Hope For Change

I thought President Obama's Middle East speech was pretty good. To quote Huck Finn, "there was things he stretched," and, as always, there were some false equivalencies, but overall he hit the points he needed to hit, and went about as far as he could without alienating the crowd. Ultimately, though, that's the problem--telling some basic truths will alienate Obama's target audience, but no real progress can be made until it happens.

In any case, words are easy. Though this speech was about "New Beginnings," there was little the President said that George Bush hadn't said already.

So far, the reaction has been predictable. Among Arab Muslims, radicals denounced it, while "moderates" were positive. However, they generally followed their approval with a folded-arm attitude: "okay, you talked nice, now let's see some action."

This isn't good. For actual improvement to occur, action is needed, but mostly from them. As long as they figure we're the ones who need to do something, nothing will change.