You have analytical skills enough to know that change in human behavior takes decades to accomplish, that the conditions that occurred during Clinton's administration were set in motion years and perhaps decades earlier than that time just as whatever terrorist plot is being hatched today was spawned by hatred created many years ago. Applying that same logic to conservative Presidents we can't blame Nixon for the mess in Vietnam and Cambodia (although we can question his tactics in dealing with them).

Part of any effective leader's task is to not make quick and temporary fixes that are reactionary but instead to try to plant seeds for future generations so that the children and grandchildren of the current generation have a better world.

Obama's speech had wonderful elements to it that were designed not to change Islamic views towards the West overnight but instead to give some breathing room by possibly giving pause to those people torn between hatred and acceptance and to plant those very seeds in the future generations our children will be dealing with.

Of course in people that see things in black and white and know only fear and bigotry, his words will ring hollow and they'll try to find ways to distort the very simple message Obama gave into some sort of submissive and anti-American rant.

Yet we know that a message of being part of a global community is perhaps the most American of themes. How can it not be with the melting pot we all came from?

Art