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Sadly, despite the emotional and eloquent rhetoric of President Obama's speech in Cairo, a "new beginning" between the Muslim world and the U.S. was not launched - and won't be until some fundamental rifts between our two worlds are mended. Despite the President's rhetoric citing what the U.S. and Muslims have in common, the speech either glossed over or ignored what can only be considered "irreconcilable differences."

Moreover, the speech began on the false premise that the U.S. was somehow complicit in the long history of colonial oppression of the Middle East. According to President Obama, "More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations..."

While a description of the tensions and resentments people of the Muslim world feel is accurate, as implied in the speech, the U.S. was not the cause. The United States had no Middle East colonial possessions. Also, during the Suez Canal crisis of the 1950's, it was the United States' adamant opposition to our traditional allies, Great Britain and France, that put the our country squarely on the side of Egypt. And what about the long history of Islamic terrorism against the United States that goes back to the early 1970s?

While the President's speech was conciliatory and peppered with "feel-good" cultural references, no amount of verbiage will be able to overcome the deep historical, cultural and religious differences between the United States and the Muslim world. These divisions, of course, have been aggravated by misunderstanding, fear and totally incompatible outlooks on how society should be organized. While the bridge to resolving our differences might, as Obama stated repeatedly, be tolerance and understanding, neither side seems able to tolerate and certainly does not now understand each other's world outlook.

So, if any "new beginning" in relations between Muslims and the U.S. can occur, we'll need more than homily-laden speeches from a President who needs to remember that his country's interests come first. If President Obama wants to launch a new beginning with the Muslim world, he will face some difficult (and probably impossible) choices. Specifically, the U.S. will have to abandon some long-held policies that have been steeped in our own self-interests and traditions, among which are:

- our need to protect sources of energy for

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