After Bush: Will U.S. Policy Toward the Middle East Change?

Ali Abu Nimah

Ali Abu Nimah's answer to the question of his lecture, "After Bush: Will US Policy Toward the Middle East Change?" was that the 2008 presidential elections in America may not have a major impact on the superpower's stewardship of foreign policy in the Arab East. Abu Nimah, who is the cofounder of the Electronic Intifada, an online publication about Palestine and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, was invited to AUB by the Prince al Waleed bin Talal Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR).

With sixty thousand individuals all over the world reading his publication every month, the interest in Abu Nimah's lecture translated into the large number of listeners who clustered in West Hall on April 3. He said that while 70 percent of American people disapprove of America's aggressive foreign policy toward the Arab East, especially in Iraq, they are heavily misinformed and thus generally insular in their opinions about American practices in the Levant and other unstable regions in the world.

"Most Americans, for instance," Abu Nimah said, "did not feel that the United States was in any way responsible for resolving the armed conflict that emerged in July 2006 between their client state, Israel, and the armed guerrilla forces in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah." He further pointed out that 50 percent of Americans condone the torture of suspected Eastern terrorists and that 52 percent of them approve of America's policies toward detainees in the notorious Guantanamo prison.

Abu Nimah said that the Bush administration has yet to provide a cogent explanation of the American-led wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which have been framed politically as wars on terror and on radical Islam. Criticizing America's systematic demonization of Muslims and the subsequent dehumanization of the victims of American violence in the Middle East, Abu Nimah cited America's incitement of sectarian Arab sentiment in supporting one sect against another. He also slammed America's continuous backing of Israel and its growing support of Arab regimes lacking the legitimacy and representation of their people.

Abu Nimah said that foreign policy think tanks in the United States hold wholesale loyalty to Israel as "a sectarian, Jewish state" and are thus levying substantive pressure on the three presidential candidates in the 2008 elections: Clinton, McCain, and Obama. "Even Obama, initially born into Islam and having an excellent understanding and education regarding the Palestine issue, comes up every day with a new set of statements that he won't challenge Israel on any front," Abu Nimah said. "Clearly, the efficiency of all three candidates will be a yardstick of how tough they can be on Muslims."

Given his argument that radical Christians drive large parts of American public opinion, making political Christianity in the US more powerful than political Islam, Abu Nimah concluded that a nationwide debate on the boundaries between state and organized religion is essential for resolving religious-based political conflict in America and elsewhere. "This debate has to happen here in Lebanon too, but on our own terms, not those of the US presidential candidates," he said.

Abu Nimah received his BA from Princeton University and his MA from the University of Chicago. He is the author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse, published by Metropolitan Books in 2006. He is also a frequent guest on local, national, and international radio and television.