Here it is in its entirety. I’m still listening to it, but it seems like a watershed moment in our relationship with the Middle East.
UPDATE: For those of you who are, as commenter Tina says, “not allowed sound in our veal fattening cubicles,” you can read a transcript here.
Gold Star Comment goes to PC, who says:
My favorite part is when he said America had undermined a democratically elected govt. in Iran in the 1950s! Almost fell out of chair. To my knowledge this is the FIRST presidential acknowledgement of ANY of our CIA illegal criminal coups ANYWHERE.
He then said, correctly, and Iran has helped terrorists etc. so looking forward, etc. etc.
This speech is world class and world historical and fulfills in a big down payment way his promise of basic change. And just talking to Moslems with respect is a huge change. Am liking Obama today.
I, too, thought that was groundbreaking. I thought he handled the Israel/Palestine issue quite well. And I really liked the way Obama pushed for women’s rights in the Middle East. I think that would have been an easy political ball to drop, but he carried through with it. This was a fantastic speech and an important moment.
Thank.
My favorite part is when he said America had undermined a democratically elected govt. in Iran in the 1950s! Almost fell out of chair. To my knowledge this is the FIRST presidential acknowledgement of ANY of our CIA illegal criminal coups ANYWHERE.
He then said, correctly, and Iran has helped terrorists etc. so looking forward, etc. etc.
This speech is world class and world historical and fulfills in a big down payment way his promise of basic change. And just talking to Moslems with respect is a huge change. Am liking Obama today.
Thanks for the link.
[Still kinda odd it’s been 30 minutes and no other comments except me? Oh well the bloom is off the rose, understandably.]
ummm, is there a transcript somewhere for those of us not allowed sound in our veal fattening cubicals?
this is historic
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-kl…
this is an amazing speech. you are right, Paul. it is a watershed moment. its huge.
He has Al Qeada on the run. He has shifted the paradigm in our favor. Now he must act to fulfill the promise of a better tomorrow. Isreal must show good faith.
Excusme me @1,
It’s not Moslems, it’s Mohammadens.
It’s a good speech, but I have a hard time with any US president lecturing the world on democracy and human rights, no matter how much it’s leavened with modesty or even contrition, when we spend more money on the military than all other countries in the world put together and have an official policy of ignoring our own war crimes.
The best thing we could do would be this speech, partnered with a complete cessation in military funding of foreign governments (starting with Israel and Egypt and working our way down), and a draw-down in our own military spending to support a truly defensive posture. Until that happens, I have a big problem with any president giving this kind of speech. Obama doesn’t get a pass just because he’s not as evil and incompetent as the last guy.
@7,
I prefer Musselmen.
@7 I prefer Mohammedmen, myself.
God fucking dammit, #7, #9, and #10 beat me to it. Though I always thought it was spelled Mohammedans.
Can’t we just go back to the good old days and call them all “Turks”?
@8, fuck off. You’re in the wrong chatroom. You didn’t understand a single word of this historic speech.
This is immense. It was PERFECTLY PITCHED to the Muslim world; it’s a nuclear strike at the heart of Al-Qaeda. I honestly can’t see how they can respond to this. He has taken every one of their arguments and vaporized it, and every word was an opening to the imprisoned hearts of Muslims.
This is by FAR the greatest speech I’ve ever heard by an American President. This is symbolically on a level with Kennedy’s Berlin speech or FDR’s Pearl Harbor.
This is going to make a difference; it’s not about what we do here, it’s about what it says to THEM. I think this could change the course in Pakistan and Iran, for starters.
Wow.
WaPo has a link to the text transcript.
Great speech.
Holy smokes, this speech is a home run. I’m still trying to digest it and what it could mean, but I feel excellent after hearing it.
#1 – Give us a chance to listen to it before we comment. The speech is almost an hour long.
That Obama is goddamn presidential isn’t he? I’m so glad he’s at the helm instead of the last one… I can’t even say his name.
Yeah, definitely took some time to digest.
Whether or not we agree with the man on all of his policies, he’s pretty amazing. This speech is one of those shining moments.
I was impressed both with his humility, and also the amount of brass it takes to say things like “Asalamalikum” and reference the Koran repeatedly.
Fox News is going to have a shit fit over that. The racist fringe parts of America are going to be clinging to their guns all the more tightly.
But he’s not pushing as fast as we would want on gay marriage, so we must hate him, apparently.
Fnarf@13, I absolutely agree this is a historic speech, well-delivered, and likely to make a positive difference in US relations with the Middle East and Islam. I just think it’s important to realize that the actions of the Obama administration do not yet match this rhetoric. If we don’t realize that, we’re just setting everyone up for disappointment when nothing really changes.
Obama says we don’t torture but he won’t prosecute those who have admitted to creating and executing a US torture policy. He wants to close Guantanamo but keep Bagram open. He says he wants to stop Israeli settlements but US money has continued to flow despite Israel’s failure to stop those settlements. He urges an end to extremist violence against innocents when the US is regularly killing civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan as an indirect consequence of his policies. If you kill one innocent you kill the whole world? Well then Obama has killed the whole world.
