Robert Fisk om Obama

Hvis nogen har baggrund for at vurdere og sætte Obama i perspektiv, så er det Robert Fisk. Hans kommentar ligger nu på The Independent's hjemmeside. Han er overvejende imponeret, og slutter med:

An intelligent guy, then, Obama. Not exactly Gettysburg. Not exactly Churchill, but not bad. One could only remember Churchill's observations: "Words are easy and many, while great deeds are difficult and rare."

Fisk bemærker også nogle af udeladelsessynderne i talen:

There was no mention – during or after his kindly excoriation of Iran – of Israel's estimated 264 nuclear warheads. He admonished the Palestinians for their violence – for "shooting rockets at sleeping children or blowing up old women in a bus". But there was no mention of Israel's violence in Gaza, just of the "continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza". Nor was there a mention of Israel's bombing of civilians in Lebanon, of its repeated invasions of Lebanon (17,500 dead in the 1982 invasion alone). Obama told Muslims not to live in the past, but cut the Israelis out of this. The Holocaust loomed out of his speech and he reminded us that he was going to the site of the Buchenwald concentration camp today.

Men læs den selv, Fisk er altid god at få forstand af. Og hvis man vil læse rosende ord om Obama, har han også mange af dem: Words that could heal wounds of centuries