Reality outside Oval Office

Op-ed: President Obama's policies remain inconsistent with Mideastern realities


Anav Silverman
Israel Opinion/Ynet
05 August '10

When the Obama administration banned the terms Islamic extremism and jihad from US national security documents back on April 7, 2010, the United States aired out a new approach to the war against terror. No longer would the ideological or religious elements that had driven the 9/11 attackers be emphasized. Any terms insinuating the religious zeal that inspires and has inspired suicide bombers from Gaza, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere across the world have been hastily filed away in the cabinet known as the ill-conceived Bush Doctrine.

Instead, a new set of terms was formulated to showcase the White House’s new and improved outreach to the Muslim world. On the same day that Associated Press carried the "banned terms" news release, the assistant to President Obama on Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, John Brennan spoke with law students at New York University, where he referred to Jerusalem by its Arabic name, al-Quds.

A month later on May 28, President Obama informed the world that the “war on terror” was over. “Our long-term security will not come from our ability to instill fear in other peoples but through our capacity to speak to their hopes,” the US president said.Terms like new partnerships, multilateral diplomacy, and tough engagement surfaced in the document, all leading to Obama’s point that “to succeed, we must face the world as it is.”

It would be safe to surmise that in Barack Obama’s world, there are no ideological-driven terrorists (only al-Qaeda), jihad against non-Muslims does not exist, and Jerusalem is a city exclusively rooted in an Islamic past, whose Jewish heritage starting from King David in 1000 BCE, bears no relevance at all to the Middle East today.

But for the residents in the southern region of Israel, the president’s attempt to recreate a new Middle East through glossed-up verbiage remains a very distant fantasy.

(Read full article)

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