ONE question remains about President Obama's upcoming schlock-concerts in the Middle East: "How deeply will he grovel?"
With top tour dates in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the political message is clear: President George W. Bush is gone, democracy's an annoyance, human rights apply only to Gitmo inmates and America owes the Middle East confessions, concessions and apologies.
The key contents of the president's ballyhooed speech to "the Muslim world" are discouragingly predictable: Along with blather about working cooperatively for a better, shared future, he'll stress that "Islam's a religion of peace" and that America isn't Islam's enemy.
But what if Islam -- as enforced by the Saudis and their surrogates -- isn't a religion of peace? What if their Islam needs America as an enemy? And what if a crucial core of radicalized Muslims don't want what we have to offer and pray for our destruction?
What if the Saudi version of Islam is the problem?
While all major religions have engaged in horrendous oppression at various points, the Wahhabi counterrevolution that's poisoned Sunni Islam has done its best to kill any hint of tolerance.
The Saudis have funded a once-great faith's grotesque degeneration. And let's not mention terrorism.
Instead of encouraging Middle Easterners to take responsibility for their own failures, to stop discriminating against those of other faiths (including Shia Muslims) and to firmly reject violence in the name of religion, our president will employ his commanding voice to deliver a message of American contrition.
For all the American left's blather about human rights and freedom, the Obama administration has turned its back on democracy, women's rights and the most basic social and political liberties in the Arab world.
But presenting a rhetorical welfare check to the collapsed civilization of the Middle East won't advance our interests -- or those of the average Arab.
I can't alter his speech, but I ask our first multi-racial president to bear in mind two things during the brief flight between Cairo and Riyadh: The Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula and Egypt were the earliest, greatest and most tenacious enslavers of black Africans. And the Saudis are the leading sponsors of religious hatred in the world today.
Who owes whom an apology?
Ralph Peters, NY Post, 6/2/09
