Yesterday was a crazy day here in Cambridge, and so I'm late with my reaction to the death of Muammar al-Qaddafi. Here's my initial take, for what it may be worth.

I don't think the death of any human being is something to celebrate, but there is no reason to mourn the man and we can take a certain grim satisfaction in his demise. Although one could point to a few achievements during his forty years as Libya's leader, such as improved literacy, the more important fact is that he was brutal and megalomaniacal dictator who killed his opponents, supported various forms of terrorism, stole much of Libya's wealth for himself and his cronies, and squandered innumerable opportunities to improve the lives of ordinary Libyans. Tin pot tyrants like him deserve no sympathy, and I feel none.

Moreover, Qaddafi's death probably reinforces some other positive aspects of the whole Libyan intervention. For starters, the campaign did not turn into a stalemate or a quagmire, as many of us feared and as seemed likely to occur at several moments during the war (and yes, it was a war). The Obama administration can also be congratulated for having shifted most of the burdens onto states whose interests were more directly at stake, and at having handled the necessary diplomacy fairly well (with one major caveat to be noted below).

The decision to intervene may have reinforced perceptions that the United States was in favor of democratic change in the Middle East, and kept some of the momentum of the "Arab Spring" alive. (According to Michael Hastings, that concern was a big part of Obama's rationale for going to war).  It is also possible that the Colonel's fate will have a salutary effect on some other dictators (are you listening, Bashar?), and lead some of them to look for an early and safe exit instead of trying to hang on until the last bullet. Qaddafi's demise also eliminates any possibility of a restoration and spares the country the distraction of a prolonged trial and possible execution, thereby making it easier for Libyans to focus on the difficult task of constructing a workable political order.

So it would be foolish not to see a certain amount of good news in this outcome. But any sense of achievement should be tempered by several other considerations.  

First, I still worry about the other lessons that other leaders may draw from Qaddafi's fate. He agreed to give up all his WMD programs in 2003, in exchange for a U.S. pledge not to overthrow him. And he got a lot of favorable attention from the United States after that--including a friendly visit from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice -- in part because he was openly hostile to Al Qaeda. Yet eight years later, that pledge was tossed aside and we intervened to help topple him from power. We should therefore expect the leaders of Iran and North Korea (and maybe some other countries) to draw the obvious conclusion: weapons of mass destruction are an effective means of deterring great powers from trying to overthrow you, and don't ever, ever believe Washington when it promises to leave you alone if you disarm.

Second, helping overthrow Qaddafi may have signaled U.S. support for the "Arab spring," but our response to upheavals in Bahrain and elsewhere shows that our policy is far from consistent. On the plus side, we did not allow at least one dictator to crush the opposition, and we can therefore claim to have taken action consistent with our values. But we are also guilty of obvious hypocrisy-both because we had previously embraced the supposedly reformed Qaddafi and because we have turned a blind eye when authoritarians on which we are more dependent cracked down on their populations. We can be sure that critics will remind us about our double-standards -- repeatedly.  And any kudos we may have won in the Arab world are more than counteracted by our shameful policy on the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

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The Wall Street Journal is a fine newspaper, but its op-ed page is like listening to O'Reilly, Beck, or Limbaugh but with a better vocabulary. And it usually makes about as much sense as they do.

Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal editors told us that pro-American dictators are ethically superior to anti-American tyrants and potentates. Money quote (h/t Eli Clifton &Jim Lobe):

The regime in Tehran -- aptly described by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday as 'a military dictatorship with a kind of theocratic overlay' -- feels zero compunction or shame about repressing political opponents. Hosni Mubarak and Egypt's military, dependent on U.S. aid and support, were susceptible to outside pressure to shun violence. Tehran scorns the West.

To put it another way, pro-American dictatorships have more moral scruples. The comparison is akin to what happened in the 1980s when U.S. allies led by authoritarians fell peacefully in the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan, even as Communist regimes proved tougher."

I'm no fan of the Islamic Republic, but two points are relevant here.  First, plenty of pro-American dictators--including former President Mubarak--felt zero compunction about brutally repressing political opponents in the past. That's one big reason why his regime was so unpopular. He just didn't do it this time around, in part because his security police weren't up to the task and because Egypt's armed services apparently refused to kill large numbers of their countrymen to keep him in power. 

