Obama: bull in the Mideast china shop
Il Giornale, 1 February 2011
US president Obama should stop making a mess in the Middle East and changing his position twice in two days around the most serious situation facing world peace—the future of Egypt. He should stop using Absolute Good as his point of reference, instead of the good of his country and of the rest of the world which, behind the US, believes in freedom, free market, monogamy and rights of women. What does he think he’s playing with? What kind of information has Mrs. Clinton when she tells us, “It doesn’t matter who's in power [however, who knows, maybe Mubarak will pull through, she seems to be hinting—ed.], the point is how we respond to the legitimate needs and complaints of the Egyptian people". Fine, but does Obama—who in offering this line after a number of hours of uncertainty, dumped his long-time ally, his point-of-reference in the Arab world —know that among the “complaints”, the toughest ones (commonly seen in the streets) are not only against Mubarak, but against the US and Israel, and the Western world in general? Does he know that this great revolution in the streets, that according to our cultural parameters has something to do above all with social issues, must instead be evaluated in terms of a completely different Islamic and Arab culture? Or must we continue to pretend that the crowd in the squares is only talking about bread and job?
Calling us back to reality is the Salaphite jihadist website Minbar Al Tawhid where prominent cleric Abu Mundhit Al Shinqiti recommends to participate in the demonstrations, explaining: “We are on the brink of an historic phase for the Islamic nation, the fall of the Egyptian regime will be similar to the earthquake of September 11th.”
9/11, President! Obama should listen to Al Shinqiti's clear hint. Does he know that now the various forces in play are jockeying in the negotiations for a government in which the Muslim Brotherhood should have a prominent role? That we have already experienced with Hezbollah in Lebanon the “democratic” phase that he reccomends now in Egypt? Does he know that the slogans on the street have an increasingly anti-American and anti-Israeli stamp, up to and including the classic hate of the ideological movements of our day, that continue to grow and be supported by states such as Iran and Syria? The Egyptians in the streets say and write on walls: “The US supports the regime, not the people”; for Mubarak, they wrote on Cairo’s largest bridge: “Traitor, go to Israel”; and “This is the end of all Jews”. Al Jazeera presents to its audiences “experts” such as the former member of the Israeli Parliament, Palestinian Azmi Bishara who fled after having been accused of spying for Hezbollah during the war in 2006. He explains that it is the Zionist Lobby in the US holding up Mubarak.
Can’t Obama see what his nice guy approach has caused in the Middle East? While pretending to support the Lebanese government, he has allowed Hezbollah to make of it an Iranian-Syrian colony; he has buttressed the power of Assad, a dictator who now explains that Syria is stable because it has avoided any kind of peace agreement with Israel. Obama allowed Turkey to choose the Islamist side. He has left Israel to the wolves, banally dealing with a handful of apartments in East Jerusalem, without ever noticing that the Maghreb, Egypt and Jordan were about to flare.
If only the democratic revolutions had taken place because Obama, like George Bush, chose the road of the dissidents... Quite the contrary. When hundreds of thousands dissidents were there in the streets of Teheran, Obama deserted them. What dissidents is Obama helping through his position against the Egyptian leadership? Certainly not Saad Eddin Ibrahim or Ayman Nur, committed democrats who often found themselves in the Egyptian jails. Obama has never seriously attempted to help them against Mubarak's abuse of power. Now, it is useless calling on democracy without having prepared the groundwork. Transitions don't make discounts. Elections, as happened with Hamas, often become a double-edged weapon against the people themselves. What a great result for Obama now to play around with human rights while 59% of the people coming to power prefer Islamization and only 29% modernization; 82% support stoning adulterers to death and 84% want death penalty for those who change religion. Has Obama read the famous "Pew poll"? The American president should read it and stop kowtowing before the Saudi king as he did in Riyadh, before Islam, as he did at Al Azhar University in Cairo, before the status quo in Iran, or Egyptian demonstrators, without a thought about the future.
If the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel falls apart, as virtually all Israeli experts fear, if the only pillar of stability in the Middle East against the extreme power of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Muslin Brotherhood collapses, and as Afghanistan trembles, what will Mr. Obama do against Muslim extremists? His job is just to give us some guarantees that the outcome of this revolution will not be a replay of Iran.