Obama in the Middle East

Josie Delap and Robert Lane Greene:

There is no question that Barack Obama has stirred the world's imagination. Polls taken in Europe show that if Obama ran against John McCain there, he would win by anywhere between seven percentage points in Russia and 52 points in Belgium. Andrew Sullivan has printed dozens of anecdotes of foreigners breathlessly proclaiming their enthusiasm for Obama. To say that the world is hoping for an Obama victory is putting it lightly.

But it is the Middle East where hopes should be running highest. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush's swaggering Evangelical Christianity, and the scandals of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay--among many other issues--have Muslims, and especially those in the Arab world, desperate for a change in U.S. leadership. Barack Obama seems almost tailor-made to deliver: He has acknowledged Palestinian suffering in the Arab-Israeli conflict. He had a Muslim grandfather and lived in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country. His middle name reminds Muslims not of Saddam, but of the prophet Mohammed's grandson. And though he is a Christian himself, he is as ruminative about faith as Bush is simplistic. Thomas Friedman, observing the Obama phenomenon from Cairo, wrote that an Obama victory "might mean that being labeled a 'pro-American' reformer is no longer an insult here."

Most Arabs only know Barack Obama's name and skin color, so, unsurprisingly, they are fairly enthusiastic about his candidacy. But what are Thomas Friedman's Arab equivalents, the opinion leaders of the Middle East, saying about Obama? A famously diverse group--ranging from idealistic reformers to moralizing Islamists--the Arab world's pundits are almost unanimous in their skepticism of him, offering a sharp corrective to the narrative of a world united in its ardor for Obama. They have been arguing that he is not so unconventional an American politician when it comes to the Middle East, and that the people of the region have reason to be worried about an Obama presidency.

...

Most of the foreign supporters are destined to be disappointed with Obama. It is still politically impossible for him to embrace what most of those in the Middle East want, I think the case can be made that his personal diplomacy with Iran will make war more likely, because it will do away with what little ambiguity remains of Ian's real intent is with Israel an its nuke program.

As people get to know him, he will alienate those on all sides of an issue while trying to show empathy with each.

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