Cairo, Egypt — Feb. 25, 2011. Two weeks after demonstrations in Egypt brought down the regime of Hosni Mubarak, Egyptians were back in Tahrir Square to demonstrate for more changes within Egypt as well as for changes outside the country. One demonstrator held a sign asking Obama to be involved in the change.
There’s a new poll out showing that Arab views of the United States have deteriorated over the last year. Zogby International’s survey of six Middle Eastern countries shows a decline in favorable views of the United States from five — Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — and no change in the sixth, Lebanon. President Obama is very unpopular. His favorability rating runs 10 percent or less in all six countries and even trails Iranian President Ahmedinejad. The uptick in favorability that followed Obama’s election and his 2008 Cairo speech has gone. We are back in George W. Bush territory.
Should we be concerned?
Yes.
Does this mean that we should use Arab public opinion as a guide for U.S. policy? Absolutely not. We should make our foreign policy based on a) a general assessment of our national interest in the instance at hand and b) a cost-benefit analysis of the various options. But we should take Arab opinion into account as we develop our policies. Why? Because anti-Americanism is a breeding ground for terrorists and their sympathizers. If the Arab world become more democratic, of course, public opinion will become ever more important.
If we hope to craft an effective policy towards the Arab — and, by extension, Muslim — world, we Americans need to forgo some myths. Here are four:
Arabs’ dislike of the United States is based on some general hatred of our way of life. This may be true of a fundamentalist minority, but Arab concerns actually focus on specific U.S. policies: our invasion of Iraq, our pro-Israeli stance, our support for dictators throughout the Middle East.
Arabs really don’t care about the Arab-Israeli dispute. This myth is particularly popular among those who oppose the United States putting pressure on Israel. Poll after poll after poll simply shows otherwise. Again, does this mean we should change our policies? Perhaps not. But we should be aware that our support for Israel — and policies such as the Gaza blockade — bears a price.
Our problem in the Middle East is mainly P.R. Since 911, we have seen major efforts within our government to improve public diplomacy in the Middle East. We’ve done a rotten job of explaining U.S. policies to Arab populations in the past. Thanks to reforms in our foreign policy agencies, we’re probably getting better at it. But this only goes so far when it is our policies that Arabs object to. All the U.S. spin in the world is not going to get Arabs to support our policy of deference to Israel on expanding settlements.
Our support for democracy movements in the Middle East will improve our stature. What support? We’ve picked sides in the Libyan civil war, true — but in part to oust a tyrant, Gaddafi, we’ve never much cared for. We called for the departure of Tunisian and Egyptian strongmen — but only when they outlived our usefulness to us. We continue to support authoritarian regimes throughout the region, most notably the Persian Gulf, where our interest in maintaining military dominance trumps any sympathy we might have, for instance, for the democracy movement in Bahrain. Our actual financial support for democratic reform in Tunisia and Egypt is embarrassingly small. Arabs recognize the emptiness of our rhetoric about democracy is, even if we don’t.
These myths reduce to a single, profound misconception: that Arabs are children, incapable of anything but emotional reaction, unmoved by argument, and unaware of their own history. This misconception found perfect expression in a famous late-2007 article by Andrew Sullivan in which he suggested that Barack Obama’s face alone would sway Muslim opinion:
“Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man — Barack Hussein Obama — is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can.”
To give credit where it is due, Sullivan has come far since he was one of the most enthusiast supporters of our invasion of Iraq. But this passage is grounded in a breathtaking contempt for the intelligence of Muslims, who are presumably incapable of looking beyond the force of Obama’s face to actual U.S. policies. There is a certain grim irony in Sullivan’s choice of a young Pakistani Muslim as his example. For the Obama administration, of course, has dramatically increased the number of drone attacks in Pakistan. Among Pakistanis aware of the drone attacks, 97 percent oppose them.
It’s the policies — not the personalities, not the speeches, not the public relations — that really count.
Joe Barnes is the Baker Institute’s Bonner Means Baker Fellow. From 1979 to 1993, he was a career diplomat with the U.S. Department of State, serving in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.