But now Fox News has topped it:

Progressives have long suspected Fox News of desiring to redraw the map of the region, but few thought the network would ever succeed.  At least it’s not like the United States ever actually spent six and a half years at war in Iraq, because if so, this kind of mistake would be embarrassing.

President Barack Obama’s speech on June 4, 2009 failed to advance the promotion of human rights in the Muslim world, Human Rights Watch said today. In a much-anticipated address, Obama spoke bluntly about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but kept to generalities when it came to the pressing need for human rights and democratic reforms in the region.

“If Obama wanted to tackle the issues that cause Muslim ill-will toward the US, he should have taken on the region’s repressive regimes, many of them US-backed, including his hosts,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Egypt and others will interpret his bland generalities as a signal they have nothing to fear from their friends in Washington.”

Speaking before 2,500 invited guests at Cairo University, Obama addressed democracy as a major source of tension between the United States and Islam around the world. His choice of Cairo for this much-anticipated speech was controversial because of Egypt’s record of stifling the opposition, holding tainted elections, and imprisoning dissidents.

Only by 8:09 p.m., the group appeared to soft-peddle that message in a release entitled “Obama Mid-East Speech Supports Rights, Democracy: But U.S. Message Needs Stronger Message for Repressive Regional Allies”:

President Barack Obama’s much-anticipated June 4, 2009, speech to the Muslim world avoided confronting authoritarian governments directly, but sent a welcome message that Washington would not let the prospect of empowering Islamist parties deter it from supporting democracy in the region, Human Rights Watch said today.

Speaking before 2,500 invited guests at Cairo University, Obama said the issue of democracy and human rights was a major source of tension between the United States and Islam around the world, in part because of the Bush administration’s use of democratic rhetoric to justify the war in Iraq. He pledged, however, that the United States would continue to support human rights and democratic principles in the region.

“For the US to regain credibility, it will have to follow through even when voters in the Middle East elect governments Washington doesn’t like,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “If Obama wants to tackle the issues that cause Muslim ill-will toward the United States, he should take on the region’s repressive regimes, many of them US-backed – including his hosts.”

Whitson’s comments, at least, are consistent between the two releases.

In this manner, Obama appears to have followed the same path taken by his predecessor, in creating more enmity towards Muslims, and adding on to the fighting enemies, thus paving the way for new long wars.

Let the American people prepare to continue harvesting what their White House leaders grow, in the years and decades to come.

They say the classics never go out of style. But more distressing that bin Laden’s expected bleating is the lack of rapid response from the administration’s public diplomacy infrastructure. If this were a political campaign, the pushback would have begun already. But so far there’s nothing from the State Department’s blog taking bin Laden’s message down.

Now, there have to be a number of caveats to my criticism. First, Obama’s Cairo speech tomorrow is, of course, a massive public diplomacy effort aimed at essentially refuting bin Laden’s worldview, even if the president doesn’t mention bin Laden. Second, the administration’s announced National Security Council shakeup last week is creating a White House director for interagency public diplomacy, so that represents an elevation of the importance of public diplomacy. Third, an argument that I don’t personally find persuasive but others might is that you don’t want the president of the United States in a back-and-forth with an al-Qaeda mass murderer. Fourth, Judith McHale’s testimony to the Senate last month to be the State Department’s public diplomacy chief made some gestures to treating public diplomacy as a national security issue, and embraced a series of Web 2.0 tools for rapid response. Fifth, the bin Laden tape was just released.

But I’m not going to let all that get in the way of my complaint! The longer bin Laden’s dreck is out there, the greater likelihood it’ll spread through the information bloodstream, and experience demonstrates that disinformation will be accepted if it’s not promptly confronted. The State Department has existing infrastructure set up — the DipNote blog, its Tweeting, and so forth — to get the U.S. message out, and yet it rarely spends much effort countering anti-American messages directly. Similarly, the Pentagon is getting out of the public diplomacy business for fear of edging too closely into propaganda. That’s laudable, but it contributes to an information lacuna that several administrations have failed to address.

Human Rights Watch briefly met with al-Libi on April 27 during a research mission to Libya. He refused to be interviewed, and would say nothing more than: “Where were you when I was being tortured in American jails.” Human Rights Watch has strongly condemned the CIA’s detention program and documented how detainees in CIA custody were abused, but, like other human rights groups, was never granted access to prisoners in CIA custody.

HRW’s conclusion:

“The death of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi means that the world will never hear his account of the brutal torture he experienced,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “So now it is up to Libya and the United States to reveal the full story of what they know, including its impact on his mental health.”

