I saw the interview, but not knowing Arabic I was wondering if there were subtitles in Arabic and if an Arabic transcript was also made available.

You really need to hammer into the mainstream media about the importance of this interview.

Just spoke to some peeps in the ME who are very excited. Male Arab Youth.

One thing I wish you would point out is that Arab does NOT equal Muslim.

Public diplomacy is not sitting around talking about feelings. From this interview, you'd think AQ, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc are operating in a vacuum with no public support. HE said we'd fight terrorists, but where was the challenege to the millions who support the terrorists (until they get hit by the terrorism, of course)?

I don't think its bad he went on, but he missed a major opportunity to make this new relationship go both ways.

I'm sorry to repeat what is somewhat of a cliche, but if we treated the lives of black Africans as fully human then we wouldn't be so high on this interview. Nowhwere was Arab support for Sudan's genocidal activities in Darfur (the real kind of genocide where your intent is to kill legions of a race, not ignoring the Geneva convention and putting civilians at risk in what ultimately is still a defensive military operation). 300,000 to 400,000 civilians in Darfur have died to date and it doesn't get A SINGLE MENTION? Please don't tell me it's because America is a financial backer of Israel -- the Arab League has been very proactive in the United Nations in defending Sudan's interests. You can value the life of the victims at 1/10 the level as an "ME peep" and the death count in Darfur would still dwarf that in the occupied territories.

Not Bou Aardvark's commentary, but the bizarre Arab League diversion supra.

Leaving aside the silliness of the genocide item (they're all black Africans, that some speak an Arabic dialect ... and plenty are merely nomads), what is the point of the Arab League digression? The Obama demarche was for the Islamic world (of which the Fur are part of, being Muslims, and given the cheerful intra-African massacres of the past decade one need not wave some sad 'fully human' flag). Queer the competition of "oh I'm more oppressed..."

Obama admits the U.S. has screwed up, U.S. does not have all the answers, and the first job of the U.S. is to listen.

Unbelievable.

What a breath of fresh air.

"Granting the first interview to al-Jazeera would have reached a much larger audience, and would have been more daring -- like going on to Fox News instead of MSNBC."

al-Arabiya is the the Saudi monarchy as Fox was to Bush.
"Granting the first interview to al-Jazeera would have reached a much larger audience..."

But he chose the smaller one.

Doing this interview was a bold decision, and President Obama had to make some very tough judgement calls as to what subjects to raise and how.

As Lynch says, he touched his Saudi base just by doing the interview on al Arabiya, and touched it again by throwing a valentine toward the Saudi king's Middle East peace plan of a few years ago, something long since forgotten by most Americans. Obama didn't say anything about the suffering of civilians in Gaza - a salient subject now among many Arabs, yet not one easy to raise without either blaming Israel and creating an uproar there before Mitchell's plane has even landed or adding a qualifier about Hamas's rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza and upsetting the Arabs all over again. It would be interesting to learn how much negotiation before the interview was done to steer the questions toward those Obama wished to answer.

Obama made a conciliatory statement about the Iranian nation while criticizing the Iranian government. He did not dwell on the nuclear issue. He got through the interview without saying anything about Pakistan, Iraq or Afghanistan at all, which I thought was remarkable even with the uproar over Gaza. For all his mentions of "the Muslim world" his remarks were directed almost entirely at the Arab countries -- not surprising considering the venue, but if one wanted to send a message to undemocratic Middle Eastern regimes about unclenching fists, one way to do it would be to draw contrasts with the democratic(ish) East Asian Muslim states.

I agree with the poster upthread who noted the absence of any reference to Darfur, though unlike him I would not have brought it up as a debating point in the Israeli-Palestinian argument. In fairness to Obama, this interview was about advertising an administration determined to address issues in a different way than the last one did. It would not have been an easy thing to throw into this mix an issue the last administration barely discussed at all with this audience; moreover the Darfur situation has evolved in such a way that any message Obama might have wished to send in this interview would have been difficult to keep brief.

With that said, it is a small criticism of this interview that it was not comprehensive. What matters for now is that it was done at all, and was able to feature a President not completely fixated on delivering cheer lines to a domestic American audience.

Hi Marc - Any chance the Obama administration decided that airing the interview on Alhurra may (further) taint the broadcaster's credibility in the region? It seems to me that had the interview been on Alhurra, the story would have been "Obama Administration leans on its government-funded broadcaster to get its message out to the Arab world" rather than "Obama to Arabs: what you'll see is someone who is listening." I can't help but think back to the weekend Alhurra launched in February 2004 where it featured an "exclusive" interview with President Bush, cycled over and over for three days, an interview that many still point to four years later of evidence of Alhurra being an agent of propaganda. Perhaps we should see this as good news for Alhurra, that this administration won't expect it to broadcast the Voice of Obama, but rather high quality journalism?

Warning from Robot B9: Obama chose to give his first interview, after being elected President of the United states, on an Arabic T.V. station. Warning! Warning! Danger! Read more at, www.stopthepresses2.blogspot.com

I don't understand Obama's line about getting back to a more respectful relationship between the US-Muslim World 20-30 years ago. You mean back to when we just supported every authoritarian leader and let young Muslim men fester with unfulfilled aspirations? I think it is great that Obama has reached out to the Muslim world, too broad a term of course, but I also think it dangerous starting from a point of 'what has the US done wrong' as it once again gives the leaders and people of many of these poor, dictatorial societies excuses. How bout we talk about ways they can improve. I don't know what Lynch sees as so 'sweet' as it looks like Obama is just fine with leaving these totalitarian societies to fester once again. This is 'change'? No, its more of the same.

To Lounsbury:

Um, no, not all of Sudan is considered Arab (Dafur, the south part of the nation). And I'll presume you are unaware of the Palestinian Authority's membership in the Arab League. The point is that attitudes like yours that 400,000 dead are a "diversion" from the Israeli killing of 1,000 in Gaza is what allows true genocide to take place. You and Mr. Lynch are like traffic cops who only target a certain race of drivers for drunk driving tickets and then indignantly claim that the charge of racism is somehow a diversion from the goal of safer roads.