Charles Krauthammer analyzes Obama’s overseas speeches and his misguided approach to repairing relations between Islam and the West. The theme running through this effort is that we all fall short. Islam stones women and we deny them equal funding under Title IX. Islam executes homosexuals and some states refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The column deserves to be read in full because it provides ample support for this conclusion:
Obama undoubtedly thinks he is demonstrating historical magnanimity with all these moral equivalencies and self-flagellating apologetics. On the contrary. He’s showing cheap condescension, an unseemly hunger for applause and a willingness to distort history for political effect.
Distorting history is not truth-telling, but the telling of soft lies. Creating false equivalencies is not moral leadership, but moral abdication. And hovering above it all, above country and history, is a sign not of transcendence but of a disturbing ambivalence toward one’s own country.