Bwahahahahahaha! Oh, you were serious about that? Good luck establishing the commission.

Military officials believe Canadian immigration policies are creating a “favorable” environment for what the U.S. government deems to be potential terrorists seeking entry into the United States from the north, according to an internal briefing crafted by a U.S. Northern Command joint task force.

Officials at the Joint Task Force-North believe a “large population” of so-called special-interest aliens, or SIAs, in Eastern Canada presents the “greatest potential for foreign terrorists’ access to the homeland,” according to a Jan. 15 briefing available on the organization’s Web site until recently.

Basically, the task force fears that Canada is letting in too many immigrants from “Pakistan, Afghanistan and Egypt” who might exfiltrate to the United States. Embarrassed Northcom officials took the briefing offline, possibly due to its extreme and embarrassing hysteria. It’s a thin line in counterterrorism planning between vigilance and lunacy, and the threshold is excessive focus on conceivable hypotheticals. And you know what also contributes to terrorism? Xenophobia directed at Muslim immigrants. Just saying.

Despite a flurry of other negotiating tracks, including talks pursued by Turkey, Cairo has become the hub of diplomacy over the Gaza war in the past few days. Egypt has served as a mediator between Israel and Hamas before, helping to broker the six-month ceasefire between the two sides, which ended last month. In the past, it has also tried to mediate between squabbling Palestinian factions, Hamas, and the U.S.-supported Fatah party.

Isn’t this a really positive development from Israel’s perspective?

The Egyptian government, if not its people, really hates Hamas. You would too, if you had to live next to this band of violent fanatics. Throughout the entire 12-day Gaza war, Egypt has kept its border crossing at Rafah shut, earning it the ire of Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah. For Egypt to broker a ceasefire will mean that an ally of Hamas’ rival Fatah will be in a lead role, absorbing the brunt of regional acrimony over seeming Arab intransigence against Israel, and also allowing Israel to elide the complicated issue of negotiating with Hamas. Perhaps that all means Hamas won’t bother with the Egyptian government this time, but there isn’t really evidence of that so far.

The United States is basically abdicating, much as it did at the dawn of the Bush administration — a time of dismissive petulance toward a deteriorating Israeli-Palestinian situation, and an era that Condoleezza Rice endlessly assured us was over when she became secretary of state in 2005. Her statement on a ceasefire wasn’t really objectionable per se — she wants something “durable,” as does everyone, in principle — but she talks about a ceasefire the way most people talk about a formal peace deal:

We must find a way, with the consent and full cooperation of likeminded governments, to prevent any arms or explosives from entering Gaza, and the tunnel systems that have allowed rearmament of Hamas must be prevented from reopening.

Another approach would be to get an immediate return to the status quo ante — Rice: “The situation before the current events in Gaza was clearly not sustainable…” — and then following it up with an Egyptian-led multinational discussion on enforcing a more durable ceasefire that inches closer to a lasting peace. Rice’s position makes the perfect the enemy of the good. She’ll actually be at an event I’m covering for TWI tomorrow, so we’ll see if she makes any further statement.

But it would be in Israel’s interest to let Egypt’s Mubarak government try to sort out the Palestinian political equation on a ceasefire. Their interests are basically aligned here: both want to weaken Hamas, quiet Gaza and strengthen Fatah. And while Hezbollah hasn’t disturbed Israel’s northern border so far, it’s beginning to make more bellicose noises. If there really is no Israeli strategy at work, quitting while you’re ostensibly ahead isn’t the worst idea.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

Aboul Gheit’s visit followed those by leaders of Jordan and Lebanon and was an indication that leading Sunni Muslim countries may begin restoring relations with Iraq’s Shiite Muslim-led government. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other nations have been concerned about Iraq’s ties with the Shiite-run government in Iran, which Sunni nations blame for attempting to unsettle the region through its nuclear program and support to militant groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“Iraq has passed through a difficult period, and today we hope that we see Iraq outside this situation,” Aboul Gheit said. “Egypt has a confirmed desire to build a strong and active Iraqi-Egyptian relationship.”

Why’s this a big deal?

Because any extrication strategy for the United States will need a robust diplomatic component. Right now, the political compact in Iraq between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds is anything but stable or settled, and it shows all signs of remaining that way for the foreseeable future.

Getting the U.S. out will require the region’s heavy hitters — in other words, the Sunni powerbrokers and Iran — to act as guarantors of political stability in the wake of a U.S. withdrawal, to cash the checks that the sectarian interests write at the bargaining table. Having the Egyptians already in Baghdad will help lay the groundwork.

Getting out just got slightly easier.