Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Time to change Obama Mideast team


Marwan Bishara argues it is time for changing Obama's Mideast team and Washington's policy towards Egypt.

Marwan Bishara, senior political analyst
Al-Jazeera

"Where does Washington stand today?

Caught in the headlights, the Obama administration has been playing catch up with the revolution since its beginning....

What should the Obama administration do to avoid such fiascos?

For the last three decades, Washington has embraced a so-called realist approach that embraced authoritarian regimes of the like of Mubarak as clients and allies in it fight against Communism in the 1980s and Islamic fundamentalism in the 1990s and in its global war on terror over the last decade.

The Arabs have been largely invisible to Washington that saw the region as unstable source of fanaticism.

President Obama, like his predecessors, has been short changed by predominantly senior pro-Israeli or Zionist advisers who approached the region through the prism of Israel with little or no knowledge of the Arab world. That needs to change. The first to go should be Dennis Ross [Dream on Marwan!], the Midle East aide most associated with two decades of US diplomatic failures in the Middle East......"

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