middle east and to american policy in the middle east and what it s going to mean and i see the way we ve all changed for our conversation because of the 99% and the occupy wall street people. i think it was appropriate and it was also a little, you know, out of the usual suspects. and i guess my question is, is it right to lump the occupy wall street folks in with the people who are leading those protests in the middle east? i think that s a good point. i think that the conflation between the people who overturn dictators in the middle east and a bunch of, well, you know, fill in the blank, and fill in the blank, jim? and i declare, you decide. (laughter) i think it s shows the media put so many chips on the protests and they genuinely thought this was the beginning of the age of aquarius and from the newt gingrich or whoever, and
it. hopefully we will come to a place we don t need to do it. that would be great. there s a huge difference between america imposing on iraq and the libyan people or the syrian or all of that taking ownership of that change. that s a huge difference. in neither case you can predict the change. but the people took charge of that change. sure. but, look, i mean, i agree with what s being said. but the trouble i m having with it is that it seems to me more crucial to discuss how fundamentally american policy in the middle east has undermined democratic movements and has put its weight behind these dictators because they guarantee stability i wouldn t say recently. but the tactics of war. one thing i worry about is if we are led to believe we can conduct wars in this way it s dangerous. it s a video game war. they warned about that in the gulf war.
believe and what strikes me about the president s speech, was that the israeli parts really didn t add too much, move the ball and they really preempted some of the other very good points he made in the speech. chris: i wanted to ask you, the wall street journal editorial page which you run and which is not generally a pillar of support for obama on a lot of the speech, you were supportive. i thought, for a while there i thought i was listening to a speech given by another president in about 2005. he endorsed essentially his own freedom agenda and said we ll put self-determination and has a hard time saying democracy but self-determination at the middle of american policy in the middle east, and top priority and, that was good to hear and the difficulty we ll have is how do you put specific policies to back that up? and the sentiments were excellent. he has no credibility at this point on it, because the policies we have seen since the arab spring has become leashed is comple