[R-G] Most Arabs know this speech will make little difference

[Sid Shniad]

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-most-arabs-know-this-speech-will-make-little-difference-1694532.html 

Independent 2 June 2009 

Most Arabs know this speech will make little difference 

I suspect that what the Arab world wants to hear is that Obama will take his 
soldiers out of Muslim lands 

Robert Fisk 

More and more, it looks like the same old melody that Bush's lads used to 
sing. We're not against the Muslim world. In fact, we are positively for it. 
We want you to have democracy, up to a point. We love Arab "moderates" and 
we want to reach out to you and be your friends. Sorry about Iraq. And 
sorry - again, up to a point - about Afghanistan and we do hope that you 
understand why we've got to have a little "surge" in Helmand among all those 
Muslim villages with their paper-thin walls. And yes, we've made mistakes. 

Everyone in the world, or so it seems, is waiting to see if this is what 
Barack Obama sings. I'm not sure, though, that the Arabs are waiting with 
such enthusiasm as the rest of the world. 

I haven't met an Arab in Egypt - or an Arab in Lebanon, for that matter - 
who really thinks that Obama's "outreach" lecture in Cairo on Thursday is 
going to make much difference. 

They watched him dictate to Bibi Netanyahu - no more settlements, two-state 
solution - and they saw Bibi contemptuously announce, on the day that 
Mahmoud Abbas, the most colourless leader in the Arab world, went to the 
White House, that Israel's colonial project in the West Bank would continue 
unhindered. So that's that, then. 

And please note that Obama has chosen Egypt for his latest address to the 
Muslims, a country run by an ageing potentate - Hosni Mubarak is 80 - who 
uses his secret police like a private army to imprison human rights workers, 
opposition politicians, anyone in fact who challenges the great man's rule. 
At this point, we won't mention torture. Be sure that this little point is 
unlikely to get much play in the Obama sermon, just as he surely will not be 
discussing Saudi Arabia's orgy of head-chopping when he chats to King 
Abdullah on Wednesday. 

So what's new, folks? Arabs, I find, have a very shrewd conception of what 
goes on in Washington - the lobbying, the power politics, the dressing up of 
false friendship in Rooseveltian language - even if ordinary Americans do 
not. They are aware that the "new" America of Obama looks suspiciously like 
the old one of Bush and his lads and ladies. First, Obama addresses Muslims 
on Al-Arabiya television. Then he addresses Muslims in Istanbul. Now he 
wants to address Muslims all over again in Cairo. 

I suppose Obama could say: "I promise I will not make any decision until I 
first consult with you and the Jewish side" along with more promises about 
being a friend of the Arabs. Only that's exactly what Franklin Roosevelt 
told King Abdul Aziz on the deck of USS Quincy in 1945, so the Arabs have 
heard that one before. I guess we'll hear about terrorism being as much a 
danger to Arabs as to Israel - another dull Bush theme - and, Obama being a 
new President, we might also have a "we shall not let you down" theme. 

But for what? I suspect that what the Arab world wants to hear - not their 
leaders, of course, all of whom would like to have a spanking new US air 
base on their property - is that Obama will take all his soldiers out of 
Muslim lands and leave them alone (American aid, doctors, teachers, etc, 
excepted). But for obvious reasons, Obama can't say that. 

He can, and will, surely, try his global-Arab line; that every Arab nation 
will be involved in the new Middle East peace, a resurrection of the 
remarkably sane Saudi offer of full Arab recognition of Israel in return for 
an Israeli return to the 1967 borders in accordance with the UN Security 
Council Resolution 242. Obama will be clearing this with King Abdullah on 
Wednesday, no doubt. And everyone will nod sagely and the newspapers of the 
Arab dictatorships will solemnly tip their hats to the guy and the New York 
Times will clap vigorously. 

And the Israeli government will treat it all with the same amused contempt 
as Netanyahu treated Obama's demand to stop building Jewish colonies on Arab 
land and, back home in Washington, Congress will fulminate and maybe Obama 
will realise, just like the Arab potentates have realised, that beautiful 
rhetoric and paradise-promises never, ever, win against reality.