SEEMS?:

Arabia: Inshallah, Obama (MAUREEN DOWD, 3/07/10, NY Times)

[M]any disillusioned Muslims are echoing the all-talk, no-action refrain first popularized by the woman who became secretary of state.

“He said all the right words in his speech,” said Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister. “But the implementation took traditional roads.”

Privately, other highly placed princes in the family oil business groused louder. “Things are worse now than before,” asserted one, “because our hopes were so high after Cairo.”

Actually, the president didn’t say all the right words in his speech. He created an obstacle for himself by demanding that Israel stop expanding settlements when it was not going to do so — even though it should — and when that wasn’t the most important condition to Arabs.

Now Obama seems ineffectual, as Israel pushes ahead on 600 more new homes in East Jerusalem, where the Palestinians want their capital, despite the White House protest in November about 900 other houses that Israel plans to put up there.

Typically, American presidents can't be honest brokers in the Middle East because we're so pro-Israel. The UR, uniquely, can't be one because he doesn't have the domestic credibility to pressure Israel.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 7, 2010 10:51 AM