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June 15, 2009
Exclusive: Obama Should Build On, Not Wreck, Bush’s Mideast Legacy
For anyone interested in watching what is happening in the wider world, it is hard to beat BBC World News. At a time when the major American TV networks seem to be withdrawing from overseas coverage, the BBC still acts like the news service of the global empire that was once ruled from London.
There are times, however, when its liberal bias surfaces and becomes grating. One of those times was the interpretation given to President Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo, Egypt. I refer less to the content of the speech than to its purported intent to dispel the alleged animosity generated by President George W. Bush that had crippled U.S. policy in the Arab world. There was no appreciation of the success of the Bush administration in forging an Arab-Israeli alignment against Iran that had been tested in Lebanon and Gaza. Instead, the tired and obsolete dogmas about Iraq being a war against Islam and the centrality of the Palestinian cause were trotted out, the products of ideology rather than analysis.
In Cairo, BBC correspondent Yolande Knell claimed, “The choice of venue was rich in symbolism for President Barack Obama to make his speech seeking ‘a new beginning between the United States and Muslims.’ Cairo University saw heated anti-American protests during the Iraq war in 2003 as U.S. relations with the Islamic world deteriorated. But on Thursday students excitedly welcomed their visitor.” But students don’t make policy in Egypt any more than they do in the United States. U.S.- Egyptian relations were on a firm footing throughout the Bush administration. Indeed, liberal critics complained that cooperation was too close in terms of the rendition of Jihadist terrorists to Egypt for “torture” and detention.
In Beirut, Natalia Antelava argued, “This week, Lebanon may put President Obama's message to the test. In Sunday's parliamentary election, Lebanese will choose between the pro-Western alliance and the opposition block led by Hezbollah and backed by Iran and Syria. For Washington Hezbollah is a terrorist organization but here it's not just a militant group, it’s also a powerful political force which could, together with its allies, win.” She was obviously hoping for a Hezbollah victory which Obama would have to embrace to show his new enlightened attitude. But Hezbollah lost to the pro-Western alliance backed by a U.S.-Saudi partnership built during the Bush administration.
The BBC was to some extent simply parroting the White House line that Obama is all about change and putting America back on track. At a May 29th press briefing, Denis McDonough, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications, said, “The fact is that we've had a great partnership over the course of many decades. We want to get back on a shared partnership, back in a conversation that focuses on the shared values, and that's what the President will talk about in Cairo.” But the evidence is that the partnership became stronger during the Bush years, giving Obama a firm legacy upon which to build if he can drop the partisan rhetoric and pick up the strategic baton.
President Obama granted the BBC’s Justin Webb an exclusive interview on June 1st at the White House. The first question Webb asked was, “Many Muslims think they're owed an apology, actually, for the Bush years and the sins that, in their view, were committed by the United States during those years. Is this speech in any way an apology?” To his credit Obama replied, “No, I think what we want to do is open a dialogue.”
Webb spent a great deal of his limited time on the Palestinians, hoping to elevate their cause above the threat to the region from Iran. Webb even tried to get the President to endorse imposing economic sanctions on Israel. His priorities were shown when he asked, “What the Israelis say is that they have managed to persuade you at least to concentrate on Iran and to give what's – behind the scenes they're calling it a bit of an ultimatum to the Iranians: By the end of this year there must be some real progress.” He was disappointed by Obama’s answer, “I don't think the Israelis needed to convince me of that, since I've been talking about it for the last two years. What I have said is that it is in the world's interests for Iran to set aside ambitions for a nuclear weapon, but that the best way to accomplish that is through tough, direct diplomacy….we do want to make sure that by the end of this year we've actually seen a serious process move forward, and I think that we can measure whether or not the Iranians are serious.”
Unfortunately, President Obama has by his actions drawn the Palestinian “peace process” back onto center stage. He has fallen for the false notion that the lack of a Palestinian state is a barrier to U.S.-Arab cooperation, and by so doing is making it a problem is was not during the Bush era. With the Palestinians split between the Fatah faction in the West Bank and the Hamas terrorists in Gaza, there is even less chance than usual for a comprehensive settlement that would bring peace. Rather than proclaim that doing the impossible is a prerequisite for U.S.-Arab cooperation, the Palestinian mess should be pushed to the side, the only real way to remove it as an obstacle to wider regional progress.
