EXCEPT FOR ONE TINY THING...:

Obama betrays hope created by Cairo speech (Craig Nelson, 11/03/09, The National)

It’s official: forget Cairo. Fold up the speech and throw it in the bin, or put it in that already bulging folder marked “Bad Faith & Broken Promises”.

That seems to be the unintended but unavoidably obvious message of the about-face by the US president Barack Obama and his decision last weekend to press ahead with Israeli-Palestinian talks despite Arab and Palestinian demands that Israel halt West Bank settlement construction first.

Interestingly, Mr Obama did not make the announcement himself. He put his travelling secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, up to it during a stop in Jerusalem on Saturday.

But make no mistake: the onus for the decision falls on Mr Obama himself. And in its vindication of violence over diplomacy and stalling over engagement, Mr Obama’s move ranked him alongside George W Bush, the man whose record he ran against to win the presidency.

...W was vindicating his core values and doing so to peoples' faces. The UR is following the polls and sending out underlings.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 3, 2009 1:04 PM