Bush returns from his trip empty-handed

 

BBC, Washington DC

16 January 2008

 

At the end of his tour of the Middle East, American president George W. Bush returns to the United States with plenty of the fatty meals with which he was greeted by the Arab leaders under his belt, and with plenty of snow and rain having fallen on his plane at Arab airports, falling on the region for the first time in decades.

 

But political analyst at the Brookings Institution Djavad Salehi-Isfahani says that President Bush did not come away from his tour with any accomplishment worthy of mention, other than convincing some members of Congress to ratify the 20 billion dollar arms deal that he hopes to sign with Saudi Arabia.

 

Bush went to the Middle East with two messages to the leaders of Arab states: the first about the necessity of democracy and its benefits, and the second about the Iranian threat. But Isfahani believes that Bush met with skepticism toward both messages. The Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinijad has previously assured the Arabs that “the Iranian intention to develop nuclear energy poses no threat to Iran’s Arab neighbors.”

 

The question now might be: how farcan the Arab states go in order to preserve their friendly relations with Iran?

 

As for the message of democracy that the United States began to propagate some years ago: “The Iraqi disaster has rendered the American message difficult to believe,” according to Isfahani. The regrettable thing, in Isfahani’s opinion, is that President Bush is talking about democracy now, “but the people of the Middle East don’t take his words seriously.”

 

With regard to the little that was accomplished on the economic front by President Bush’s visit, Isfahani says that the primary concerns in Arab countries are the economy and development, and that the best thing that leaders in the region can work for is the creation of job opportunities for the youth that make up a majority of the population in the states of the region.

 

It is possible here to distinguish between two American perspectives on youth in the Middle East, according to Isfahani. The American administration sees the youth in Iran as “agents of regime change” in that country, while it sees youth in Arab countries as a “possible security threat.”

 

Additionally, it is difficult to see President Bush’s speeches during the tour as aimed at the Arab public. They seem to target an American audience more than they do an Arab one. And this Arab audience looks to the United States with caution and skepticism about its intentions.

 

But if the Arab public looks askance at the rhetoric of this administration, the American public “has heard nothing but the same message from Bush for years, and that’s that the United States is trying to spread democracy in the Middle East and that Iran is the main obstacle to this mission,” according to Isfahani. This seems to be an effective message in the United States, but it is not in the Middle East.

 

The image that might stay in the American viewer’s memory from Bush’s tour of the Middle East is that in which Bush tried to hold an eagle, or else that in which he danced with King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia, along with the commentary of the CNN broadcaster, who asked: “What are they celebrating? We don’t know.”