Krauthammer and Obama's Speech: Apologies and Moral Equivalence

Charles Krauthammer expresses the crux of the problem with many of Obama's remarks in his Cairo speech, as well as the problem with Obama's foreign policy perspective and his view of America.

It's apologies and moral equivalence.

Obama just cannot keep from expressing his disdain for America. He has a compulsion to apologize for our country when no apologies are in order. He finds moral equivalence where there is none.

Transcript

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Well, the damage in policy was rather small. The damage to our position philosophically was large. On policy the damage was small because the speech was so abstract, vapid, and self-absorbed that it didn't touch a lot of policy, except on Iran, where he was exceedingly weak. That was the weakest statement on Iran and nukes in at least 8 or 9 years by anyone in the West.

It spoke about our demand that it not develop a nuclear weapon as a kind of a misunderstanding over a treaty. But the real damage is philosophical. It was once again, over and over again, apologies and moral equivalence.

At the beginning, he apologizes for colonialism and imperialism. The United States was never a colonial power, or even the holder of the League of Nations mandate in the Arab or the Muslim world.

And then he goes into the moral equivalence. I'll give you one example. He speaks about, with Iran, how on the one hand, we had a hand in a coup in 1953; and on the other hand, they had been involved in some nasty stuff over the last 30 years.

So, on the one hand is American involvement in an action by Eisenhower executing a Truman plan 55 years ago. On the other hand, you've got 30 years of ongoing terrorism against the United States in the world, the taking of hostages, the proxy killing of Americans in Iraq and elsewhere, the development of nukes, and the threatening of allies with nuclear weapons. So, these are to be balanced.

One other example, if I can, are women's rights, a very oblique reference to the oppression of women in the Muslim world. And on the other hand he says, he can't help himself, he has to find something in us he's got to attack.

He says, 'The struggle for women's equality continues in many aspects of American life.'

So on the one hand, you've got a university somewhere where the women's lacrosse team is not getting the full funding under Title IX. The other hand you get women beaten in the street in Saudi Arabia who show an ankle or stoned for adultery in Iran. It's not exactly morally equivalent.

On women's rights, Obama dares to draw a connection between the status of women in America and women in the Arab world.

Yes, women still face challenges in America. For instance, no woman has ever been elected president. But to suggest that there's any similarity between the experience of American women and women who aren't allowed to drive or are required to wear burkas or are stoned for adultery is positively ludicrous.

I found Obama's comparison of the Holocaust with the plight of the Palestinian people to be disgraceful. There's no moral equivalence.

What really kills me is the way the liberal media eat up this crud, and crud it is.

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