Reactions to Obama’s first televised interview on Al-Arabiya

Here’s part of CNN’s AC360 coverage of — and commentary on — Obama’s interview with al-Arabiya last night (we have the full two-part interview below). Huffington Post has the full text. I find the panel’s comments about the probable reaction by Al Qaeda to be interesting, if just a tad over-the-moon adulatory, heh:

From the arch-conservative Weekly Standard, we get concerns unique to that one publication. (Nowhere else, in any press or blog account on last night’s interview, did I read concerns that Obama’s remarks about Iran might infer a more lax attitude towards its building of nuclear weapons, which both Obama and Secretary Clinton have said is unacceptable.) In “Obama on a Nuclear Iran: Yes They Can?,” the commentary hits on a theme that we who have questioned Obama intensely have worried about (that he’ll say whatever he thinks people want to hear, rather than conceiving his own independent judgment, hence our frequent use of terms like “backtrack” or “flip-flop”):

Wouldn’t a simple ‘no, a nuclear Iran is unacceptable to the United States and our allies’ have sufficed? Instead Obama says that Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon is “unhelpful,” that it’s “not conducive to peace.” When Obama was in Israel, he said that “a nuclear Iran would pose a grave threat and the world must prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.” He added that he would “take no options off the table in dealing with this potential Iranian threat.” In the first debate of the general election, Obama reiterated that the United States “cannot tolerate a nuclear Iran.” But when Obama has the chance to speak directly to the Muslim world, he can only muster retread rhetoric from his inaugural address about clenched fists and open hands.

President Bush was incapable of engaging the Muslim world with his own words, but neither was it possible for the Muslim world to confuse his view of American interests in that region. President Obama has the potential to secure real progress through his skill as a communicator, but there’s always been a fear that some portion of his success in negotiating difficult issues was the result of a willingness, or perhaps a compulsion, to tell his audience whatever it is he thinks they want to hear.

It is encouraging that President Obama has chosen highly seasoned experts on foreign policy such as Secretary Clinton and envoys like George Mitchell, now on a lengthy tour of the Middle East and Europe. Especially since, as Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey notes, Obama has a “charming and dangerous naivete.” Hillary would have given a very different interview, wouldn’t she. (That’s not a question, since it’s a fact.)

Hillary, by the way, is expected to give an address shortly, which we’ll get to you as soon as possible.

Since we often don’t get much insight or reflection in our own newspapers and television/radio outlets, I decided to check out foreign media outlets. Most don’t have anything written up yet, but I did manage to find the following:

While the New York Times’s laudatory title was “Obama Signals New Tone in Relations With Islamic World,” The Guardian, a liberal UK newspaper, adopted a more critical, objective approach:

Little of substance, but Obama’s tone was striking

Al-Arabiya’s exclusive with the president was an important moment, though he failed to mention Gaza

[...] Obama’s main message to al-Arabiya, the Dubai-based, Saudi-owned rival to the more popular but far more strident al-Jazeera, was that Americans are not the “enemy” of the Muslim world – a perception that has taken hold in the years since the 9/11 attacks and George Bush’s declaration of a “war on terror”. (continued below)

No matter that this was a reprise of a much-discussed theme in his inaugural address last week. It certainly bears repeating as a high-profile exercise in public diplomacy. But there was no news at all about changes to specific policies that would demonstrate the dawn of a genuinely new approach. The interviewer, Hisham Melhem, got an enviable exclusive – but not a smidgeon of a scoop.

Obama’s best line was his call for the “language of respect” in dealings with the Muslim world – though he also readily agreed with his interviewer that there had been a “demonisation” of America.

The president’s call for the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks will be welcomed as another signal of his determination to play an active role from the start – in stark contrast to Bush. That has already been underlined by the dispatch of the Northern Ireland veteran George Mitchell, his special Middle East envoy, for his first talks in the region. [...]

If the al-Arabiya interview contained little or no substance, Obama’s emollient, intelligent tone was still striking. … Read all.

New York Magazine writes:

Obama’s tack was to make a conciliatory attitude toward the Muslim world seem the most deadly threat to terrorists and their efforts to draw followers. He said men like Osama bin Laden “seem nervous” because in the face of a new attitude toward America, “their ideas are bankrupt.” …

As always, Memeorandum.com has a large collection of stories and opinion pieces (both blog and MSM) on the story. But, for some reason, they missed Ed Morrissey’s essay at Hot Air, which is very informative:

[Obama's remarks about Israel and Gaza]

I included the entire question and answer to give the entire context of this exchange, in which Obama faltered badly. The main driver of Israeli-Palestinian conflict isn’t settlements, and hasn’t been for some time. It’s the rocket launches coming from Hamas in Gaza, and to a lesser extent from Islamic Jihad there as well. How can we know this? Israel hasn’t had to conduct a military exercise in the West Bank for years, where the settlements are located. On the other hand, they’ve had to conduct several military operations in Gaza in the few years since Ariel Sharon dismantled the settlements there.

Obama should have reminded his interviewer of those facts. That’s a big failure, and a missed opportunity to get the record straight in the Arab world. And there’s more, as Scott Johnson points out:

Q: President Bush framed the war on terror conceptually in a way that was very broad, “war on terror,” and used sometimes certain terminology that the many people — Islamic fascism. You’ve always framed it in a different way, specifically against one group called al Qaeda and their collaborators. And is this one way of –

THE PRESIDENT: I think that you’re making a very important point. And that is that the language we use matters. And what we need to understand is, is that there are extremist organizations — whether Muslim or any other faith in the past — that will use faith as a justification for violence. We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence that is done in that faith’s name.

And so you will I think see our administration be very clear in distinguishing between organizations like al Qaeda — that espouse violence, espouse terror and act on it — and people who may disagree with my administration and certain actions, or may have a particular viewpoint in terms of how their countries should develop. We can have legitimate disagreements but still be respectful. I cannot respect terrorist organizations that would kill innocent civilians and we will hunt them down.

But to the broader Muslim world what we are going to be offering is a hand of friendship.

Again, the naiveté comes through clearly in this exchange. The terrorist organizations themselves have a wide base of support among Muslims in the Arab world, as well as with the Iranian government, if we include Hamas and Hezbollah. Obama makes al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah sound like the Baader-Meinhofs or the tax-resister militias here in the US. They’re not. They’re well-funded and strongly supported, at least until that support starts costing people more than they’d like. Terrorism doesn’t begin and end with AQ at all, and if Obama doesn’t understand that, then he’s extremely ill-prepared for his task in the next four years of stopping terrorists, a task at which Bush succeeded after 9/11.

Unlike some others, I didn’t mind Obama’s decision to grant al-Arabiya this honor. Obama has a great deal of popularity in the Muslim world, and that can be a great asset to the US if used properly. Obama could have taken the opportunity to explain some hard truths while extending the hand of friendship. Instead, he took the opportunity to pander.

This last section, on the extremist groups, is particularly important for us to discuss. I’d especially like to get Larry Johnson’s reaction to Morrissey’s POV.