Second, and more importantly, has the WSJ editorial team completely forgotten about the fall of communism? Remember those nasty, hostile, brutal, anti-American, and vicious communist governments in East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, and the USSR itself?  These regimes didn't prove to be "tough" at all. In fact, by declining to suppress the "velvet revolutions" by force, they seem to have exhibited the same "moral scruples" that the WSJ attributes to its list of "pro-American" despots.

Egyptians have returned to the streets for what anti-government forces have dubbed a "day of departure." The early reports I've seen are heartening: the demonstrations are peaceful, more and more members of the elite appear to be embracing change, and key institutions like the army continue to behave with restraint and to enjoy respect from the crowds. If it holds up, this augurs well for a transition that avoids most of the worst-case scenarios.

Meanwhile, there seems to be a lot of behind-the-scenes diplomacy going on, trying to convince Hosni Mubarak to step down and to coordinate some sort of transitional process. I hope that is the case, because Egypt will need a credible caretaker government to orchestrate the revision of the constitution, conduct either new elections or the elections already scheduled for September, and to maintain order during this process. 

I don't know what sort of transitional arrangements would work best, so I'm not going to prescribe any particular scenario or road-map. Instead, here are few items you might want to read, to get a sense of the different issues, possibilities, and pitfalls.

1. My colleage Tarek Masoud has an very interesting op-ed in today's New York Times, arguing that Mubarak needs to say long enough to orchestrate a transition that is consistent with the existing constitution. His point is that it makes sense to change the government via existing procedures, to emphasize the importance of rule of law. I'm not convinced this will work (i.e., the popular forces may not tolerate it), but his broader point about giving the transitional process as much legitimacy as possible seems right to me. But would the best be the enemy of the good?

2. For an alternative procedure, see the statement by a group of Egyptian activists that was translated and released by the Carnegie Endowment here.  In their scenario, the Vice-President would oversee an independent process of revising the constitution and preparing for new elections, in consultation with independent jurists and constitutional experts.   For additional commentary on the proposal, and the more general problem of constitutional reform, see Egypt expert Nathan Brown's posting here.

3. If you've been hearing those wild-eyed claims that the Muslim Brotherhood is a mortal threat to US interests and the nucleus of a future radical Islamic republic in Egypt, please read Helena Cobban's thoughtful discussion of the MB and its background. I should add that I think the lurid fears of some sort of radical jihadist takeover of Egypt are wildly off-the-mark, especially so long as the Egyptian army remains intact and respected (as it has so far). And as Masoud says in the op-ed discussed above, "democracy in Egypt, or any other part of the world, is not something we should fear."

Do the large and angry demonstrations in Egypt mean that I was wrong to predict that the revolution in Tunisia wouldn't spread? Not yet, but I will be watching events closely and developments there could eventually prove me wrong. (As Keynes famously retorted, "when the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?") But thus far, I'm sticking with my original forecast.

A couple of quick points.  In my original post on the subject, I emphasized that revolutionary upheavals are always inherently unpredictable, because it is hard to know how much the population is willing to risk to overthrow the authorities and because each person's reaction will depend on what they think others will do. (Someone might be reluctant to join an angry mob if they thought only ten other people will show up, but if they are convinced that 5000 other people will be there, then there's safety in numbers and they'd be willing to be the 5001st). 

I didn't deny that events in Tunisia might generate some sympathetic rumblings elsewhere, because this is common after a revolution, but I said that I didn't expect a wave of upheavals that ultimately overthrew neighboring governments. The main reason was that authoritarian governments would be on their guard against contagion, and would act quickly to snuff out any rising revolutionary tide. Thus far, that's precisely what the Mubarak regime seems to be doing, and they have a lot of practice at this sort of thing.  See here for an eyewitness account. As Juan Cole warns, "Egypt is not Tunisia."

