President Barack Obama will deliver a speech reaching out to the Muslim world, in the aftermath of the killing of Osama bin Laden and amid ongoing unrest in the Middle East and North Africa, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. Officials said the president will make the case that bin Laden represented a failed approach of the past while populist movements brewing in the Middle East and North Africa represent the future.
Obama is preparing a wide-ranging address to be delivered as early as next week in which he will make the case that bin Laden’s death, paired with popular uprisings sweeping the region, underscores the US view that the al Qaeda is a spent force in the Muslim world. Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser at the White House, told the newspaper that the speech was likely to be delivered before Obama departs on a five-day trip to Europe on May 23 – not quite three weeks after bin Laden’s demise in a US commando raid in Pakistan.
“It’s an interesting coincidence of timing — that he is killed at the same time that you have a model emerging in the region of change that is completely the opposite of bin Laden’s model,” Rhodes said. The president has stressed outreach to Muslims during his tenure in the White House, and plans to describe the Islamic world as at a crossroads, the US officials told the Journal.
Meanwhile, Obama on Tuesday carefully wove the killing of Osama bin Laden into the political pitch he is beginning to make to voters for a second White House term. In a fundraising event in Texas, Obama introduced the killing of bin Laden for the first time in his political rhetoric. “Because of the extraordinary bravery of the men and women who wear this nation’s uniform and the outstanding work of our intelligence agencies, Osama bin Laden will never again threaten the United States of America.”
Most polls have shown Obama got a modest bounce from the killing of bin Laden in opinion polls, between six and 11 per cent in some surveys, but analysts believe it may not last long. More importantly however, Obama’s steely decision to launch a risky raid that successfully targeted bin Laden in Abbottabad could defuse Republican claims he is weak, hesitant and wary of wielding US power.
