An Arab Strangelove Opines, Why I Evoke the “Shoe” Again……
“The Arabs Have Stopped Applauding Obama. A foreign policy of penance has won America no friends….. 'He talks too much," a Saudi academic in Jeddah, who had once been smitten with Barack Obama, recently observed to me of America's 44th president. He has wearied of Mr. Obama and now does not bother with the Obama oratory…….. The Obama diplomacy had made a settlement freeze its starting point, when this was precisely the wrong place to begin…….. The right course would have set the question of settlements aside as it took up the broader challenge of radicalism in the region—the menace and swagger of Iran, the arsenal of Hamas and Hezbollah, the refusal of the Arab order of power to embrace in broad daylight the cause of peace with Israel……….”
Maybe many Arabs, especially of the absolute monarchy variety, have stopped applauding Obama, but they are not ready to throw shoes at him.
It is a cute one about what a “Saudi academic” told him. I wish Ajami would mention one “Saudi academic” who has criticized the regime and remained outside the dungeons. He must have been talking to a bureaucrat who has a teaching job. Ajami does read their media and that would tell him what they want Obama to do: fight a few more wars in the Middle East on behalf of their feudal cause. And fight that “other” fundamentalist across the Gulf on behalf of “their” fundamentalism (you know, the one that created al-Qaeda and Taliban).
Cheers
mhg
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