So what do I think now? It's clear that events in Tunisia have provided a catalyst for Egyptians to express their discontent with the Mubarak regime. (That discontent is not new, of course).  It seems plausible that social media (e.g., the internet, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) may have facilitated some degree of mass mobilization, thereby encouraging larger turnout at demonstrations than one might otherwise have expected. It's hard to know how important this has been, but it could be a change in background conditions that makes this sort of revolutionary contagion more likely. I have an open mind about that subject.

What we don't know yet is whether the popular discontent that is being expressed in the streets will ultimately be able to challenge the government's authority, undermine the cohesion and loyalty of the Egyptian security forces, and render Mubarak's continued rule untenable.  If I had to bet, I'd say not at present. But am as I confident as I was last week? 'Course not.

And for me, the more interesting question is not the short-term possibility of revolutionary contagion, but rather the long-term possibilities for political and social change that these events herald. Even if governments like Mubarak's remain in power today, it is hard for me to believe that the current political order in much of the Arab world can survive unchanged for much longer. Smart governments will try to get out ahead of these processes, and manage a gradual evolution towards more legitimate and participatory forms of government (which may not bear much resemblance to Western-style liberal democracy). The point is that political change in the Arab world need not come about through violent revolution; the mere possibility of violent upheaval may be enough to convince some leaders that they need to rethink some of their policies. Whatever the mechanism, we'll be living in interesting times. 

I'm on the other side of the world, and so I didn't get to see President Obama's speech in Arizona. I gather that he did well. I'm glad to hear it because one of the things presidents can do at times of crisis is to provide us with sentiments that most of us can readily embrace, at a moment when our unity as a nation is in some doubt.

I've tried to keep up with at least some of the blizzard of commentary that has followed the Arizona shooting, and although a lot of it has been thoughtful, I'm also disappointed (though not surprised) by the reflexive "who us?" reaction from a lot of conservative pundits. The most prominent example was probably David Brooks of the New York Times, who devoted an entire column to explaining why violent political discourse had absolutely nothing to do with a violent assault on a U.S. congresswoman. Brooks took this position, I suppose, because he knows that most of the hateful and violent rhetoric in America today comes from the right-hand side of the aisle. I'm not saying he agrees or endorses the worst rhetorical excesses of the American right (i.e., Brooks is often wrong but rarely openly hateful), but it was a pretty lame attempt to exonerate his ideological fellow-travelers.

One problem, of course, is that causality in a case like this is always murky. When someone arrives at a public event and starts shooting people, how do we determine the relative weight of mental illness, personal experience, opportunity, lax gun-control laws, and the toxic soup of violent rhetoric to which he had been exposed, when we try to figure out how something like this could have happened? Granting that Rep. Giffords's assailant was by all the evidence a deeply disturbed individual, it is still true that his madness manifested itself as an attack on a politician. He didn't shoot up his workplace, or a school, or even a random shopping mall: He chose a political target. And whatever his personal motives or internal dialogues may have been, he did this at a moment in our history when self-interested hatemongers have combined violent rhetoric and political polarization to an unprecedented degree. Yet for the American right, the violent, and frequently Manichaean, rhetoric that has been the stock in trade of some of their most prominent spokespeople (including Sarah Palin) is totally irrelevant, and anyone who says differently is just playing partisan politics.

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As with earlier WikiLeaks "revelations," the latest batch of classified communications is bound to be something of a Rorschach test. With a wealth of cables from which to choose, readers will be inclined to see in them what they want to see. I've been reading some of the latest releases and I've read the New York Times accounts pretty carefully, but thus far, I haven't seen anything that fundamentally alters my views about U.S. foreign policy. Nor have I seen any other commentator who says that they've changed their mind about some important contemporary issue either. That said, here are a few tentative reactions.

First, everyone should remember that these documents are not revealed truth or literal transcripts of an event. Like most forms of diplomatic reportage, they are a version of events or a summary of impressions, as seen through the eyes of the person (in most cases mid-level officials) who are drafting the message. Even when one is just summarizing a meeting, whoever is drafting the cable gets to emphasize certain things and to omit or downplay others, and that includes the possibility that they misheard, misinterpreted, or misunderstood what was said. Context matters too: what foreign officials say will be shaped by what they are trying to accomplish and also what they think their American interlocutors want or need to hear, and it's hard to identify the full context from these releases alone.

