"I've come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world," President Barack Obama said in 2009, "one based on mutual interest and mutual respect." He went on to list the tensions between America and the Muslim world he sought to relieve—yet at the latest meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, he skipped meeting with any of his fellow world leaders for a taping of The View. It's hard to believe those snubbed leaders, who included Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, think the president is actually relieving any tensions in the Middle East.
President Obama doesn't put much time into working the phones or flying to funerals or inviting world leaders for weekends at Camp David, unlike some of his predecessors. He puts more value on the words in a speech—because to him, soaring rhetoric is the end, not the means to an end.
[See a collection of political cartoons on the Middle East.]
In that speech in Cairo, President Obama never once used the word "terrorism," just as he didn't in his address to the U.N. General Assembly last month. His reluctance to denounce terrorism by name over the last four years is part of a pattern: In 2009, the administration initially labeled the so-called underwear bomber a lone radical, until al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack a few days later. (Remember Janet Napolitano ludicrously saying "the system worked"?) And the administration still maintains that it cannot determine if the suspected Fort Hood shooter, Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, was acting as a terrorist when he allegedly killed 13 and injured 32 in 2009, despite being praised afterward as a "hero" by Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical cleric with ties to the 9/11 hijackers.
The White House didn't want to admit that the murder of the U.S. ambassador to Libya on the anniversary of 9/11 was a terrorist attack, either. At first they condemned the "spontaneous" attack over a "hateful video" and reassured the public that we had a "substantial security presence" in Benghazi. Not only did the president of Libya immediately disagree, saying that the attack was "preplanned, predetermined," but it became clear that there was very little security at the U.S. compound on 9/11. White House adviser Valerie Jarrett has full-time Secret Service protection, yet there were no Marines protecting our ambassador in Benghazi that night.
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Most Americans knew immediately that the attack in Benghazi was a terrorist one, and suspected that the underwear bomber, the Fort Hood shooter, and the attempted Times Square car bomber were all terrorists, despite the administration's early denials.
The problem with using the word "terrorist" is that it creates tension. Not only does it acknowledge that there are extremist elements in the Arab world, but it reminds everyone that the United States is vulnerable to attack. The White House doesn't like either of those. Better to disavow hateful videos and lone radicals, and say the system worked.
Or say this: "Al Qaeda is on the path to defeat, and Osama bin Laden is dead," as the president does regularly in his stump speeches. Most of us appreciate that bin Laden is gone, but I don't think anyone believes that al Qaeda is down and out.
[Check out our editorial cartoons on President Obama.]
The administration's tiptoeing around the very real threat of terrorism—part of its "new beginning" with the Muslim world—sends a signal of weakness that has had alarming consequences: dozens of embassies attacked, American flags burned, and American personnel evacuated, while al Qaeda gains weapons and territory in Africa. When Israel rightly voiced fears about Iran getting the nuclear bomb, the president dismissed it as "noise" he'd prefer to "block out."
He's blocking it out, alright. The president has only attended a third of his daily intelligence briefings this year; a National Security Council spokesman said that's because he's "among the most sophisticated consumers of intelligence on the planet." Really.
[See a collection of political cartoons on Iran.]
The situation in the Arab world has changed dramatically since that speech in Cairo. Voters have no idea who the president considers an ally or an enemy, or how he'll protect American assets not only in Libya but across the Middle East and North Africa. No wonder approval ratings for the president's foreign policy are tanking.
Voters know there's a better way. Christopher Schroeder recently pointed out in the Harvard Business Review that the Arab world has nearly twice as many people as Brazil, a GDP larger than Russia and India combined, and per capita GDP nearly double that of China. Disposable income there has grown 50 percent since Obama took office. In the next three years, nearly all of the 100 million Arabs under the age of 15 will have mobile phones and be online. The young entrepreneurs of the Arab world are not the ones fueling the riots, and they are not the ones running the government crackdowns. They are the ones building a better Arab economy and growing a moderate middle class there.
[Read the U.S. News Debate: Has Obama Properly Handled the Arab Spring?]
In the Wall Street Journal, Romney recently called for a new approach to foreign policy, to "encourage liberty and opportunity for those who have for too long known only corruption and oppression. The dignity of work and the ability to steer the course of their lives are the best alternatives to extremism. But this Middle East policy will be undermined unless we restore the three sinews of our influence: our economic strength, our military strength and the strength of our values."
Romney makes a good point about leveraging free enterprise into a better foreign policy. Young Arab entrepreneurs are the ones that Romney is putting his faith in. That's a better "new beginning" than the one we've seen for the last four years.
- Read Evan Moore: Romney Lays Out Foreign Policy Strategy
- Read Michael P. Noonan: Romney's Plan to Find Allies in Syria Is Easier Said Than Done
- Read Ross Wilson: NATO Needs to Take Action on Syria
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