US President Barack Obama'saddress to the Muslim world evoked a mixed response from the mainstream media here, with a section terming it a welcome break after "eight years of arrogance" while another sounding unimpressed with the "repackaged" version.
Obama's landmark speech delivered from the historic city of Cairo offered the Muslim world a "new beginning" in ties with America and referred to a Palestinian statehood, while indicating that US forces do not intend to remain in Iraq and Afghanistan forever.
Terming it a historic speech, The New York Times in its editorial wrote: "After eight years of arrogance and bullying that has turned even close friends against the US, it takes a strong president to acknowledge the mistakes of the past. And it takes a strong president to press himself and the world to do better."
"When President Bush spoke in the months and years after Sept 11, 2001, we often - chillingly - felt as if we didn't recognise the US. His vision was of a country racked with fear and bent on vengeance, one that imposed invidious choices on the world and on itself. When we listened to President Obama speak in Cairo on Thursday, we recognised the United States,"
The Times said.
TIME's Cairo chief Scott MacLeod termed the speech as "the most important address ever given by an American leader about the Middle East". "He didn't arrive or depart as a prophet, but for an American president treading into territory inhospitable to US
policies, he won some new adherents," MacLeod said.
However, not everyone was as appreciative, with a
Wall Street Journal editorial titled 'Barack Hussein Bush,' saying "what he mostly offered were artfully repackaged versions of themes President Bush sounded with his freedom agenda."
Taking strong objection to Obama's insistence on calling Iraq a "war of choice", The Journal said it "is a needless insult to Mr Bush that diminishes the cause for which more
than 4,000 Americans have died".
"The President also stooped to easy, but false, moral equivalence, most egregiously in comparing the US role in an Iranian coup during the Cold War with revolutionary Iran's
30-year hostility toward the US," it said.
The Washington Times, which arrived at the same conclusion, said that much of Obama's address sounded like "the same old song".
"President Obama sounded like he was channeling President George W Bush,"
The Washington Times said. "One could easily remove the biographical references,
redact a few of the sentences that are clearly critical of specific Bush administration policies, and pass it off as old Republican talking points," it said.
An opinion piece in the paper said as Obama reached out in friendship to Muslims around the world, he distanced himself from Israeli policies more than any other president in decades.