The effort to foster cooperation both among the Arab states and with Israeli reached its peak during the last two years of the Bush presidency. On July 30, 2007, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns held a press briefing detailing how the Bush Administration planned to arm the Arab states in the Middle East to contain Iranian expansion. The $20 billion in military aid to Saudi Arabia and the other five members of the Gulf Cooperation Council would run parallel with increased military aid to Israel ($30 billion) and to Egypt ($13 billion) over the next decade. According to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the arms sale to the government of Hosni Mubarak would “strengthen Egypt’s ability to address shared strategic goals” with Israel and the other Sunni Arab states. The best way to build new diplomatic and security alliances is to pull otherwise diverse states together against a common enemy, in this case, Shiite Iran.
The arms deal with Israel was signed in Jerusalem on August 16, 2007. At the signing Under Secretary Burns put the aid to Israel in the context of the Iran-Syria axis and its support for Hezbollah and Hamas, all enemies of the Jewish state. But he then went on to say, “We have said to the congressional leadership that we intend to seek their support for increased military assistance to our friends in the Gulf: To Saudi Arabia and to Kuwait and to Bahrain and to Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and to Oman. All of this together represents a signal from the United States that our country is strong in this region, that we intend to be a good friend to our allies and our partners in this region.”
It should be remembered that during the summer of 2006, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan openly criticized Iran’s Hezbollah proxy for raiding into Israel, triggering over four weeks of heavy fighting in southern Lebanon. The Arab states gave Israel the diplomatic space it needed to mount military operations aimed at crippling Hezbollah. The same alignment was evident when Israel sent its forces into Gaza in retaliation for rocket attacks launched against is towns by Hamas, the same type of aggression that had provoked the 2006 war in Lebanon.
Israel is criticized for building a border wall to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks. But Egypt has a security wall along its border with Gaza. In January, 2008 Hamas blew down a seven mile section of the Egyptian wall in order to raid the city of Rafah for food and fuel. Between this event and the Israeli strike into Gaza at the end of the year, “The Mubarak government showed no disappointment over the ongoing blockade or Israel’s repeated targeted killing of Hamas activists and other Palestinian militants,” according Amr Hamzawy of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And during the three week offensive in Gaza (December 27, 2008-Jan. 18, 2009), no Arab state lifted a finger against Israel.
Indeed, there has not been an interstate Arab-Israeli war since 1973. The largest military actions in the region since have been the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988; the occupation by Damascus of much of Lebanon in an effort to create a Greater Syria; and the Gulf Wars rooted in Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and the prolonged tensions that followed. The wars waged by Israel against the PLO in Lebanon in the 1980s have shifted into a civil war between pro-Western and Syria/Iran-backed factions, with only the latter group in combat with Israel. The simplistic Arab-Israeli conflict model is decades out of date, as are references to the Muslim world as a monolith, which it has never been.
In his March 29, 2007 testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Under Secretary Burns outlined the new regional dynamics in which Lebanon plays a major role, “We are also working with France, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and others to signal our strong support for Prime Minister Siniora’s democratically elected government in Lebanon, to enforce the arms embargo imposed by Security Council Resolution 1701, and to prevent Iran and Syria from rearming Hezbollah. We have stationed two carrier battle groups in the Gulf, not to provoke Iran, but to reassure our friends in the region that it remains an area of vital importance to us. And at the regional level, Secretary Rice last autumn launched a series of ongoing discussions with our Gulf Cooperation Council partners, as well as Egypt and Jordan, regarding issues of shared concern, including most especially the threat posed by Iran.”
Iran, with its support for militias in foreign lands, its nuclear ambitions, and its aggressive Shia faith, poses a much greater threat to the Sunni Arab world than does Israel, which has no intention of toppling Arab regimes and converting their people to its religious doctrines. Israel just wants to be left alone. It is Iran that has expansionist ambitions, directed at both Jews and Sunni Muslims. As a sign of the new strategic reality, Israel did not oppose the arms sales to the Arabs.
Iran got the message. On August 9, 2007, the Tehran Times, the self-proclaimed “loud voice of the Islamic Revolution,” highlighted a speech given in Lebanon by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah who attacked the proposed U.S. arms sales as an attempt to “drown the Mideast in wars.” The speech followed Nasrallah’s claim that his fighters had already been rearmed for new battles. Following Hezbollah’s recent defeat at the polls in Lebanon, Nasrallah reserved his right to use force against the will of the voters. Meanwhile, back in Tehran, the ruling theocratic cabal made sure its front man President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would survive any reformist electoral challenge no matter what the voters wanted.
President Obama needs to understand that positive changes have already taken place in the Middle East and that he needs to use the momentum created by President Bush to carry America’s strategic interests forward. Actions that revive Arab-Israeli tensions over a nominal Palestine while appeasing the illegitimate Iranian regime with “an open hand” will undo all the good work of the last eight years.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor William R. Hawkins is a consultant specializing in international economic and national security issues.
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