Please note that I am not arguing that there isn't useful information here. My point is that we bear in mind that these cables are the products of individual human drafters who have their own agendas and frailties, and that the discussions they are summarizing do not occur in isolation. And although these documents clearly tell us something about a number of key policies, they are a very incomplete picture.

Second, as with previous WikiLeaks releases, we need to be very wary about our initial conclusions. Only a small number of cables have been released so far, and the media outlets that were given access to them (the New York Times, the Guardian, and Der Spiegel) are picking and choosing from among the one's they've seen. Until we've had a chance to see the full set of releases, a degree of interpretive caution is in order.

Third, I am less troubled than some others about the possibility that these documents will expose gaps between what governments say they are doing and what they are actually doing.  Some commentators worry, for example, that these documents have exposed the hypocrisy of the Yemeni government, which has been pretending that it wasn't allowing the United States to conduct drone strikes on its territory. Others probably fear that some particularly pungent comments about various world leaders might get exposed, and thereby creating undesirable frictions. There's also the concern that foreign representatives will be less candid in the future, for fear of being exposed by some subsequent leak.

But let's get serious for a second. I doubt there are any major world leaders who once believed that we held them in the highest regard, and who will now be crushed to learn that some of our officials had reservations about them. (I'm willing to bet that plenty of foreign cables say less-than-flattering things about U.S. officials too, and that those officials wouldn't be entirely shocked were those reports to go public). I give most leaders a bit more credit than that: most people know when there are significant differences between allies and even personal points of friction, even if they are papered over with appropriate diplomatic niceties. It's mildly embarrassing to have this out in public, but I'm not sure anybody is going to feel seriously betrayed or misled.

And as for the possibility that American diplomats will be exposed as less than 100 percent honest: at this stage in our history, is all that even remotely surprising? I mean, after the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, Iran/Contra, the cruise missile attack on Sudan, Colin Powell's cooked-up testimony to the Security Council in 2002, how many people are under that many illusions about the dark underbelly of U.S. foreign policy? And it's hardly headline news to learn that the United States has been obsessed with Iran's nuclear program, reflexively solicitous of Israel's concerns, worried about North Korea, or deeply concerned about al Qaeda. Some of the details in these cables are interesting, but none of the dispatches I've read or the news accounts I've seen suggest that a major rewriting of recent diplomacy is in order. 

Fourth, the recurring theme that I keep seeing in these documents -- it's my own Rorschach, I guess -- is how everybody around the world wants Uncle Sucker to solve their problems.  South Korea and the U.S. talk about what to do if North Korea collapses. Israeli officials keep demanding that we deal with Iran and preserve their "qualitative military edge." Some Arab leaders in the Persian Gulf want us to stop an Iranian bomb too, but they don't agree on the steps we should take to achieve that aim. And so on.

You'd expect these documents to contain a lot of this sort of special pleading, of course, because they are reports from American officials who have been meeting with various foreign counterparts and trying to figure out what they think or want. Nonetheless, it is still striking how many pies the United States has its fingers in, and how others keep expecting us to supply the ingredients, do most of the baking, and clean up the kitchen afterwards.

Fifth, the big story in the early releases -- at least as highlighted in the Times -- seems to be the combination of the clear U.S. obsession with Iran and the fact that some Arab leaders expressed great concern about the prospect of an Iranian bomb.  It was as predictable as the sun rising tomorrow that hard-line advocates of doing whatever it takes to stop an Iranian bomb would immediately seize upon the initial releases to buttress their case, but the documents don't actually support that conclusion. As Andrew Sullivan points out, the same people who routinely dismiss Arab calls for a different U.S. policy on the Israel-Palestinian peace process are now suddenly convinced that these same Arab leaders are pillars of wisdom. In any case, it is hardly a revelation to learn that some Gulf rulers would a) prefer a non-nuclear Iran, and b) would prefer it if the United States did the heavy lifting and bore the onus of taking care of this problem. It would be astonishing if they thought any other way.

