Obama the Underminer

Obama the Underminer: By addressing the "Muslim world" from Cairo, the president is helping Tehran - Lee Smith, Slate: "If President Barack Obama's speech in Cairo on Thursday is designed to hit 'reset' on Washington's relations with the Muslim world, the White House may soon find that it is pushing the wrong buttons. Public diplomacy in the lands of Islam is a deeply complicated affair, and Muslims do it much better than U.S. presidents. … Now that Washington has put democracy promotion on the back burner, the only challenge to these regimes is from Islamists and other so-called nonstate actors, as well as the state that stands behind them: the Islamic Republic of Iran. President Obama has unwittingly walked right into the middle of Tehran's own public diplomacy campaign, one of the most effective PR efforts ever staged. … Washington's Arab allies are telling Obama that Iran is the problem, but he can't hear them while he's doing Tehran's public diplomacy."

http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2219706