Your Œc. Vol. knows a little about “the Muslim world” which President Obama addressed yesterday. So you might expect him to have a lengthy opinion on the speech. Well, there was a fair amount of stuff in there that’s kind of interesting…a surprising hostility to Israel, accepting the Islamist premise that “the Muslim world” is, in fact, an operative concept (opposed to the rest of the world), advocating accommodation of traditionalist forms of Muslim culture that many Muslims themselves oppose, a shocking gloss over the fundamental inequality of women in Islamic law, some cherry-picked suras of the Koran, the typical apologizing and running down the U.S., etc.

So why isn’t your Volgi all that worked up and screedy? Well, because while this may gain the U.S. a temporary uptick in poll results in the Arab world (and some other Muslim countries), it was fundamentally insubstantial and changed nothing about anything. Had he gone up there, established his phil-Islamic bona fides (back from Barbuda where they spent the campaign!), and then read the Arab world the Riot Act with the scary authority and force of an American president? That might have done something.

But this? Meh. The autocrats who run most Arab states now know that Obama’s got their back, Islamists aren’t scared of him, and the man in the street heard his criticisms of the U.S. much louder than his tepid allusions to some of the local shortcomings reinforcing stereotypes rather than changing minds. He gave the speech well, came off likeable, and maybe re-branded the U.S. a bit. But, to name a few things it won’t do, it ultimately won’t the Saudi and Egyptian presses, e.g., from running loonbag anti-American (not to mention anti-Semitic) conspiracy theories, it won’t cause powers on the fence to rally to the side of an assertive superpower against the regional nasties they’re afraid of, and it won’t give the real violent bastards a moment’s pause.

So, while Confucius* hopes it turns out otherwise—and one never knows—his off-the-cuff reaction is: one cheer for pasting a smiling friendly face on the Gorgon that normally appears in Middle Eastern media. Hope that helps for a while. But overall, don’t count on its doing much. Good P.R., only fair public diplomacy. (And, yeah, I know: FFPE. And, yeah, it does seem to be a lot about him.)

*For those who came in late, vide infra. In Confucius’s defense, the Czar took that picture one morning in the cafeteria before I’d had my customary morning dose of the Liao Drug and black pearls dissolved in the blood of virgins and the tears of a clown.

Confucius, Œc. Vol.

Don’t ask impertinent questions like that jackass Adept Lu.