Obama's Not Even Popular in the Middle East! So What's the Point?

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
23 June '10

The last pillar of President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy, his alleged popularity in the region, has gone bye-bye. All the apologies, distancing from Israel, the Cairo speech, the Istanbul speech, the engagements with Syria and Iran, the ban on using the word “Islamism,” and all the other apparatus of the new, non-strategic strategy have availed him—and U.S. interests—not.

Why? It’s very simple. On one hand, there are the enemies of America who don’t take that stance just because they thought George W. Bush was icky. They want--depending on who we are talking about--to conquer the Middle East, take over their own countries, establish a Caliphate, lord it over neighbors, wipe Israel off the map, turn women into chattel, get rid of the Christians, expel Western influence from the region, and/or transform their own countries into Islamist utopian dictatorships.

So why should we expect them to care whether the U.S. president is a nice guy who likes them and is really sorry for any time in the past when America actually did or tried to do something in the region? Indeed, Middle East dictators and revolutionaries also believe that nice guys finish last.


Then there are those who depend on the United States for their survival. You may think first of Israel but the list includes pretty much every Arabic-speaking government—more than a dozen—all of them except for Syria, Yemen, Sudan, and the Gaza Strip Islamist dictatorship of Hamas. They want a strong, determined U.S. policy that protects them from their radical enemies at home and abroad. If Washington can't provide that, these rulers seek their own deal with the revolutionaries in order to survive.

Thus, it shouldn’t surprise anyone—but does due to bad ideology and media coverage—that Obama isn’t popular. According to the latest Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project poll, he’s gone down in every Muslim-majority country. Only 17 percent of people in Turkey, Pakistan, and Egypt have a positive view of the United States. In Egypt, America is less popular than it was when Bush was president.

And in some cases, Obama is less popular than the United States as a country! In Pakistan 17 percent like America, only 8 percent like Obama, despite billions in U.S. aid rained down unconditionally on that country. In Turkey, he leads the popularity of the United States by only 6 percent.

Of course, the low figures are being spun by administration supporters to suggest that if only the United States pulled out of Afghanistan and Iraq, abandoned Israel completely, and perhaps held its breath until turning blue, this would all change.

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