Setting The Stage In Cairo

Marty Peretz asks:

Who allowed Obama to make this decision?  Maybe foreign policy "realists."  Or maybe his own hubris.  Of course, soon - after his Cairo oration, perhaps - he will correct his blunder about Jewish Jerusalem. And if he doesn't? He will have shown that he fails to grasp that facts have changed since the war that started 42 years ago this coming week and many of them have changed beyond the tinkering - or the grand architecture - of an American president.

Marc Lynch sees the politics of the call to end building:

As Obama leaves for Saudi Arabia and Egypt, he will thus benefit from the headlines and op-eds in the Arab press featuring his strong stand on the [Israeli] settlements.  His team has done an outstanding job setting the stage, establishing its credibility both with Israeli and Arab audiences and generating real momentum. It should help him get a receptive audience for the much-anticipated address, and allow him to point to deeds matching words (the most frequent Arab criticism of his outreach thus far). 

Crowley looks more broadly at Obama's upcoming speech:

Obama the idealist is looking very much like Obama the realist. His administration has told China not to sweat human rights. Democracy in Afghanistan is not a cause for which America will fight, and [President of Egypt] Hosni Mubarak--ally of Israel and increasing bulwark against Iran--will apparently be spared too many inconvenient questions about his police state. To be sure, this is at least a defensible global posture for a militarily and economically weakened United States that confronts massive problems around the world. The interesting question is whether Obama can be honest about these tradeoffs in his speech on Thursday, and explain to people like Ahmed that the peace Obama wants truly requires them.

Michael Tomasky:

The most interesting question, to me, is how he'll describe his vision of what America can do to promote democracy and liberty. Yes, these were neocon goals. But it's not the goals that were wrong, just the ends (military force). During the Bush years, some American liberals came to reject even these goals just because Bush endorsed them. So one of Obama's tasks on Thursday is to reclaim these goals, yank them out of their neoconservative context and place them in a liberal-internationalist one.

Paul Pillar:

The Obama administration’s policies toward the Arab-Israeli conflict, and more specifically the Israeli-Palestinian component of it, will be the single most important determinant in restoring U.S. credibility in the Muslim world, and especially in the Middle Eastern portion of it. Despite all that has been written about how this conflict is more rationale than heartfelt conviction, and not the root of all mayhem in the region, the fact remains thatrightly or wrongly, logically or notit is the most salient issue by which citizens of the region measure and evaluate the policies and intentions of others, including the United States. After the president’s speech we will hear much about how deeds are more important than words.