From Simon Tisdall:
Barack Obama’s chances of making a fresh start in US relations with the Muslim world, and the Middle East in particular, appear to diminish with each new wave of Israeli attacks on Palestinian targets in Gaza. That seems hardly fair, given the president-elect does not take office until January 20. But foreign wars don’t wait for Washington inaugurations.
Obama has remained wholly silent during the Gaza crisis. His aides say he is following established protocol that the US has only one president at a time. Hillary Clinton, his designated secretary of state, and Joe Biden, the vice-president-elect and foreign policy expert, have also been uncharacteristically taciturn on the subject.
But evidence is mounting that Obama is already losing ground among key Arab and Muslim audiences that cannot understand why, given his promise of change, he has not spoken out. Arab commentators and editorialists say there is growing disappointment at Obama’s detachment – and that his failure to distance himself from George Bush’s strongly pro-Israeli stance is encouraging the belief that he either shares Bush’s bias or simply does not care.
This might actually work to Obama’s long term favor – given the way Obama ran very strongly against President Bush and American policy over the past 8 years, the impression given in the Arab would was of a 180 degree shift in American policy…which would translate into abandoning our friends and currying favor with our enemies. By not speaking out on Gaza, Obama has cast doubt about this, and therein lies his great opportunity.
Now, I happen to think that Obama hasn’t made a statement on Gaza because he, Biden, Hillary and the whole gang simply don’t know what to say. They are entirely at sea here, lacking even cursory knowledge of how things work in foreign affairs and military policy. You’re supposed to call for a cease fire, get the President of France over there, cobble together a truce which will be violated on a daily basis and then have some grand conference somewhere (with preference given to places with swank hotels and nice beaches). Its not working out that way because Israel just might possibly be determined to fight this out to the finish (and I suspect with the tacit approval of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and perhaps with such approval from the Egyptian government, as well) – what might happen here is complete Israeli victory, abject Hamas defeat and thus an end to the Gaza issue…there is no one in Obama’s team who can grasp this set of circumstances. But, no matter – it can still work to our advantage.
The befuddled silence on the part of Team Obama might start to convince our friends that Obama won’t actually abandon them and also convince our enemies that Obama just might fight them – and this will greatly strengthen our friends and dismay our enemies, who have already been greatly weakened by 8 years of President Bush relentlessly hammering them. The sole remaining bastions of State-sponsored terrorism – Syria and Iran – are both politically and economically on the ropes – they breathed a sigh of relief on November 4th as they contemplated what would at least work out to a period of truce allowing them to rebuild their shattered terrorist organizations…but now they’ll doubt, and if Obama presses, he can cause them to collapse upon themselves.
We’ll see – unfortunately, that same ignorance which is the likely explanation for Obama’s current reticence is likely to prevent his seeing this massive chance to finish the War on Terrorism with victory within a year or two.
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