Robert Fisk is an excellent writer. Where I tend to bash away at a point, Mr. Fisk slides it in quietly and with subtlety. The article behind this link tries to be very appreciative of what Mr. Obama was trying to do with his speech in Cairo. But then, in one little quote, slipped in right at the end, he makes exactly the same point about Obama that I tend to make in my bash-over-the-head writing style.
Preacher, historian, economist, moralist, schoolteacher, critic, warrior, imam, emperor. Sometimes you even forgot Barack Obama was the President of the United States of America.
Will his lecture to a carefully chosen audience at Cairo University "re-imagine the world" and heal the wounds of centuries between Muslims and Christians? Will it resolve the Arab-Israeli tragedy after more than 60 years? If words could do the job, perhaps...
It was a clever speech we heard from Obama yesterday, as gentle and as ruthless as any audience could wish for - and we were all his audience...
Go read the rest of it, all the way to the end.
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