Speaking in Berlin in 1963, President Kennedy showed how a few words in the local language is a sure fire way of winning approval (in the form of applause) from a foreign audience (clip 1 below).
Today, speaking in Cairo, President Obama did the same with a few words in Arabic (clip 2 below), and also showed how a quotation from the local religious holy book can be just as effective (clip 3).
And he came close to recycling a line from the speech he himself had made in Berlin last year (clips 4 & 5).
Far from implying criticism of him for doing this, I find it very encouraging to hear him sounding as though he is serious about putting into practice an approach to foreign policy that he was only able to make promises about before he became president.
But whether or not we should read anything significant into the replacement of the word 'trust' with the word 'respect' is a question on which I'd need an opinion from an expert on diplomatic semantics.
