Jennifer Foster: Obama's success depends on converting words into reality

President Obama made good on a campaign promise this week and spoke to the Muslim world from within the Muslim world.

From a podium at Cairo University, the former law school professor seemed right at home delivering a speech that touched on the most controversial and volatile international issues of our time.

But if the location of the speech was a tip of the hat to the place Cairo held as a place of learning in antiquity, its promotion by the White House was a crash course in the way technology shapes modern politics: It was promoted on social media sites, advanced on the White House blog, live-streamed from the president’s Web site, excerpted in text messages and made available in 13 languages.

Why the full-court press? Obama’s intended audience wasn’t just Muslims. He wanted to reach young Muslims. Continuing this theme held over from his presidential campaign last year, he emphasized the younger generation as the bridge to change.

As speeches go, this one met the high bar Obama has established for himself. He wove history and current events together well; he drew on personal experience to balance and give perspective to policy challenges. If there was a substantive difference, for me, it came in his word choice. Where he is usually cerebral and thoughtful, Thursday’s speech found him employing the direct, deliberate approach.

As for the content of the speech, I found it effective if, at times, lecture-like. The president did a fine job of speaking specifically and forcefully about the big issues facing the Muslim and Western worlds. I found him to be at his best when explaining the rationale for the invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001:

“Let us be clear: Al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on (Sept. 11). The victims were innocent men, women and children from America and many other nations who had done nothing to harm anybody. And yet Al Qaeda chose to ruthlessly murder these people, claimed credit for the attack, and even now states their determination to kill on a massive scale. They have affiliates in many countries and are trying to expand their reach. These are not opinions to be debated; these are facts to be dealt with.”

I was also glad to hear the president discuss women’s rights in Muslim countries. The line between cultural mores and gender-based oppression is often blurred there; difference, as the president so rightly pointed out, is whether the individual Muslim woman has the choice to adopt those mores on her own, or whether they are thrust upon her by the men in charge.

But most interesting to me was this statement Obama made near the start of his speech:

“But I am convinced that in order to move forward, we must say openly the things we hold in our hearts, and that too often are said only behind closed doors.”

It was a gentle, but unmistakable, rebuke — not only to those listening around the world, but also to those world leaders with whom the president meets one on one — that political correctness or a simple unwillingness to accept reality only builds new barriers to diplomatic progress and cultural understanding.

President Obama has established himself as one of our country’s greatest orators. But the success of his presidency will be judged based on how well he is able to convert that soaring rhetoric into reality.

His words for the Muslim world will be no exception.

Jennifer Foster lives in Auburn and writes a column for the Opelika-Auburn News.