Look, Obama can’t fix the horrors of US foreign policy overnight, even if he wanted do (and he only wants to fix some of it.) It would be tragedy for him to avoid making this speech just because he hadn’t fully purified US policy. Some progress is better than no progress, even if it leaves injustice intact. But words should be matched with some actions on these big issues. I applaud this speech but parts of it made me uncomfortable, knowing how unlikely it is that Obama truly wants or will be able to change the fundamental policies of the United States.
Thanks for the link… Ummm wow… Did I read that part about the right for a Palestinian State to exist and that the US supports that correctly, cause damnnn… Just an absolutly amazing speech, cant wait to go home and watch FOX New lose their shit over this one.
@19, you’re still not getting it. That’s not what this speech was about, none of it. He wasn’t talking to you, he was talking to THEM. And prosecuting or not prosecuting the Rumsfeld-Cheney gang is IMMATERIAL to what happened in Cairo today. You’re having the wrong conversation here.
No, Fnarf, our friend Cascadian is trying to start exactly the right conversation here, precisely because this speech is not for you or I, but for the Muslim world. And which among them could hear Obama speak against the killing of innocents without thinking of the death tolls of Iraqi civilians, Afghanistani civilians, etc?
We, you and I, understand that though he is politically unable to denounce the war in Iraq, he gestured in that direction as much as he could. This is awesome. We understand that he is now at the helm of a US war machine of nearly unstoppable enormousness, whose hulking mass is at this point interwoven with so many aspects of our security/stability (or what passes for it) that he can’t turn it around overnight even if that is his goal, which I believe it is. But who in the Muslim world can hear this speech and not think, about nuclear weapons, why you and not us? Or about his urging Palestinians to use non-violent protest as the only means for change, how exactly are drone warships non-violent?
@20, eventual Palestinian statehood has been official US policy for what, fifteen years now? That part wasn’t new. What was new was calling out Israel on the settlements. That’s VERY new. American policy has always been to publicly decry them, but privately wink at them. Netanyahu is discovering now that for the first time Americans mean what they say. This is HUGE.
@22, you are oblivious. You’ve missed the point by a mile.
Nobody gives a shit about drones, and Obama’s certainly not going to be shrinking the military might of the United States; that’s absurd, and it’s not what Obama’s audience wants. None of these things are even close to the issue at hand.
What they want is to be heard — by us, by their own countries, and even by themselves. The subject is nothing less than the future of Islam; he’s talking about their Renaissance and their Enlightenment. It’s there, tangible but remote, in front of them, in Iran, in Egypt, in Turkey, in Pakistan, in Iraq, even in Saudi Arabia. The young people are educated, and they’re not stupid; they know what’s going on. They know what they’re missing.
I think the most important part of the speech, other than the various admissions of American culpability (important as they are), was the discussion of modernity (does anyone else get goosepimples at the way Obama says that word?)
Then he mentions Japan and Korea — THIS is what they want to hear. How can they be modern without being trampled? This is what everyone in Tehran and Amman and Damascus and Riyadh and Nairobi talks about ALL THE TIME. It is THE conversation of our age. They know it’s happening; and they know the consequences, both good and bad. But the discussion is just getting off the ground; in the Arab world in particular, it’s still considered dangerous to think about it. This is the intellectual vacuum that the Bin Ladens and the Ahmedinejads rush in to fill. But Obama, unlike Bush, is not a vacuum.
For an American President to talk about this is HUGE. This is an empowering moment for the MIND of the Middle East. It’s also what Charles Mudede is talking about half the time (and you can bet they’re talking about this speech in Harare and Cape Town and Dar es Salaam).
Obama just sent an electric jolt through the young people of the Islamic world. Those people looked at Obama’s partly African face and saw that maybe, just maybe the future is going to come for them after all. THIS is the moment where Bin Laden collapsed like a spent balloon. These young people are READY.
If you’re talking about war crimes and unmanned drones and military budgets, that electric shock is going right over your head.
Thank you, Fnarf. Thank you.
Gee, Fnarf, you make some really good points here. And you articulate them pretty well, I think I see what you are getting at. And it’s impacted my view of the speech, so thanks.
But why do you have to be such a huge asshole about it? Jeez.
One of the reasons I read Slog is to hear others’ points of view, and get feedback on my own take on things. All hopefully towards the goal of learning something, understanding more fully.
People with different reactions than yours should be welcomed if they are speaking in a respectful and hate-free way. In fact, I think most thoughtful people have multiple and conflicting reactions to complex events, and the best way to tease them all apart and figure out where you stand is to join a conversation.
But when you are hostile to non-hostile people with different interpretations than you, you alienate the very people who have the most to learn from you, the ones who will force you to the best articulations of your own ideas. Or maybe even complicate your own understanding of things. By your hostility I mean saying fuck you and telling people to leave the conversation.
I loved the speech and it made me cry and pace the room and gave me whole body chills just like when he won the election, when he made his inaugural address, hell, since the 2004 Democratic convention. I fucking love the man. I am not your enemy.
(Bracing for sarcastic response)
The speech should truly be required reading (read: studying) for every student everywhere – and all those who never had the opportunity to be a student as well.
No bull.
Thank you President Obama