would lose the vote in the House the next day...and he did.

Obama can make all the pretty speeches he likes.

Unless President Obama backs it up with serious resolve, and he has the will to endure the backlash --- the usual series of car-bombings and assassinations in Lebanon that no one seems willing to trace back to Syria...or some Muslim extremists massacring busloads of American tourists near the Great Pyramids at Giza -- nothing will happen.

Marlowecan: "This is actually quite wrong. Bush was, if anything, a high-stakes risk taker. Does no one recall the full court press President Bush applied on the autocratic states throughout the Arab world to democratize?"

I think we all remember and are unfortunately still living with Bush's democratization ideas and actions. When democracy was in action, if Bush didn't like the results he was opposed to the incoming government. And what about Bush's hypocrisy with Pakistan? And what gives us the right to invade another country (I'm referring to Iraq) and tell them what government is best for them? While I believe that the US should encourage democracy abroad, Bush, with his invasions, his supporting of dictators, his lack of support for democratically elected governments is not by any means the example to follow or emulate.

Bush was a coward to taunt our enemies in the middle east to "bring it on" while he hid behind the largest security force guarding an individual in the world. Thousands of Americans have paid for his words with their lives. Bush can have all the resolve in the world but he's still an idiot that places his own political interests ahead of his sworn duty of defending the constitution of our country. Every country in the world must laugh at Bush when he talks about spreading democracy when he can't even extend basic rights to people, has suspended habeas corpus, turns the citizens of his own country against each other, among other things, all for his own gain and the gain of his cronies. Yeah, Bush is a BIG believer in democracy. Too bad he doesn't support it.

I will agree with you that speeches are largely worthless.... we can see that with all the speeches Bush has given, and done the exact opposite (if anything at all).