Will President Obama stand up for American values when he addresses the UN General Assembly today?
Or will his remarks to assembled world leaders be just another pit stop on his global apology tour?
The White House yesterday let it be known that Obama plans to address “the recent unrest in the Muslim world” when he speaks today.
Which means, according to a National Security Council spokesman, that “the president will make it clear that we reject the views in this [anti-Islam] video, while also underscoring that violence is never acceptable.”
On its face, that’s a specious conflation — though it surely will fall lightly on the ears of Egypt’s new Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi — who told The New York Times that America should not judge his country by Western standards.
Ditto to Hina Rabbani Khar, foreign minister of Pakistan — scene of violent government-supported, anti-US protests last week — who says America needs to “rethink how much freedom [of speech] is OK.”
To which the proper answer must always be: “as much freedom of speech as possible — and certainly as much as is enshrined in the Constitution.”
But is that the response Obama is prepared to deliver?
Will he offer what Americans should expect from their president — namely, a rousing declaration of support for the guiding principles on which this nation was built?
Or will he simply condemn “unjustifiable” violence — even while endorsing the rioters’ complaints about the “insult” to their religion?
Because that’s what the Muslim world’s leaders seem to be expecting.
And it’s the message they’ve heard thus far from Team Obama, which has soft-pedaled any defense of America’s core civil right: the freedom to speak one’s mind, even if someone may find strong opinions offensive.
A freedom, needless to say, that scarcely exists in the Arab world.
As Foreign Minister Khar declared: “It is not good enough to say, ‘It’s free speech, it should be allowed.’ . . . We really have to be sensitive to religious sensitivities.”
(Though when asked why Muslims don’t protest when the religious “sensitivities” of Jews and Christians are attacked, she declined to “go deeper into discussion.”)
Which is precisely why President Obama needs to deliver a ringing pronouncement of precisely the principles that make America exceptional — and that most Middle East countries are terrified of extending to their own people.
If the president fails to proclaim this nation’s unique commitment to the most fundamental personal liberties, and instead kowtows to the forces of repression and violent intimidation, it will be a profound humiliation to all Americans.
And a great victory for the zealots.