The Day When Barack Became Hussein Again

Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and respecting Islam. This is his task. In his founding speech in Cairo, Barack Hussein Obama laid the groundwork for what will be one of the greatest challenges of his presidency: US reconciliation with the Arab-Muslim world.

It will take a little time to measure the real impact of the words of Barack Hussein Obama, delivered on June 4 under the golden dome of the University of Cairo. It will take time to separate, in this long, inspired text, elegant rhetoric from the reality of a U.S. policy trapped by its own inertia, its constraints and its superpower rationality. Obama himself acknowledged it: a speech does not erase decades of mutual distrust and the “challenge” – to persuade the Muslim world to change its perception about the United States without giving the impression of a major policy change – is not particularly easy.

When bin Laden, Zawahiri or Moqtada Sadr warned their clients against “refined”, “smooth” and “soporific” words by the ” American snake charmer “, they reacted like contractors worried to see their stock in trade lose its reason for being (much like Avigdor Lieberman on the other side). They also surf on a wave of deep mistrust of sixty years old; Arab misgivings are rooted in the famous meeting in February 1945 in the Red Sea, during which President Roosevelt promised King Abdelaziz Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia to do nothing in the region without prior consent of the Arabs. We know what eventually came of these beautiful words…

The Power of Words

Beyond these reservations, the speech given on June 4, 2009 in Cairo can undoubtedly be described as historic. Never has a Christian head of state addressed the Muslim world with as much honesty and courage. No US president has every been applauded as much in the land of Islam and never before has a US president come so close to the balance point that has seemed so impossible to achieve: a friend for two peoples, Jews and Arabs.

Obama, inspired by a generation of great African-American preachers, believes in the power of words, reason and persuasion. But his quotes from the Holy Quran and the sometimes incantatory side of his speech do not reflect in any way the marketing of an evangelist pastor. He understands that the main factor of radicalization of the region’s societies is the failure of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and that the only way for America to reverse this trend is to reconsider its position and look to Islam as the solution, not the problem.

Not once in his speech did he utter the words “terror”, “terrorism” “terrorist”, repeatedly announced by his predecessor George W. Bush. Not once did he mentioned the name of his absent host, Hosni Mubarak, the archetype of the Pharaonic regime under whom many peoples of the Arab world suffer. No resident of the White House before this half-blood Afro-American man, raised between the church and the mosque, has dared to say: “The situation of the Palestinian people is intolerable”. Was the tragic chapter opened on September 11, 2001 finally closed on June 4, 2009? Peace Insha’Allah…