Barack Obama Vs Reality

President Obama gave a long, rambling “speech to the Muslim World” this morning.  Unfortunately, we’re unlikely look back on this speech as the moment when Peace and love replaced terrorism and hostility.  We are going to focus on on segment that illustrates the weaknesses in Obama’s  Leftist thinking.

After the usual tedious call to “recognize our common humanity” the President said:

For we have learned from recent experience that when a financial system weakens in one country, prosperity is hurt everywhere. When a new flu infects one human being, all are at risk. When one nation pursues a nuclear weapon, the risk of nuclear attack rises for all nations. When violent extremists operate in one stretch of mountains, people are endangered across an ocean. And when innocents in Bosnia and Darfur are slaughtered, that is a stain on our collective conscience. That is what it means to share this world in the 21st century. That is the responsibility we have to one another as human beings.

He starts with valid observations: Disease has never respected national borders.  America’s financial crisis has had negative consequences elsewhere.  For  one thing, Muslim nations Iran and Saudi Arabia have seen the foundation of their economies, exported oil, become far less profitable.

But what asserts to be the conclusion from these observations,  “That is what it means to share in this world in the 21st century,” simply makes no sense.   Those observations are not examples of sharing.  What does he want the typical Muslim listener to do with that assertion?  What action is he calling for?

Continuing from Obama’s speech:

This is a difficult responsibility to embrace. For human history has often been a record of nations and tribes subjugating one another to serve their own interests. Yet in this new age, such attitudes are self-defeating. Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail.

One wonders what he’s trying to say with this paragraph.  For one thing, it is not a “world order” that elevates America and Americans over most of the rest of the world.  It’s liberty.  America grew from zero to the most powerful, prosperous nation in human history because of individual liberty.  Other nations, including most that are dominated by Islam are not nearly as prosperous or powerful as they could be because they are kingdoms, dictatorships, or theocracies, that, to borrow Obama’s word, “subjugate” individuals to the interests of royal families, or thuggish despots.

The world order wasn’t imposed by some outside force.  It wasn’t imposed by America.  It just is what it is: free nations like America, occupying the same planet with other nations where the people still suffer under the jackboot of tyranny.

So whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners of it. Our problems must be dealt with through partnership; progress must be shared.

Which “problems” does he refer to?  The flu problem?  Financial problems?  The Islamic terror problem?  The problem of rogue nations led by ruthless thugs having nukes?  Is he saying America can “partner” with the psycho who runs Iran to prevent him from achieving his openly stated goal, developing nuclear weapons, for the purpose of incinerating the Jews in Israel?

In America progress comes from private initiatives, investment, innovation, intellectual achievement, and hard work.  How does progress come to Iran or Saudi Arabia?  It’s imported from America and other free nations, in exchange for oil.  Can an American individual or company “partner” with the thugs who run Islamic nations, to bring shared progress? How would that work?

In reality there can be no partnerships of any real substance because Muslim nations are governed in a way that precludes them.  Americans can’t “partner” with or “share progress”  with people who are enslaved by their governments.  And, kings and Dictators don’t “partner” in their own demise.