Muslim World

(Follow Up)

Since President Obama's "epic" speech a few weeks ago in Cairo where he addressed the Muslim world in an attempt to ease tensions, we have had a few events that have shown how the Middle East accepted his olive branch.

1. A major part of his speech addressed not only what the U.S. and the Muslim community need to do to move towards peace in the Middle East but also put pressure on Israel to accept a Palestinian state and to stop the settlements in the West Bank which the President labeled as "illegal". Israel, once again, extended their hand by accepting a Palestinian state with conditions that this state be non-militarized and that they recognize the Israeli state. This demand is not only reasonable but key due to the fact that Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group (and now elected leaders) have launched over 7,000 missiles and rockets into Israel over the last three years. That averages out to over 6/day for three years!

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, one of the more reasonable of the Muslim leaders in the Middle East, attempted to respond to Israel for the Muslim community, stated that they will never recognize Israel as the Jewish state. The response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's vision for peace in the region was to refuse to even recognize Israel as an independent state. Now, where does Israel go from there? If the Muslim world will not even recognize Israel right of sovereignty how can they even begin to negotiate peace?

2. The most notorious of all the Muslim leaders has to be Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who term of power came up for reelection this past week. He was challenged by a more moderate contender who has gained the support of the youth of the country, similar to what provided Obama's victory. After a day long paper ballot vote, it took just a few hours for these paper ballots to be counted and to declare Ahmadinejad the Landslide victor.

We can interrupt this result in two different ways but either ways shows that Iran has no intention to work with the U.S. and they cannot be trusted. First, we can trust the accuracy of this election and accept that the people of Iran like the way the country is being run by the President who continually lies about his country's nuclear intentions and has on many occasions called for the annihilation of Israel. Or, secondly, we can question the overwhelming discrepancies of an election facilitated by the incumbent who a) won by a landslide in a highly contested race, b) counted millions of paper ballots in a few hours and c) carried his challenger's home city by a large margin. If it is in fact a "stolen election" then how we can trust a leader who cheats his own people out a basic right to have their vote counted. He has proven time and time again that he cannot be trusted so what can be gained out of working on a peaceful solution to problems with this man. He will just say what we want to hear and do exactly as he wants.

I do agree with President Obama that we cannot get involved with this election. We are not trusted or liked by these people and nothing can be gained by meddling into their internal affairs.

Both of these situations show that the Middle East is not a place that wants peace. No matter what efforts we make and what ally we throw to the wolves we will not be able to negotiate peace with these people. The Middle East is a unique part of the world where the radical extremists have too much power. I don't believe our relations with the Muslim world changed significantly or in any important way under President Bush nor do I believe things have or will change under President Obama. The speech in Cairo was, in my opinion, neither good nor bad. It may have eased some feelings with the moderate Muslim people but it did nothing to make our country safer or bring an overall peace to the region and if anyone believed it did, I think that is nieve.