BY_ ED HUSAIN
FROM_ CFR - THE ARAB STREET
JUN 1 2012
It is
conventional wisdom to assume that former president George W. Bush was, and is,
universally disliked by Arabs and Muslims. The Obama administration pursued
what was referred to as the ABB (Anybody But Bush) foreign policy in the Middle
East by reaching out to Iran, sidelining democracy promotion in important
countries, antagonizing Israel, and wooing Arabs with his famous 2009 Cairo
speech. President Obama went out of his way to remind his global Muslim
audiences of his own days in Muslim-majority Indonesia, his Muslim ancestry,
and the important roles American Muslims play at home and abroad.
All this,
one may reasonably assume, was highlighted to endear the president to the Arab
world. Yet President Obama’s approval ratings among Arabs are lower than Bush’s
ratings during his last year in office. President Obama is guilty of his own
success: he raised expectations among the Arab masses and then performed poorly
on a raft of Middle East issues ranging from the Arab-Israeli peace process, to
abandoning the Iranian Green Movement, to dithering on support for popular
protests against Mubarak in Egypt, and generally failing to reposition the U.S.
among Arabs. His successes in Libya or Yemen have not yet yielded results. If
President Obama—with his own credentials, convictions, and current
opportunities in Arab history—cannot help recast the United States in Arab
eyes, then one can legitimately ask how any future president can do so.
During my
visit to Saudi Arabia last month, I was struck by criticism of President Obama
from several young Saudi friends, and their yearning for Bush-style, proactive
military leadership to oust Assad from Syria or attack Iran’s nuclear
facilities. Last week in Egypt, a prominent liberal politician asked me:
What has
Obama done for Egypt? His administration is close to the Muslim Brotherhood,
and met them eight times in a year, but has yet to meet a single liberal
political group. Bush would have supported an emerging Egyptian democracy
financially, with aid and trade, and kept the Brotherhood at bay.
At home,
President Obama is yet to visit an American mosque, ostensibly for fear of
being labeled a Muslim. President Bush had no such compunctions, visiting a
mosque immediately after 9/11 and helping to prevent a backlash against U.S.
Muslims. Obama supported the so-called Ground Zero Mosque, and then refused
doing so. Yet abroad, he uses that same broad affiliation to try to bolster his
Muslim-friendly credentials.
A poll
recently released by the University of Maryland found that only 5 percent of
Egyptians said they admire Obama (on par with numbers for the Saudi king).
American presidents in office are rarely popular in the Arab world. It was
Carter that brought in Sadat, and was then seen to have betrayed the Arabs, yet
today he is perhaps the most popular former U.S. president in Middle East
capitals. Bush was unpopular while in office, but it’s fair to expect that
Obama should be at least more popular than Bush. But that is not so.
Somehow, I
cannot see a Mitt Romney presidency being any more popular in Arab streets.