In today’s LA Times Interview section comes this from yesterday’s interview with President-elect Barack Obama.

Barack Obama says his presidency is an opportunity for the United States to spread a message of tolerance, starting the day of his inauguration and continuing with a speech he plans to deliver somewhere in the Muslim world.

And when he takes the oath of office Jan. 20, he plans to be sworn in like other presidents, using his full name: Barack Hussein Obama.

“I think we’ve got a unique opportunity to reboot America’s image around the world and also in the Muslim world in particular,” Obama said Tuesday, promising an “unrelenting” desire to “create a relationship of mutual respect and partnership in countries and with peoples of goodwill who want their citizens and ours to prosper together.”

The world, he said, “is ready for that message.”

Anyone besides me thinking of a Coca-Cola commercial from the seventies? All one has to do it take a peek at the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attack to see that “peoples of goodwill” don’t get much play in the greater Islamic world. It is a frightening thought that our next Commander-in-Chief might not deeply understand this. He did address it, somewhat.

Obama said the country must take advantage of a unique chance to recalibrate relations around the globe, through diplomacy that emphasizes inclusiveness and tolerance as well as an unflinching stand against terrorism.

“The message I want to send is that we will be unyielding in stamping out the terrorist extremism we saw in Mumbai,” Obama said, adding that he plans to give a major address in an Islamic capital as part of his global outreach.

I don’t know . . . I’m sure not seeing much, make that zero, calling out of the Islamic extremists by “moderate” Muslims. Until that becomes the norm, it’s only prudent to be very wary as the radicals continue to call the important shots. Does Pres-elect Barry get this, even a little? Time will tell.

A liberal columnist that does seem to get this is Camille Paglia, writing for Salon.

Meanwhile, an area where too many in the mainstream media have been oddly AWOL is in the response to the attack on Mumbai, India, two weeks ago by a squad of Pakistan-based terrorists, who killed nearly 200 people. Reaction in the U.S. was somewhat muted because the protracted standoff occurred over the Thanksgiving holiday, when many Americans were traveling or absorbed in family business. But I was troubled by a persistent soft-pedaling of the identification of the attackers as Muslims –as if the mere reporting of that fact would be offensive and politically incorrect.

Because seven years have passed since 9/11 without another attack on native soil, many Americans, particularly urban professionals, seem to have been lulled into a false feeling of security. But jihadism as a world movement — even if its membership is a tiny fraction of young Muslim men — will continue to pose a serious threat to every open democratic society over the next century and more. Anyone who has studied ancient history knows that great civilizations, from Egypt and Persia to Rome and Byzantium, broke down in stages separated in some cases by many superficially tranquil decades. Because of the unprecedented fragility of our intertwined power grid and complex transportation system, the technological West is highly vulnerable to sabotage and chaos.

The tragic fate of so many innocent victims in Mumbai deserves our pity. But what should live in special infamy was the ruthless execution of the Lubavitcher rabbi, Gavriel Hertzberg, and his lovely wife, Rivka, who was 5 months pregnant. These were two idealistic young people of obvious warmth and humanity, who sought only to serve. The rescue by their Indian nanny of their orphaned 2-year-old son, Moshe, crying and smeared with his parents’ blood, is already legendary. Was this zeroing in on the Chabad Jewish Center in Mumbai about Israel, or was it simply a gruesome eruption of the medieval tradition of anti-Semitism? Why have Muslim organizations, very quick to protest insulting cartoons, been mostly silent about the atrocities in Mumbai?

The slaughter of the Hertzbergs and other Jews at Chabad House should be a wake-up call to Western liberals who believe that jihadism can be defeated through reason and happy talk. Only other Muslims can launch the stringent internal reform necessary to stomp this barbaric extremism out. But the events in Mumbai confirmed my opinion about the looming problem of a nuclear Iran: While I oppose all American military operations and bases in the Mideast, I continue to believe that Israel, whose security is directly threatened, has every right to take preemptive military action against Iran.

Hopefully the Obama speech delivered somewhere in the Muslim world won’t prove that he is just one of those “liberals who believe that jihadism can be defeated through reason and happy talk.”

I sure hope that the President-elect reads, and understands, his Camille Paglia.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 at 10:17 am and is filed under POTUS Obama, Radical Islam, When Left Is Right. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  |   Print This Post  |   Email This Post

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