Varieties of Barackrobatics II: The Unreality-Based Assertion

Max Boot analyzes President Obama's assertion in yesterday's interview given on an Arabic news channel:

America was not born as a colonial power, and that the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there's no reason why we can't restore that. And that I think is going to be an important task.
Boot recalls the actual state of affairs 20 and 30 years ago, and deems this, convincingly, to be ahistorical nonsense.

It's doubtful you can build a workable foreign policy based on misty-eyed claptrap. In his Inaugural Address, Obama promised to "restore science to its rightful place", but it would be nice if he showed some respect for history as well.