“to the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect,”– President Obama in his first television interview, on al-Arabiya.
Charles Krauthammer (hat tip: Brutally Honest):
Is it “new” to acknowledge Muslim interests and show respect to the Muslim world? Obama doesn’t just think so, he said so again to millions in his al-Arabiya interview, insisting on the need to “restore” the “same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago.”
President Obama is a bright man and well-educated; yet he doesn’t have a firm grasp of history….kind of like a certain former peanut president….
Let’s see… 20 or 30 years ago… that would be 1989 or 1979.
What was happening in relations between America and the Muslim world back then? Not relying on memory alone, I consulted Bernard Grun’s reference book, The Timetables of History.
It turns out that in 1989 U.S. fighters shot down two Libyan jets over the Gulf of Sidra. The last Soviet troops left Afghanistan, creating a vacuum that would eventually be filled by the Taliban. Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for Salman Rushdie’s death for “blasphemy.” Hundreds died in Lebanon’s long-running civil war while Hezbollah militants were torturing to death U.S. Marine Colonel William “Rich” Higgins, who had been kidnapped the previous year while serving as a UN peacekeeper in Lebanon.
And 1979? That was an even darker year-in many ways a turning point for the worse in the Middle East. That was, after all, the year that the shah of Iran was overthrown. He was replaced by the Ayatollah Khomeini, who launched a war against the West that is still unfolding. One of the first actions of this long struggle was the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran and all of its personnel as hostages. The same year saw the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which led to the growth of the mujahideen, some of whom would later morph into Al Qaeda and the Taliban. This was also the year that Islamic militants temporarily seized control of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, an event that drove the Saudi royal family to become ever more fundamentalist.
In other news in 1979, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan, was hanged by General Zia al-Hak, inaugurating a long period when Pakistan would be under the effective control of the army in alliance with Islamic militants. That year mobs also attacked U.S. embassies throughout the Muslim world from Kabul and Islamabad to Tripoli. The one bright spot in 1979 was the signing of the Camp David Accord between the US, Egypt, and Israel, which did not, unfortunately, auger a “new” Middle East as many optimists hoped.
So this is the sort of “partnership” between the U.S. and the Middle East that President Obama would like to see? If his predecessor had suggested any such thing he would by now be a subject of ridicule for late-night comedians and daytime talk show hosts, and rightly so.
This is actually a revealing slip. To wit, it reveals two things: First, Obama’s profound ignorance about most aspects of foreign policy, including the recent history of the Middle East. A second, and related point, is his tendency to blame the ills of the region on the previous administration-something that is only possible if you started following the Middle East around 2001 and have little idea of what came before. It is then all too easy to claim, as Obama did on the campaign trail, that it was George W. Bush’s “disengagement” from the peace process and his “disastrous” war with Iraq that messed up the Middle East. Only someone with a longer view would realize how profoundly messed up the region was long before Bush came into office.
Even if we go back before the current era of religious extremism that began in earnest in 1979 we find evidence that from the American perspective the Middle East was hardly a happy place. Think of the OPEC oil embargo that began in 1973, the numerous wars between Israel and the Arabs, Eisenhower’s landing of marines in Lebanon in 1958, the Suez Crisis of 1956, the overthrow of Iran’s prime minister in 1953, and so on.
To the extent that we had any stability in the region it was purchased at the expense of alliances with distasteful regimes like those of the Shah of Iran and the Saudi royal family, once considered the “twin pillars” of American policy in the Middle East. Obama is dreaming if he thinks there was a wonderful “partnership” with Arab or Muslim regimes that he can “restore.”
More from the Al Arabiya interview with President Obama:
Q: And in the last — since 9/11 and because of Iraq, that alienation is wider between the Americans and — and in generations past, the United States was held high. It was the only Western power with no colonial legacy.
THE PRESIDENT: Right.
Way to defend the image and reputation of our great nation, Mr. President! The implication in that last interviewer’s sentence is, since we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan and removed two brutal regimes while handing sovereignty back over to the people of the two countries, America now has a “colonial legacy”.
Krauthammer again:
Astonishing. In these most recent 20 years — the alleged winter of our disrespect of the Islamic world — America did not just respect Muslims, it bled for them. It engaged in five military campaigns, every one of which involved — and resulted in — the liberation of a Muslim people: Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq.
The path to democratization is “a long and arduous one; fraught with peril”; but at least it’s begun.…
About 15 million Iraqis were eligible to vote in the polls, held in 14 of Iraq’s 18 provinces on Saturday.
The polls, seen as a test of the security situation in Iraq, closed at 6am (15:00GMT) following an hour’s extension by electoral authorities aimed at giving more Iraqis the opportunity to vote.
