Some strange reactions is what I mean. A Times leader this morning:
He did not, sadly, address the issue of democracy.
I could swear I heard him doing so: 'the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose'; 'there are some who advocate for democracy only when they are out of power'; 'government of the people and by the people sets a single standard for all who hold power: you must maintain your power through consent, not coercion; you must respect the rights of minorities'; and so forth. The Times's own correspondent, James Hider, also noticed. Stranger still, here's a researcher for Human Rights Watch for whom what Obama said about human rights was less satisfactory than what Condoleezza Rice said four years before him in the same city. Obama, she thinks, didn't go beyond generalities. No, but the burden of them was entirely clear. What is more, one of those generalities sounded pretty much like this, the words of none other than Condoleezza Rice: 'America will not impose our style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, to attain their own freedom, make their own way.'
Then there is the suggestion that merely by including a reference to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa in the same speech as a discussion of Israel and Palestine, Obama might be taken to have licensed the Israel/apartheid analogy. He did no such thing. The South Africa reference came in a passage designed to illustrate the point that violent resistance is 'a dead end' - nothing more. Otherwise we should have to conclude that Obama sees the situation of the Palestinians as similar to that of the Jews during the Holocaust - on the grounds that, not merely in the same speech, but in two consecutive paragraphs, he spoke first of the Holocaust and then of the plight of the Palestinians. These are whimsical interpretations.
Finally Ahdaf Soueif, for her part, was waiting for Obama to assume global leadership; but '[h]e did not; he remained the President of the United States.' Welcome to the real world.
I suppose it was inevitable, since Obama was trying to bring greater understanding to issues that have divided people, and this meant that he spoke, and spoke forthrightly, on more than one side of the issues - inevitable, consequently, that there would be those who would fasten on to some particular and miss what they had no appetite for. For my money, this was one very impressive speech - hard to improve upon, in fact, given everything Obama was trying to do with it - and an exercise in international leadership indeed.