Mideast Media Sampler 05/13/2011

From an email from DG:

1) The incurious President

The New York Times reports that Obama seeks reset in Arab world (h/t Tweeted by Tamar Abraham)

On page 2 of the story we learn:

At night in the family residence, an adviser said, Mr. Obama often surfs the blogs of experts on Arab affairs or regional news sites to get a local flavor for events. He has sounded out prominent journalists like Fareed Zakaria of Time magazine and CNN and Thomas L. Friedman, a columnist at The New York Times, regarding their visits to the region. “He is searching for a way to pull back and weave a larger picture,” Mr. Zakaria said. 

The point of the story is to portray President Obama as sophisticated and intellectually curious, but this paragraph has just the opposite effect.


I wondered what Zakaria and Friedman have written about Barack Obama.

Zakaria wrote a column, How Obama sees the world, before the election in which he praised the candidate:

Obama rarely speaks in the moralistic tones of the current Bush administration. He doesn't divide the world into good and evil even when speaking about terrorism. He sees countries and even extremist groups as complex, motivated by power, greed and fear as much as by pure ideology. His interest in diplomacy seems motivated by the sense that one can probe, learn and possibly divide and influence countries and movements precisely because they are not monoliths. When speaking to me about Islamic extremism, for example, he repeatedly emphasized the diversity within the Islamic world, speaking of Arabs, Persians, Africans, Southeast Asians, Shiites and Sunnis, all of whom have their own interests and agendas.

Before the President's Cairo speech two years ago, Friedman wrote Obama on Obama in which he observed:

It was clear from the 20-minute conversation that the president has no illusions that one speech will make lambs lie down with lions. Rather, he sees it as part of his broader diplomatic approach that says: If you go right into peoples’ living rooms, don’t be afraid to hold up a mirror to everything they are doing, but also engage them in a way that says ‘I know and respect who you are.’ You end up — if nothing else — creating a little more space for U.S. diplomacy. And you never know when that can help.

Friedman's conclusion came across as eerily prescient:

I think that’s right. An Egyptian friend remarked to me: Do not underestimate what seeds can get planted when American leaders don’t just propagate their values, but visibly live them. Mr. Obama will be speaking at Cairo University. When young Arabs and Muslims see an American president who looks like them, has a name like theirs, has Muslims in his family and comes into their world and speaks the truth, it will be empowering and disturbing at the same time. People will be asking: “Why is this guy who looks like everyone on the street here the head of the free world and we can’t even touch freedom?” You never know where that goes. 

Neither pundit is one who challenges the President's assumptions. It's not like he reads Charles Krauthammer, Barry Rubin or Jackson Diehl, to challenge his assumptions. Rather he seems to seek out those who confirm his own premises. The media sophisticates loved to dismiss President George W. Bush as being "incurious," but what's being reported here shows that that epithet applies to the current President. The man who's been praised for his "supple" intelligence and "nuanced" view of the world can't be bothered with contrary opinions.

Even the claim that he searches for blogs for information betrays a certain unseriousness on the part of the President. Sure he's doing the "cool" thing, but was he paying attention when Mohammed el-Baradei tweeted when he was attacked by Islamists? Or that the face of the revolution, Wael Ghonimwas kept off the stage when Sheikh Qaradawi spoke? If he were following "Edward Dark," I believe that the United States would be taking a stronger stand against Assad. Whatever information the President gets from blogs isn't clear. What is clear, is that he would rather be reassured than challenged.

2) Oh gee this might not be as easy as we thought

The Washington Post features Reversals challenge hope of Arab spring

The article catalogs many of the complications that have arisen in the Arab world.

When popular rebellions began erupting around the Middle East earlier this year, the outpouring of democratic fervor was quickly dubbed the Arab Spring, a phrase that captured the heady optimism of what appeared to be a new era of freedom and hope. But as spring turns to summer, events across the region are taking an altogether darker and more sinister turn, one in which the prospect of a brighter future no longer seems so readily assured.
 
Overall it seems to be a rather sobers assessment of the "Arab Spring." However I could have done without the smug quote from Hezbollah apologist Rami Khouri, at the end.

3) Not Private Ryan

Here are the first two paragraphs of Saving President Assad at the WSJ

(For the full article go here.)

Hearty salutations and reassurances from Damascus. After killing more than 600 (and counting) and arresting and injuring thousands more in a seven week crackdown, the Syrian regime wants you to know that it thinks it has the upper hand over protestors. And Bashar Assad appreciates the support and understanding in these trying times from so many in the Arab world, Europe and the U.S.
That's the word this week from Syrian President Bashar Assad's adviser Bouthaina Shaaban, who called in the New York Times man in Beirut for a security update. It's all under control now, she said, and the world can relax. "I hope we are witnessing the end of the story. I think now we've passed the most dangerous moment."

4) Priorities 

A German firm has pulled out of an Israeli railway project.

Israel on Wednesday said it regretted the decision by German National Railways (Deutsche Bahn) to halt its work on the high-speed train line from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem because a small section of the route crosses over into the West Bank.

However Germany hasn't been so bothered about helping Iran develop its nuclear arsenal.

According to a front-page story in the main German business daily the Handelsblatt, “Although [Iran] is subject to strict economic sanctions by the EU and USA, Germany helps in circumventing them.” New disclosures this week have catapulted the Hamburg-based Iranian bank EIH, the German Foreign Ministry, and Germany’s central bank (Deutsche Bundesbank) into a security disaster over Germany’s use of its bank system to finance Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. Apparently, the terror bank EIH — which the U.S. Treasury sanctioned “as one of Iran’s few remaining access points to the European financial system” — simply colluded with the Bundesbank and the Foreign Ministry to bypass EU and U.S. sanctions.

Good to know that the German's have their priorities.

Nor is providing a venue to Hamas a problem in Germany.

The decision of Mayor Peter Jung and the city council in Wuppertal, North Rhine-Westphalia, not to oppose a pro-Palestinian conference on Saturday that featured Hamas supporters has sparked criticism.

And a German court has extended to John Demjanjuk a courtesy that Nazis didn't extend to their victims.

But Demjanjuk will spend no immediate time behind bars. Presiding Judge Ralph Alt ordered him released from custody pending his appeal — a process that could take at least a year. It was not immediately clear when Demjanjuk would be released or where he would go.

And while a lot of the reporting has mentioned the overturning of Demjanjuk's verdict in Israel nearly 20 years ago, it was not a definitive exoneration asJudge Alex Kosinski wrote at the time:

The Israeli Supreme Court's decision to free Demjanjuk rests on two key rulings. The first concerns the sufficiency of the evidence that Demjanjuk was Ivan the Terrible--the operator of the Treblinka gas chamber where thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of Jewish men, women and children perished. This, the court held, was not proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Second, the court decided not to pursue the lesser charges that Demjanjuk served as a guard at the extermination camp at Sobibor and the concentration camps at Flossenbuerg and Regensbuerg--charges the court found were proved beyond a reasonable doubt, indeed beyond all doubt. An American court would probably have ruled otherwise on both issues.

In case anyone was concerned, Germany doesn't seem too squeamish about showing sensitivity to Jew killers.

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