Obama in the middle east

It's going to take more than one speech to make peace with the Muslim world, but this might be a good start.

What a lot of conservatives fail to realize is that we have done a decent job fighting the extremists, but we have done a terrible job of building bridges to the overwhelmingly moderate Muslim population. When Osama Bin Laden is considered an admirable leader by otherwise moderate muslims, this shows how much needs to be done.

A good example is Indonesia. The Indonesians are moderate and tolerant, but identify themselve as Muslim. We have done almost nothing to build bridges to these people, and as a result, and Arab Wahhabist ideology (which should be completely alien) has made inroads into a relatively secular Indonesian society, through the rhetoric of "Muslims everywhere are under attack".

Lets hope Barack can start a (long) process of reconciliation.