President Obama's first formal televised interview after his
inauguration, given to the Arab television network
Al-Arabiya,[1] was a glib attempt to address a global Arab
and Muslim audience, re-brand American foreign policy, and distance
himself from the policies of the Bush Administration. In many
respects it resembled a campaign speech replete with vague rhetoric
that elevated tone over substance. The speech also raised
troublesome questions about the naïve assumptions on which
President Obama will apparently base his foreign policy.[2]
Obama began by answering a question about the moribund
Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations: "Well, I think the most
important thing is for the United States to get engaged right away.
And George Mitchell is somebody of enormous stature. He is one of
the few people who have international experience brokering peace
deals." While this response served a political purpose--distancing
his Administration's policies from those of the Bush
Administration--it grossly misstates the problem.
The breakdown of the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations was
not the result of America's lack of engagement but of Palestinian
failure to halt terrorism. American engagement cannot deliver
progress toward peace if the situation is not ripe for resolution.
President Clinton spent much of the last five months of his
Administration heavily and personally engaged in the negotiations,
but the Oslo peace process (which began with a negotiating
breakthrough reached without American engagement) was destroyed by
persistent Palestinian terrorism. As long as the Palestinian
leadership (then the PLO's Yasser Arafat, now the Islamist
extremists of Hamas) continue to use terrorism, no genuine peace is
possible. The problem then, as it is now, was not a lack of
engagement by Washington but the rejection of peaceful compromise
in the Palestinian territories. It does not matter that the
American special envoy has "enormous stature" when Hamas remains
committed to destroying Israel and has taken Gaza hostage to
advance its hate-fuelled agenda.
President Obama also presented a weak case against Iran's
nuclear weapons program and support for terrorism, suggesting that
such behavior was merely "not helpful." By downplaying the threat
posed by Iran, Obama undermines the case for greater Arab
cooperation in pressuring Tehran to halt its nuclear weapons drive
and support for terrorism--an area of mutual America-Arab interest
that could serve as a basis for closer cooperation in the
future.
President Obama offered a new tone but little substance. He
proclaimed that "we are ready to initiate a new partnership based
on mutual respect and mutual interest." But he displayed amazing
naiveté in defining what those common interests are,
suggesting that al-Qaeda leaders "seemed nervous" because their
ideas are bankrupt: "There's no actions that they've taken that say
a child in the Muslim world is getting a better education because
of them, or has better health care because of them."
This statement reveals an enormous misunderstanding of the
ideological roots of Islamist terrorism and a shocking lack of
respect for the powerful motivating force of the idea of
jihad for al-Qaeda supporters. The President implies that a
better education policy or health care plan will inevitably doom of
al-Qaeda, as if that terrorist network is competing like a
political party to benefit Muslim voters rather than trying to
violently impose its radical ideas on people that it views as
misguided Muslims.
This naïve mirror-imaging dangerously underestimates the
threat posed by Islamist extremists, both to the United States and
to the Muslim world. After all, al-Qaeda has murdered more Muslims
than non-Muslims and more Arabs than Americans. Hopefully, when
President Obama speaks again to the Muslim world from a Muslim
capital--as he affirmed he will do in this interview--he will
demonstrate a more realistic appreciation of the threat of Islamist
extremism, the ideological force motivating al-Qaeda, Hamas, and
Iran. Moreover, Obama must offer a plan of action to defeat
al-Qaeda through cooperation on something more than just health
care.
James Phillips is Senior
Research Fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs in the Douglas and Sarah
Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the
Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International
Studies, at The Heritage Foundation.