But the crucial question all along has been how to address that issue, and here these releases show some ambivalence. There is hardly a consistent chorus of voices telling the United States to go ahead and bomb the place. Some leaders seem inclined in that way; others much less so. I've heard other senior Arab and Muslim officials say that it would be a calamity if we did.

Lastly, the big question I keep pondering is this: would it be all that bad if diplomats understood that secret deals and two-faced diplomacy wasn't going to be that easy anymore, because the true facts might leak out sooner rather than in twenty or thirty years time? I can think of a few cases where secrecy has been useful (Kennedy's deal over the Jupiter missiles in Turkey during the Cuban Missile Crisis comes to mind), but in general I think human beings -- and this include foreign policy-makers -- are more inclined to do bad things when they think they can do so without being exposed.  If you have to keep something secret, that's often a sign that you shouldn't be doing it at all.

And at the risk of seeming like a naïve Wilsonian (the cruelest thing you can call a realist like me!), the whole episode raises the larger issue of whether the citizens of a republic have the right to know exactly what representatives are doing and saying in their name, backed up by the money and military power that the citizens have paid for with their taxes. And I don't mean finding out thirty years later, but now. I'm sure that most diplomats would prefer to minimize democratic scrutiny of their activities, as it would surely be annoying if Congress or the media or (God forbid!) ordinary citizens were to peer over their shoulders while they are trying to line up foreign support. But given that I am less and less convinced that our elites know what they are doing, I'm also less inclined to want to let them operate outside public view.

But there is a real downside, which is why I retain some concerns about this latest batch of revelations. If diplomats start fearing that any conversation or cable might get leaked, they will either stop talking, stop taking notes, or stop sending message back to headquarters in any sort of republishable form. There's an old line from Chicago city politics: "Don't write if you can talk; don't talk if you can nod; don't nod if you can wink." Somehow, I'm not sure our diplomacy will be enhanced if our representatives are reduced to making facial gestures, and communicating back home only through secure telephones.

I have only two thoughts on the deal that has sent ten Russian spies back to their homeland, in exchange for four people who were, as the Times puts it, "deemed to be spies" in Russia.

First, some people wonder why the United States didn't get more upset about this, and why the Obama administration didn't allow the incident to derail its long-term effort to "reset" relations with Moscow. The simple answer is: because we are undoubtedly doing the same thing, albeit probably in different ways. I doubt we've sent U.S. citizens to Russia as long-term moles (though anything's possible), but I have no doubt whatsoever that we are engaged in all sort of espionage efforts there (and in plenty of other countries too). To pitch the diplomatic equivalent of a hissy fit over something that we are doing ourselves would be asinine.  And as Reagan administration official Richard Burt pointed out, the United States and the Soviet Union ratified numerous agreement at the height of the Cold War, even though we were spying on each other like crazy and trying to bring about the other side's collapse (we succeeded, they failed).

Second, it is remarkable how quickly the whole business was resolved. The two governments did the deal, the Russian spies plead guilty, and the handoff was made. Turns out its much better to be spying for Russia than to be detained as a suspected terrorist. If that happens, you could end up being held without trial for eight years, with the U.S. government bending over backwards to find some way to keep you in custody, even when there was mounting evidence that you were innocent. Keep that latter point in mind the next time you decide to visit Yemen, or when somebody brags about our deep commitment to the "rule of law" and the importance of habeas corpus.

When I got out of the shower this morning, my wife was waking up to NPR. Her first comment to me was this: “I never thought I would hear an NPR reporter say those words.” What had she just heard?  A report that the Obama administration was “under fire” for defending the rights of terrorist suspects.

She wasn’t complaining about NPR’s coverage, mind you, she was commenting on the bizarre situation where anyone -- let alone a president and his administration -- could be “under fire” for defending a core principle of the American justice system. The Founding Fathers would be spinning in their graves, about as fast as a nuclear centrifuge. They understood the dangers of giving executives arbitrary authority to arrest, detain, coerce, and try suspects (i.e., those whom authorities think might have committed a crime but whose guilt has not yet been determined). So suspects -- all suspects -- are accorded certain legal rights.

