Obama's First Presidential Interview...on Al Arabiya

President Barack Hussein Obama elected to do his first official presidential interview with Arab news station al-Arabiya.

As is normal with the new president, there were a great many platitudes and few specifics.

Two things I found significant.

One of the things was Obama's promise to restore relations with the Arab world to "the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago..." or to those of you who can't be bothered to count backwards, to the Clinton and Carter years respectively.

That appears to be pretty much where we're heading.

The second thing was his choice of al-Arabiya itself as a venue. While not a s radical as al-Jazeera or al-Manor, al-Arabiya is not exactly a paragon of moderationas most Americans would look at it.

Obama's entire tone is similar to Bush's statement about appointing an envoy to the jihad friendly anti-Semitic Organization of Islamic Councils ( OIC) "to listen and to learn."

While the president's non-confrontational tone is understandable, in order to restore relations with the Arab world as he says he wants, he is going to have to give them Israel's scalp, endorse the Saudi 'peace' ultimatum in full and radically change America's foreign policy.

Given the steps he's taken in the last few days and the nature of the advisers around him, I wouldn't be surprised if that's exactly what he has in mind.