Five disastrous Middle East policies that the president must show he's rejected -- from salon.com

Obama's Cairo mission: Don't be Bush

Five disastrous Middle East policies that the president must show he's rejected.

By Gary Kamiya

June 4, 2009 |"These are momentous days in the Middle East. As President Barack Obama arrives in Cairo to deliver a long-awaited speech addressing relations between America and the Arab/Muslim world, no fewer than four significant events loom on the regional horizon. On June 7, Lebanon will hold elections that could give the militant group Hezbollah unprecedented political power. Iran will hold its elections five days later, with the political fate of hard-line president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hanging in the balance. U.S. combat forces are scheduled to leave all Iraqi cities by the end of June, the first tangible step toward ending the American military presence there. And Obama has just handed right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a July deadline to form a new peace policy.

Under George W. Bush, America's Arab/Muslim report card was an F-minus. U.S. standing in the Middle East and among the world's Muslims sank to an all-time low, terrorist attacks greatly increased, violent extremists gained power, moderate and pro-U.S. regimes were weakened, the crucial Israeli-Palestinian conflict grew ever more intractable, Iraq sank into a hell from which it has only now begun to emerge, and the Taliban surged back in Afghanistan and threatened Pakistan. Bush's policies were directly responsible for many of these calamitous outcomes, and exacerbated others. In his Cairo speech, Obama's most pressing need is thus to make it unequivocally clear to the world's 1.5 billion Muslims and 325 million Arabs that the U.S. has decisively rejected Bush's failed ideology and policies, and intends to chart a completely new path. We can expect Obama to invoke his own background, reject the idea of a "clash of civilizations" and make an inspiring appeal to shared values. Those oratorical flourishes will count for something, but unless he supports them with tough, realistic language and actual policy changes, they will just go down as pretty words."

snips:

1. "Like it or not, the Palestinian cause is the unifying one for the world's Arabs and Muslims, and the West's abject failure to act justly toward the Palestinians has done more damage to its image in the Arab/Muslim world than anything else. Bush took that phenomenon to new depths."

2. "His grandiose declaration of a "war on terror," accompanied by ignorant, self-defeating rhetoric about fighting "Islamofascism."

3. "Bush Sin 3: Bush lumped all "extremist" groups together and declared all of them America's enemies. Violent extremism is indeed a regional problem, but Bush's failure to distinguish between nationalist resistance movements like Hamas and Hezbollah and anomic Islamist groups like al-Qaida was counterproductive and only strengthened the extremists."

"The U.S. does indeed need to bolster moderates, but the way to do that is to stop the moralistic blustering and get smart. Simply demonizing militant groups that have deep roots in their societies, like Hezbollah and Hamas, is a ticket for failure. With the exception of fanatical Islamist groups like al-Qaida, "extremism" is often wholly or partially a symptom, a reaction to an underlying situation, not an eternal state of anti-Western hatred. "

4. "Demonizing Iran and Syria. Bush did this both out of ideological conviction, to punish them for their hard line against Israel, and as a way of lining up a "moderate" Arab coalition against them. Like all of Bush's Middle East policies, this one backfired. Iran is stronger than ever, and the much-vaunted moderate Sunni coalition against Iran was undercut by their publics' anger over the Palestinian issue. As long as Iran and Syria can pose as the defenders of the Palestinians against Israel, the moderate Sunni states will have their hands tied in trying to weaken them."

5. " Bush Sin 5: His well-meaning but condescending, hypocritical and self-defeating support for reform and democracy. This is the trickiest part of Obama's mission, and the most equivocal part of Bush's legacy. Bush's goals in supporting democracy and reform in the Arab world were justifiable, but those goals foundered on realpolitik."

snip: "Perhaps the best thing Obama could do to encourage democracy and reform in the region would be to display a little salutary humility. If he were to acknowledge that the U.S. has not always lived up to its own ideals, that it has made grave errors in the region -- such as toppling Iran's legitimately elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 -- such an admission would probably go further than anything else in signaling to Obama's audience that he "gets it." A leader who is big enough to admit his country's historic mistakes, and apologize for them, would make a far stronger case for American-style freedom and democracy than one who lectures the rest of the world from a self-righteous pulpit."