Repeating the “settlement freeze means no babies!” canard in his column today, Charles Krauthammer adds his voice to the chorus of conservatives who have never said a bad word about the tight Israeli restrictions on growth in Palestinian neighborhoods, but who think that holding Israel to its commitments on settlements is an outrageous injustice:

Obama says he came to Cairo to tell the truth. But he uttered not a word of that. Instead, among all the bromides and lofty sentiments, he issued but one concrete declaration of new American policy: “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements,” thus reinforcing the myth that Palestinian misery and statelessness are the fault of Israel and the settlements.

Blaming Israel and picking a fight over “natural growth” may curry favor with the Muslim “street.” But it will only induce the Arab states to do like Abbas: sit and wait for America to deliver Israel on a platter. Which makes the Obama strategy not just dishonorable but self-defeating.

So let’s get this straight: The President of the United States went to Cairo, condemned anti-Semitism, called Holocaust denial “ignorant,” told Arabs to stop demagoguing the Palestinian issue, and quoted from the Talmud, but Krauthammer insists he “uttered not a word” of the truth. Okay.

Meanwhile, for those who prefer their discussions of this issue a bit saner, ThinkProgress recently sat down for an interview with Daniel Kurtzer, former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt, to discuss the Obama administration’s initial foray into the Middle East peace process. Kurtzer said that he thought the administration had “gotten off to a terrific start, because the president, number one, made it clear that the peace process is a presidential priority.”

I asked Kurtzer about the apparent tension between President Obama and P.M. Netanyahu over the issue of settlement contruction — the Obama administration has requested a complete freeze, without exceptions, something which Netanyahu has called “unreasonable.” Kurtzer said that “as part of his establishing [the Israeli-Arab peace process] as a presidential priority, the president is talking about the need to deal honestly with issues that have not previously been dealt with as honestly they might have, and on the Israeli side settlements is the most pronounced of those issues.”

Every administration since 1967 has said to Israel not to build settlements and very few have done anything about it. And so the president is saying to Israel this is not dependent on Arab behavior, this is not dependent on reciprocity, it’s not dependent on anything else except Israeli action and therefore things have to change. I think one can be confident that the president will say the same things on the Arab side, on issues related to their behavior: violence, recognition of Israel, and other kinds of issues that have stalled progress towards reconciliation. But for an administration that’s only four months old, there’s been a lot of very serious work and some very important markers laid down.

Watch it:

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Last night, Karl Rove went on Fox News and lambasted President Obama’s speech in Cairo, saying that he would give him a grade of “D minus” on the “important parts of the speech.” Host Bill O’Reilly then decided to play “devil’s advocate” and pointed out that President Bush’s approach wasn’t all that great since Muslim communities around the world “hated him.” Rove responded that it doesn’t really matter what they think:

O’REILLY: Okay? The bottom line on it is that President Bush may have been right in a lot of the things that he said and did during the war on terror in his administration. But the Muslim world would not listen to him. They wouldn’t. They didn’t like him. They hated him. He was demonized. And they didn’t like him at all.

ROVE: No, I totally disagree with you.

O’REILLY: The Muslim world –

ROVE: Totally disagree with you.

O’REILLY: — the Muslim people. They didn’t like him.

ROVE: Well, no, no. Look, I disagree with you.

O’REILLY: Well, all the polls showed in every Muslim country that President Bush’s approval rating was 20 percent. So I mean how can you disagree?

ROVE: You know what? Who cares about whether or not they approve or like the president of the United States? The question is do they respect the policies of the United States government? And you bet they did. Because we showed strength and power and influence.

Watch it:

Not only did many Muslim countries not “like” President Bush, they also didn’t respect his policies. A 2006 poll of five Muslim nations found that just 8-16 percent of those surveyed believed that “the ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein made the world a safer place.”

In fact, the reason that so many Muslim communities didn’t approve of Bush was because of his policies. The United States may have had “strength and power and influence,” but under the Bush administration, it used it to “weaken and divide the Islamic world,” according to a 2007 poll of four majority Muslim nations. The abuse of this power is what led to “widespread…unfavorable attitudes” of the United States by Muslim nations throughout Bush’s two terms.

Not that Rove ever cared what they thought anyway.

Transcript: Read more

Reacting to President Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world yesterday, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) decried the president’s speech as “un-American” and even suggested Obama might be on the side of terrorists:

Sen. Jim Inhofe said today that President Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo was “un-American” because he referred to the war in Iraq as “a war of choice” and didn’t criticize Iran for developing a nuclear program.

Inhofe, R-Tulsa, also criticized the president for suggesting that torture was conducted at the military prison in Guantanamo, saying, “There has never been a documented case of torture at Guantanamo.”

“I just don’t know whose side he’s on,” Inhofe said of the president.

Unsurprisingly, actual Iraqis and Iranians — a couple of the key audiences for Obama’s speech — viewed it far more favorably than Inhofe. Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the speech reflected greater understanding of Mideast culture and “reduces the chance of growth of extremist ideas that are trying to tarnish the image of Islam in the world.” “Obama’s speech was extraordinary. I loved it,” said 24-year old Iranian Morteza Sinaie. “I wish every Iranian would hear it. I think it would dramatically change their opinion about Obama and the United Sates.”

Reporting from Iraq, NPR correspondent JJ Sutherland noted one family said they wished Obama’s words “to be real. We wish what he’s saying to be real.” Reporting from Iran, Christian Science Monitor’s Scott Peterson wrote, “Mr. Obama’s pledge that America was ‘ready to move forward’ with ‘courage, rectitude, and resolve’ will be welcome in Tehran.”

One of the important goals of Obama’s speech was to stop creating an “us versus them” mentality with the Muslim world, the very approach that Inhofe is still espousing. In his speech, Obama tried to end language that suggests the Muslim world and the U.S. are on competing sides:

I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles — principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

The Wall Street Journal reports, “Muslims in the Middle East and beyond praised U.S. President Barack Obama for the tone of his speech Thursday.” Al-Jazeera, the Arab world’s leading satellite channel, celebrated the speech as “an attempt at forging a new relationship between Washington and the Muslim world.” If the Muslim world is on America’s side, whose side is Inhofe on?

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