An incisive post from Adam Serwer. Money quote:
There’s little chance for change in how Arabs and Muslims view the United States as long as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains unresolved, the U.S.’s military footprint in the Muslim world remains significant, and the U.S. does little more than wag its finger at allies engaged in brutal crackdowns against their own people.
In many ways this was a beautiful speech, particularly its emphasis on universal human rights and historical comparisons to America’s own movements for change. But the allusions to our own history, while meaningful to us, may not resonate much with the speech’s intended Mideast audience. Obama can give all the speeches he wants, but absent progress on those fronts, negative perceptions of the U.S. in the region are unlikely to change. America’s problems in the Middle East have never been about what it has said, but about what it has done.
The Dish 