Barry Rubin: Obama Gives a Preview of How He’ll Campaign on Foreign Policy

Obama Gives a Preview of How He’ll Campaign on Foreign Policy

By Barry Rubin


“I shot the sheriff
But I didn’t shoot no deputy.” –Bob Marley

As his rare December 8 press conference, President Barack Obama took two questions on the Middle East. His answers give a sense of how he’s going to campaign on the issue. Both answers are deeply flawed but one wonders how many people will understand that.

To paraphrase the song, Obama will say: I shot ben-Ladin, and I also wounded Iran.

The way his election rivals should put it is:

You–or more accurately courageous U.S. soldiers–may have shot the sheriff but you have been helping turn over several countries with tens of millions of people to the far more dangerous deputy. He and his men are terrorizing the townspeople who you keep criticizing them for trying to defend themselves.

Or, let me put it boldly:

Think about this: In the year 2012 the overwhelming majority of Muslims in the Middle East will be governed by radical Islamist regimes that believe in waging jihad on Israel and America, wiping Israel off the map, suppressing Christians, reducing the status of women even more than it is now, and their right as true interpreters of God’s will to govern as dictators. (Egypt, Gaza Strip, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Tunisia, and Turkey)

Now compare that to a few thousand al-Qaida guys running around and staging occasional terror attacks.

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Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, to be published by Yale University Press in January 2012. You can read more of Barry Rubin's posts at Rubin Reports, and now on his new blog, Rubin Reports, on Pajamas Media

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