Obama and the Middle East: Taking sides

Much of the speech was simply outdated boilerplate from the 1960s. This line, for example — "In a global economy based on knowledge and innovation, no development strategy can be based solely upon what comes out of the ground" — ignores the decades of economic diversification pursued by most of the oil producers of the Middle East. Muammar Qaddafi is an outlier and a nut; Algeria, Egypt, Iran, and the Arab nations of the Persian Gulf have all made strides in diversifying their economies. The presidential way to bring up diversification would have been to praise the efforts made already, and pledge US support to continuing or expanding them. Instead, Obama chose to lecture his audience on the need for diversification — sounding very much like someone who hasn't gotten any updated information on this topic since he was awarded his baccalaureate degree in the early 1980s