Obama, Bush, and Muslims

What's new about Obama's "new beginning" with the Islamic world?

President Obama's speech in Cairo had a "sort of familiar ring," said Michael Crowley in The New Republic, and indeed, "most of his main arguments have been made before"—by his predecessor, in 2006. Both Obama and George W. Bush said the U.S. isn't at war with Islam, decried the "daily humiliation" of Palestinians, and said that freedom couldn't be imposed from abroad. But Bush's 2006 speech was "immediately forgotten," while Obama's speech—perhaps his best yet—could make a real difference in how Muslims view the U.S.

Still, Obama's "artful" repackaging of Bush's "freedom agenda" is a compliment to Bush, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. Obama even "went one better" than Bush in his "implicit rebukes" to the Muslim world. Except for a few sour notes—his "needless insult" to Bush and U.S. troops in calling Iraq a "war of choice," his false boast that he ended U.S. torture—Obama's speech really just pushed the Bush policy, "without the taint of its author's name."

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