I’m not a lawyer and so I don’t normally weigh in on legal issues, including the continuing debate over torture, the use of civilian vs. military tribunals to try suspected terrorists, and the other aspects of post-9/11 policy. As a matter of policy, however, the case for abandoning our normal criminal justice procedures strikes me as laughably weak.  As Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Greenwald, and others have noted repeatedly, the various Bush-era abuses (including torture, “preventive detention,” reliance on military tribunals) were a propaganda boon for our adversaries, and did not in fact lead to significant intelligence breakthroughs or other strategic benefits. And as numerous commentators have pointed out, the criminal justice system worked just fine in the case of Richard Reid (the Al Qaeda “shoe bomber”) and Ramzi Yousef (who planned the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and is now serving a life sentence without parole).  And on the issue of torture, top military commanders like David Petraeus agree.

The latest evidence, of course, is the guilty plea entered by Najibullah Zazi at his trial in New York City (yes, the very same New York city that supposedly couldn’t hold a trial for Khalid Sheikh Muhammed). Zazi was was arrested and charged with conspiracy, for plotting to detonate a bomb in the New York subway system. He was Mirandized and interrogated in the normal fashion (i.e., he wasn’t waterboarded). The result? He pleads guilty, and appears to be singing like a bird. Good thing we didn’t send him to Guantanamo, where he might have been tortured, and his evidence rendered either suspect or legally inadmissible.

The lesson here is that Americans ought to have more faith in our existing institutions. It’s a great paradox: we constantly tell the world how great our country is, how our values ought to be emulated, and how other states would be much better off if they re-made their societies in our image. But then something bad happens, panic sets in, and people conclude that those same precious values are in fact a fatal weakness that our enemies will exploit to bring us down. And the result is usually an embarrassing and shameful tragedy (like the incarceration of Japanese-Americans in World War II), for which we later have to apologize and make restitution.

Defenders of these abuses sometimes point out that Lincoln, Roosevelt, and other American icons were also willing to suspend core U.S. values in times of national emergency, and that the pendulum swung back once the danger is over. I would make three comments in response.

First, to the extent that this is true, it merely underscores the need for opponents of these policies to keep making the case against them. The pendulum won’t swing back if critics don’t explain why these policies are misguided, or if their advocates prove to be louder or more persistent.

Second, even if the pendulum does swing back somewhat, it may not go all the way. We may have abandoned water-boarding, for example, but the Obama administration has retained a number of other Bush-era policies, including preventive detention and extraordinary rendition. And we all know that once in place, many policies prove remarkably resistant to change. Moreover, executive power in the realm of national security has been growing steadily for the past century -- and especially since the Cold War began -- and it is not obvious to me that this has been a net positive. Third, it is worth remembering that former Vice President Cheney and key aides like David Addington were not advocating a temporary response to a new threat, akin to Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War. Rather, they saw 9/11 as an opportunity to pursue a permanent increase in executive power, a goal that they had been seeking for many years. (Never mind that they don't seem very interested in a strong executive during this administration).  And I suppose we should be grateful that Bush’s many failures helped slow this power grab somewhat.

You might think a realist like me would be in favor of a strong executive, on the grounds that states in the dog-eat-dog world of international politics need a strong hand on the tiller of the ship of state. But realists also have a healthy appreciation for human frailty, and the tendency for those who possess great power to abuse it. Concentrating too much power in the executive is a good way to blunder into foolish wars, and it can even discourage the sort of open debate and discussion that (sometimes) helps democracies to avoid the fatal errors that authoritarian governments often make.

So have a little faith in our existing institutions, and stop trying to become more like the countries we normally oppose.

My class at the Kennedy School is examining liberal theories of international politics this week, and the policy issue we'll be discussing is the question of democracy promotion. One of the assigned readings is former President George W. Bush's 2nd Inaugural Address. As you'll probably remember, the address was a soaring anthem to virtues of liberty and America's commitment to promoting it around the world. Some of the its choicer lines included:

The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands."

"America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one."

"It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."

"The great objective of ending tyranny is the concentrated work of generations."

