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The WSJ Editorial appears to bend over backward to find the "Bush" in Barry before cutting to the chase ...
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He also couldn't resist his by now familiar moral self-indulgence by
asserting that he has "unequivocally prohibited the use of torture" and
ordered Guantanamo closed. Aside from the fact that the U.S. wasn't
torturing anyone before Mr. Obama came into office, his Arab hosts can
see through his claims. They know the Obama Administration is
"rendering" al Qaeda detainees to other countries, some of them Arab,
where their rights and well-being are far less secure than at Gitmo.
The President also stooped to easy, but false, moral equivalence, most
egregiously in comparing the U.S. role in an Iranian coup during the
Cold War with revolutionary Iran's 30-year hostility toward the U.S. He
also compared Israel's right to exist with Palestinian statehood. But
while denouncing Israeli settlements was an easy applause line, removal
of those settlements will do nothing to ease Israeli-Palestinian
tensions if the result is similar to what happened when Israel withdrew
its settlements from Gaza. We too favor a two-state solution -- as did
President Bush -- but that solution depends on Palestinians showing the
capacity to build domestic institutions that reject and punish terror
against other Palestinians and their neighbors.
 Hanging
over all of this is the question of Iran. In his formal remarks, Mr.
Obama promised only diplomacy without preconditions and warned about a
nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Yet surely Iran was at the top of
his agenda in private with Mr. Mubarak and Saudi Arabia's King
Abdullah, both of whom would quietly exult if the U.S. removed that
regional threat. They were no doubt trying to assess if Mr. Obama is
serious about stopping Tehran, or if he is the second coming of Jimmy
Carter.
| Is he " the second coming of Jimmy
Carter?" Yes, only not as good.
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