More than 14,000 candidates competed for 440 seats.
Except for a few stray incidents, officials said the elections went peacefully.
More about the Iraqi Election at The Anchoress.
A former fetus, the “wordsmith from nantucket” was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1968. Adopted at birth, wordsmith grew up a military brat. He achieved his B.A. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles (graduating in the top 97% of his class), where he also competed rings for the UCLA mens gymnastics team. The events of 9/11 woke him from his political slumber and malaise. Currently a personal trainer and gymnastics coach.
The wordsmith has never been to Nantucket.
Firstly, Iran is our enemy today primarily because of two things. First, the CIA installed the Shah of Iran and kept him in power for 25 years. Second, the USA gave Saddam Hussein chemical weapons which he used against the Iranians. That’s right; the “evil dictator” was once treated as an ally by Ronald Reagan. To his death, Saddam professed his admiration of Reagan.
Second, the 1979 US-Egypt-Israeli accord was a diplomatic masterstroke. Egypt was, far and away, the greatest threat to Israel. Jimmy Carter brokered a peace which has endured without interruption. Imagine the turmoil today were Egypt, the most populated Arab country and the country which came very close to defeating Israel in 1973, still in a state of belligerence against Israel, including actively supporting Hamas and Syria (with which Egypt was briefly united in the past).
Most of the rest are isolated independent terrorist attacks. We will always have those, just as we’ll always have plane crashes. The key thing is to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons grade anthrax or nuclear devices. Sending the army to fight land wars in Asia will do nothing to prevent the real terrorist threats to America, which are those WMD.
There is a supply side approach to anti-terrorism. This is in minimizing the number of young Islamists to commit their lives to Jihad and the number of dollars that wealthy sympathizers contribute to the cause. Of course, diplomacy won’t stop Jihad or, by itself, protect America from terrorist attacks. But it’s one important arrow in the quiver. In addition to negotiation itself, there is the whole opportunity for public relations in the Islamic world, which, again, won’t stop terrorism by itself, but which will increase cooperation between governments for terrorist interdiction and which will reduce the numbers of life commitments to Jihad and dollar donations to Jihad.
“Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.” – JFK, Inaugural address, 1961
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
So….fighting land wars in the Middle East is pointless, but spreading democracy through the Middle East is one of the ways to stop/prevent/lessen terrorism……….So how do we spread democracy to places like Iran again? I must have missed that part.
/sarcasm
Simply by taking advantage of the rising pro youth generations, ripe for internal change, Lord Maxwell. Sometimes waiting for the generations of hate to die off is in order.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
Yes, in a counter-coup approved of by Churchill and Eisenhower; because what was the alternative? If I remember correctly, I believe it was British intell that fed us into the belief that Mossadeq was turning toward the Soviet sphere of influence. Yes, we put our democratic principles on hold for an ends justifies the means belief that containing communism and maintaining the free-flow of oil was more important to our national interests. For all his problems, the Shah modernized the Iranian economy, increased women’s rights, and was a deeply pro-American ally, to a fault (trusting in Carter). Was it a good thing that the Shah was overthrown? Are Iranians better off today living under a theocracy? Are they happier? How are women’s rights doing now? Does Iran, today, pose a threat to world peace? The rise of Islamic militancy? Exported terrorism? How many did the Shah kill and brutalize compared to the numbers at the hands of the mullahs? Which represents a greater violator of human rights? How different would the world look today had we insured the survival of the Shah during the Carter Administration? If we had maintained a pro-American Iran in 1979, would we have lent support (which was not as significant as the political left allege) to Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war? Would we be worried about Iran going nuclear?
Uh…yeah, and he seemed to have expressed admiration for the American people as well; not so much the Bush presidents for some inexplicable reason.
Do you understand why we gave some limited support to Saddam at the time? Do you understand why we gave support to Stalin? Do you understand why we’re friends with Britain and Japan and Germany- all former enemies- today? Do you understand why conservatives voted McCain over Obama when McCain wasn’t a candidate they were particularly excited about? Alliances are not permanent and there is no shame in the fact that we are estranged from former allies today and friendlier to former enemies now. Times change. Situations change. Don’t get blinded by the smoke and mirrors rhetoric of “blowback”.
The U.S. did not give Saddam “chemical weapons“. Please look into it.
Who supplied most of Saddam’s military arsenal, btw?
wordsmith/agitator
“Well educated?” Going to Haavaad does not necessarily mean being well educated. On the contrary, given the utter nonsense spouted on leftist campuses I am willing to bet Hussein is absolutely clueless.