It would be easy to pick the speech apart, of course, or to point out that Bush's lofty declarations about "America's belief in human dignity" were at odds  with the torture regime that he oversaw as president. It was also the kind of speech that tends to make even America's friends overseas nervous, as they wonder what new crusades the United States might contemplating.

But that's not the point I want to make today. As I read it over preparing for class, I had an odd thought: what if Barack Obama gave the same speech? How would Americans react, and how would foreign audiences perceive it? I read it again, and imagined Obama's voice and cadences uttering the same lines. And you know what? It read a lot better that way. Try it yourself and see. (If you want to make this hypothetical easier to imagine, throw in the phrase "Make no mistake" once or twice).

I draw three rather obvious conclusions from this exercise. First, when you like a political leader, you'll tend to like what he or she says no matter what the actual words are. Conversely, if you've already decided you don't like someone, there's little they could do to convince you. Second, liberal values are deeply infused into American political culture, which is why either Bush or Obama could use a lot of the same phrases and invoke the same sweeping language and get a lot of heads to nod in assent. Third, as long as the United States is very, very powerful, there will be a strong outward thrust to its foreign policy, even when vital interests aren't at stake and even when meddling abroad could make things worse rather than better. 

PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images

A few quick thoughts on President Obama's Cairo speech.

Overall, Obama once again demonstrated his willingness and ability to wrestle with complex and difficult ideas in public. One of his hallmark features as a leader is to show respect for his listeners by appealing to their sense of reason. As he did in the "race" speech during the campaign, and in his Notre Dame speech on abortion, Obama acknowledged room for disagreement and contestation and showed that he understands and respects alternative views even when he does not share them. Yet there are also clear limits to his tolerance: the speech included a forthright rejection of violence, a reminder to his audience that his "first duty is to protect the American people" and that "al Qaeda killed 3,000 people on [9/11]," and a clear statement of the American commitment to basic human rights. In seeking a "new beginning," he didn’t start with an act of appeasement.

I thought his handling of the Israel-Palestinian issue was clear and straightforward, He reaffirmed both the bedrock U.S. commitment to Israel's existence and security and the necessity of an independent Palestinian state. He understands -- even if others do not -- that "this is in Israel's interest, Palestine's interest, America's interest and the world's interest." He also rejected the poison of Holocaust denial and "vile stereotypes about Jews" in clear and direct language, and told his listeners that such beliefs helped prevent "the peace that the people of this region deserve." I wish he had offered a few more specifics, but overall he handled this issue well.

He did not avoid the tricky issue of democracy and human rights -- an especially delicate subject in Egypt -- but he left a lot of wiggle room by saying "there is no straight line to realize this promise." And while his focus on women's rights isn't likely to endear him to some Islamists, he was right to include it, for it is a fundamental issue that is bound to play a major role in the years to come.

His discussion of nuclear weapons acknowledged the current double standard "that some countries have [nuclear weapons] while others do not," and tried to square that circle by referring to "America's commitment to seek a world in which no nations hold nuclear weapons." This was less convincing -- at least to me -- but at least Obama acknowledged the contradictions in the U.S. position.

What was more significant was his statement but that "any nation -- including Iran -- should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty." The big question: does "the right to access" mean control of the full fuel cycle (under full NPT safeguards, including the Additional Protocol), or does it merely mean one of the various proposals that would deny Iran control of the full fuel cycle but provide nuclear fuel via some sort of international consortium? If it's the latter, there's no deal possible; if the former, it is at least conceivable that a deal that kept Iran from building a nuclear weapon might still be negotiated. We'll see.

The truest thing he said? "No single speech can eradicate years of mistrust." But he has committed himself to a set of principles and policies in front of the entire world. And if you think that "audience costs" (both domestic and foreign) matter, it will be hard for him to backtrack on the commitment to get out of Iraq on schedule, to leave Afghanistan as quickly as possible, to make significant changes in nuclear weapons policy, and to focus like a laser beam on the Middle East peace process. He's committed his administration in public, and that means he (and the country) will pay a bigger price if he doesn’t follow through.

Now he needs to follow up words with deeds. And so do his listeners.

AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP/Getty Images