Today, President Obama will deliver a major foreign policy address aimed not just at Americans but also at the Arab world (the Middle East and NOrth Africa, commonly abbreviated MENA). The themes are likely to touch upon the Arab Spring, the implications of Osama bin Laden’s death, and American economic support of Arab democracy, particularly in the form of billions of dollars of new aid and loan guarantees, especially for Egypt and Tunisia. I assume however that President Obama will not talk about Israel and Palestine, and will seek to draw a distinction/justify the difference in American verbal support between the popular revolution in Bahrain versus other Arab states. These would be disappointing but not surprising stances for the pragmatic, neo-realpolitik policy that Obama has been espousing (and which was on display at the US – Islamic World Forum in DC a few weeks ago).

I’ll post the transcript and word cloud and my post-speech analysis afterwards.

UPDATE – the video is showing live here.

UPDATE 2 – here’s the transcript and word cloud of the speech.