{"id":466933,"date":"2011-05-20T10:02:22","date_gmt":"2011-05-20T10:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mecouncil.org\/?p=466933"},"modified":"2022-09-21T06:47:55","modified_gmt":"2022-09-21T06:47:55","slug":"obamas-middle-east-speech-didnt-clarify-u-s-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/obamas-middle-east-speech-didnt-clarify-u-s-role\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama\u2019s Middle East Speech Didn\u2019t Clarify U.S. Role"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many things were missing from President Obama\u2019s Middle East speech<\/a>, but one of the most concerning was its inability, or unwillingness, to clarify America\u2019s contested role in a rapidly changing region. Obama and other senior U.S. officials have repeatedly said that the Arab revolts are \u201cnot about us.\u201d But, inevitably, they are. For decades, the U.S. supported autocratic regimes in the region. This has long been a central Arab grievance.<\/p>\n

Considering this history of U.S. involvement, some of the language Obama used was odd. For example: \u201cWe must proceed with a sense of humility. It is not America that put people into the streets of Tunis and Cairo \u2013 it was the people themselves who launched these movements, and must determine their outcome.\u201d This sort of language is likely to strike Egyptians as disingenuous. The United States\u00a0was not, after all, a neutral actor. As Emad Gad of the Al Ahram Center for Political Strategic Studies pointed out after the speech: \u201cWashington took a position against the Egyptian revolution and supported [Egyptian president Hosni] Mubarak until his final days in office.\u201d According to a recent Pew poll<\/a>, only 22 percent of Egyptians believe the\u00a0United States\u00a0played a positive role in their uprising. In the same poll, more Egyptians, remarkably, said they approved of both al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden than they did the United States.<\/p>\n

Obviously, these sentiments are not solely tied to America\u2019s support for Mubarak, but it is a major factor contributing to still considerable mistrust toward the United States. As I argued<\/a> in a recent piece for Slate<\/i>, Obama\u2019s speech presented an opportunity to come to terms with the past and acknowledge to Arab audiences that the United States, too often, sided with regimes over their citizens.<\/p>\n

The closest Obama came to doing this was when he said, \u201cthere will be times when our short-term interests do not align perfectly with our long-term vision of the region.\u201d But a much more forthright discussion of how and why American interests and ideals clash, as they so often have, was what was needed on Thursday. As Jennifer Lind, scholar on the politics of apology, writes, the act of apologizing \u2013 in its willingness to affirm the pain of others \u2013 can be critical in the restoration of dignity.<\/p>\n

It was unlikely that Obama would ever go so far as to apologize to an Arab audience. But loudly affirming America\u2019s commitment to supporting Arab democracy, when the reality \u2013 as Arabs perceive it \u2013 is that the\u00a0United States\u00a0has backed, and continues to back, repressive autocracies returns us to an old narrative and an old problem. During this \u201cArab spring,\u201d the uneasy tension between ideals and interests has not, as some had hoped, been resolved. During Obama\u2019s speech, the inconsistencies and contradictions were still there. And as long as they remain, they will continue to undermine American influence and credibility at this critical moment. The Arab world, it turns out, is changing much faster than we are.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many things were missing from President Obama\u2019s Middle East speech, but one of the most concerning was its inability, or unwillingness, to clarify America\u2019s contested role in a rapidly changing region. Obama and other senior U.S. officials have repeatedly said that the Arab revolts are \u201cnot about us.\u201d But, inevitably, they are. For decades, the… Continue reading Obama\u2019s Middle East Speech Didn\u2019t Clarify U.S. Role<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":466958,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"publication_archive_type":[297],"class_list":["post-466933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","publication_archive_type-issue-brief","entry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466933"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":466934,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466933\/revisions\/466934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466933"},{"taxonomy":"publication_archive_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publication_archive_type?post=466933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}