State of the Union Address

President Obama made much publicized news domestically and abroad last Wednesday when he delivered his first State of the Union Address. Understandably, the speech has been much discussed and it seems every little remark and mannerism has been picked over and commented on by pundits representing both sides of the aisle. Although the focus of the night was on health care and economic reform there were still brief mentions of foreign policy and I was intrigued as to how the foreign press was evaluating the specific issues that might affect them.

I found an article in my media of choice; the Al-Ahram Weekly, that I feel represents an Egyptian view of the speech quite well. The article, entitled “Obama's disappointment” and written by Hassan Nafaa, covers the entirety of the speech and, similar to all the press I've heard about the speech so far, goes over every detail with a fine-toothed comb, reading into vocabulary and even reasons why certain topics weren't mentioned.

One of the first points of contention the article has with the speech is something that I noticed as well, that President Obama devoted a vast majority of the speech to domestic affairs and very little to issues abroad. The author finds this very odd considering, “the US is mired in two wars that are draining it materially and morally, and… these wars and other problems overseas have a direct impact on domestic security and daily life in the US”. Here I feel the author is making a questionable assumption when he asserts this focus to Obama's fear that the U.S. has lost influence and has irreversibly lost its world power status. Nafaa claims that underneath Obama's confidence and posturing lay a sense of foreboding and “an inescapable note of concern between every line”.

The article's other big issue with the speech was that it never once mentioned issues related to the Arab world, and more specifically the Arab-Israeli conflict and the U.S.'s obligation to broker a peaceful settlement. The fact that Nafaa took such issue with this I found to be extremely interesting. Of course it makes perfect sense that an Egyptian article would be looking over the speech for any issues that concern them, and the most likely candidate for such an issue would be the Arab-Israeli conflict. What is surprising is that upon hearing no mention of the conflict whatsoever Nafaa took offense to this and felt Obama had failed in some way. He cites a time when, “for years virtually every State of the Union address included at least a short paragraph reaffirming America's commitment to the security of Israel and its determination to reach a peaceful solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.” Nafaa did not see this snub as an abandonment to the commitment this administration has made to settling peace in the region, but rather a response to Israel's unwillingness to cooperate with the administration's pressures toward slowing settlement development and negotiation tactics.

The article ends with this interpretation; “Obama's State of the Union address revealed both his helplessness and his confusion at this juncture. Sometimes a sense of weakness makes people put on a display of might. Therefore, we might wake up one day to the renewed sound of war drums and, once again, the Middle East will be the battle theatre.” It is an eye-opening experience being able to examine a news event that one is so close to through the lens of another country and another world view. The levels that this article reads into what Obama did not discuss and the conclusions drawn were surprising to me but completely understandable; although they seem far fetched to me these media blogs are allowing me to understand where they are coming from. My media consumption and political leanings lead me to interpret Obama's speech entirely differently, but that isn't to say that I think the conclusions drawn in this article are completely out of the question.