Just watched the historic speech made by Obama at Cairo University again ... I had liked it the first time when I watched it with a good friend here in my lab. This second time I had the opportunity to actually think about why I had liked it so much -- and about some of the ideas in the speech that made me go 'Okay ... now now ... '.
The speech has already received ample criticism from different countries and also from the Muslim-world to whom the speech was addressed. So, I will not even attempt to set-up something like that -- but would really want to say that it felt great to see the leader of such a powerful nation finally coming up on a public podium and being upfront and direct about so many issues. The speech did a great job of projecting Obama as a man who was willing to look at solutions and not just comment on the problems -- and as someone who is trying to be approachable by the global community, something that I can't say his predecessor succeeded much at.
There is this YouTube video of one of McCain's campaign sessions, when an elerly woman grabs the mike and says that she really can't trust Obama -- cos she thinks he is an Arab. McCain promptly denies that, and makes it a point that such issues are not even allowed in discussions any more. Good Job McCain !! Much of the political strategy of America in the recent has been in a similar strain (or so I think) -- to get rid of these conceptions that American people, and even people around the world, happened to have grown about the relations between America and the Muslim-world. Obama's speech was a big significant step in that direction.
I looked at the speech again, and I realized why I liked it that much in the first place though. You see, when you think about global political issues, you sometimes have some very obvious questions creeping up in your mind -- some things that you keep thinking about. As an example, you think about why America is getting involved in Iraq's state of affairs for so long -- are they gonna even help them re-organize, or are they gonna actually stake claims over their reserves and resources? How about them doing stuff in Pakistan ... you can't just pressurize them ... the roots of their issues do lie elsewhere ... how about doing something to address those issues ?
And he spoke about these candidly (or at least as candid as he could be I guess). He mentioned about adressing Pakistan's development by helping them build their businesses and education. he mentioned about leaving Iraq quite soon, and not claiming any stakes, but help them in their development as well. His admittance of Iraq issue being dealt with in not quite the right manner, and his insistence that Israel's relations with America will be unscathed even in the face of attempts to help resolve the Palestine issue -- these are stuff that you kind of thought wouldn't be addressed that clearly. But ... he did.
One must admit though that there is no way to be sure that he knows how to go about addressing all of these issues properly. There will still be doubts as to whether all that he said was actually 'too good to be true'. Indeed, for example, how will it work out for America to help garner funds for development of the economies of Iraq, Pakistan, and so on -- the Federal Government is in a debt of such an insane amount !!!
You know what ... let's not forget that end-results notwithstanding, it is a great start on behalf of America -- on behalf of Obama -- to look deeper into such issues of critical importance in global politics and developmental relations. And that's what the speech was all about wasn't it ? It was all about this new start, about a 'new beginning'.
