Talk Like an Egyptian

There are critiques all over the intertubes today about President Obama's speech in Cairo. I'd only make two points, myself:

I'm really tired of the moral equivalence trope, especially the odious comparisons of the systematic attempt to exterminate Jews to the current experience of the Palestinians in places like Gaza. If you had people within your midst who were willing to kill you at a moment's notice, chances are pretty good that you'd react the way the Israeli government has acted over the years. Self-defense is rational. The behavior of the Palestinian Authority, not so much.

To set up my second point, I happened upon this critique from the portside offered by Peter Daou over at HuffPo. It pretty much speaks for itself. At one point in his speech, Obama talked about American efforts to ensure that women have the right to wear the hijab. Daou ain't buyin' what Obama is selling here:

With women being stoned, raped, abused, battered, mutilated, and slaughtered on a daily basis across the globe, violence that is so often perpetrated in the name of religion, the most our president can speak about is protecting their right to wear the hijab? I would have been much more heartened if the preponderance of the speech had been about how in the 21st century, we CANNOT tolerate the pervasive abuse of our mothers and sisters and daughters.

Me too. The issue isn't whether or not Muslim women have the right to wear the hijab. The real issue is self-determination for women. And men, too. And in places like Cairo, Egypt, those rights aren't currently on offer.