The Power of Humility (ISRAEL)

Is there meaning and power to Barack Obama's address without President Obama? Is this solely Obama's text or is it America's new text, whoever the president might be? The answer is twofold. Obama did not have to make his Cairo speech to alter U.S. policy. Anyone looking for a policy change could have found it in his earlier declarations supporting dialogue with Iran and opposing settlements, as well as in his announcements that he would bolster the Afghanistan campaign and speed up the pullout from Iraq. Obama the politician could have allowed his actions to draw Arab and Muslim support, and show the rest of the world where he is headed.

But Obama did not plan merely to announce political change and redefine U.S. interests in the Middle East, or offer American-Muslim reconciliation. You don't need an appearance at a dim hall at Cairo University to do this. Obama is a political philosopher who seeks to forge a new constitution of international politics that can replace the old paradigm, which drew a line separating Islam from the West. The old paradigm also built the temples of Orientalism, where the Middle East was researched as a holding area of natives, which attributed wisdom to the West and backwardness to "Islam," and juxtaposed a West of diplomatic finesse and honest handshakes with an Islam of fraud and violence.

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