Soccer Dad

Differing visions

In Going Nowhere Fast, David Ignatius looks at polls in the Arab world and concludes that the United States's influence is a low ebb due to the mistaken policies of the Bush Adminstration.

"Are you on the road, or in the ditch?" Back when I covered labor negotiations 30 years ago, that was the question reporters would ask to get a sense of how contract talks were going. The phrase came back to me last weekend as I listened to a series of relentlessly negative presentations at a conference here on America's relations with the Muslim world.

We are in the ditch in the Middle East. As bad as you think it is watching TV, it's worse. It's not just Iraq but the whole pattern of America's dealings with the Arab world. People aren't just angry at America -- they've been that way to varying degrees since I first came here 27 years ago. What's worse is that they're giving up on us -- on our ability to make good decisions, to solve problems, to play the role of honest broker.

In a similar vein Jean Abi Nader writes in "the Gulf between the Arabs and America":

During my visits to the region in the fall and again last month, it was evident in Syria and Saudi Arabia that there is widespread concern for the Iraqi people and equal conviction that the United States wants to prolong their suffering . . . As the recent crisis grew, I heard the same litany in conversations with Kuwaitis, Lebanese and others: that the United States has double standards when it comes to enforcing U.N. resolutions on the Middle East . . .

Shibley Telhami, quoted by Ignatius, also wrote on his own in U. S. Iraqi policy alienating Arab allies

The answers underscore the need for a new U.S. approach to Middle East policy even as Washington must remain steadfast in demanding Iraqi compliance. Specifically, the current institutional separation between Arab-Israeli issues and the rest of the Middle East must be erased. "Linkage" of these issues, temporarily suspended in 1990, can no longer be avoided. The essential task of maintaining a broad consensus on what to do about Iraq requires greater U.S. sensitivity toward its allies' concerns. . . . Instead, the rift between the United States and its Arab allies over Iraqi policy has been growing daily, exacerbated by Arab frustrations over the glacial pace of the Arab-Israeli peace process.

The ellipses in the two preceding paragraphs though, should clue the reader in. I haven't exactly been forthright in those quotes. Those quotes are not contemporary, but the Nader article is from March 1998 and the Telhami article's from Nov 1997. In other words both articles are critiquing the Clinton administration's approach to the Middle East, not the Bush administration's. The point is that most American administrations are going to have significant differences with the Arab world, and the Arab world and its interlocutors will use those differences to blame the alienation of our Arab allies on America's myopic leadership.

In a different approach Maryland Conservatarian dismisses the polling that underlies Ignatius's argument

... when a man in a coma garners more dislike than the current Israeli leader; that really can’t say too much for the attention span of those surveyed.

And he points out

But not to be all negative; his suggestion about brokering “a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute” is just the kind of innovative thinking we need for our Government. Perhaps some input from Bill Clinton would be of some help in this matter. I think he has some experience from a similar matter some 8 years ago.

Yes we should go back and see what the Arab world was saying back in the heyday of the Clinton administration. Ignatius's expert, Shibley Telhami, was active back in 1998. What did he write then?

In large part, the United States is mediating the Arab-Israeli conflict because it is the only party acceptable to Israel. It is unlikely that the Palestinians would have accepted a proposal for Israeli withdrawal from only 13% of the occupied territory if any other country had made it. Left on their own or to the mediation of others, the Palestinians would probably have rejected even a larger offer from Israel. Although the United States, as a mediator, always applies some pressure on both parties, it is clear, by the sheer asymmetry of power, that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is more often the recipient of such pressure than Netanyahu.

Pressure? In 1998, a year after signing the Hebron Accords and committing to limiting the size of his "police" force, promising to halt terror, reversing the Palestinian charter and stopping incitement against Israel, Arafat still hadn't made good on any of his commitments. And who did the Clinton administration treat as the problem? From the Jan 20, 1998 Washington Post.

Having declined to find time for Netanyahu in November, even as their aircraft parked nose to tail at Los Angeles International Airport, Clinton is continuing what one administration official described as a deniable but obvious pattern of "snub diplomacy." Today's schedule includes no breaking of bread, no visit to Blair House, no joint public appearance -- no touch at all of the usual warmth that greets Israeli leaders on visits of state.

"We're treating him like the president of Bulgaria," who is arriving to a modest reception on Feb. 10, the official said. "Actually, I think {Clinton will go} jogging with the president of Bulgaria, so that's not fair."

Those arguing for the concerns of the Arab world and complaining about the lack of attention that the United States pays to those concerns often have to ignore what's really happening to make their case. For Telhami to accuse the Clinton administration of only pressuring Arafat when it was clear that the administration was in fact pressuring Netanyahu (when Netanyahu was making the "unreasonable" demand that Arafat actually adhere to the Hebron accords the he had signed and that the U.S. had guaranteed) shows that in some ways placating America's Arab allies is difficult, if not impossible.

There are fundamental differences between America and the Arab world. Blaming the lack of cooperation on American indifference, insensitivity or bias is unfair. The United States is a liberal democracy the Arab world consists of tyrants and somewhat benevolent dictators. If there weren't differences in world views and priorities that would be surprising.

But the differences exist and will always exist unless one or the other changes.

Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Blogdigger tags: Arab World, Diplomacy, President Bush, President Clinton.