The Middle East: Deciding Whether To Fall for Obama

DAMASCUS, Syria — The fallout from Barack Obama's speech last week before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is still reverberating here in the Middle East. Indeed, it should be no surprise that the whole world is watching this presidential election — often more closely than any campaign within local borders — with CNN International and the Internet bringing even seemingly pointless details from remote regions of the U.S. to the globe's digital newsstands.

But Obama's declaration that "the bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable today, tomorrow and forever," and his assertion that Jerusalem "must remain undivided," forced this entire region to reevaluate the candidate.

A pair of young Syrians sitting near me at a coffee shop the other day echoed something that I heard several times before: "The people here can't believe it's real." A black man doing so well in the U.S. elections, that is. "They all think it's a conspiracy. That someone's putting him up, but that he could never actually win," they said. I pushed the pair on it. They, too, it seemed, weren't quite ready to believe that the candidacy was real.

But following Obama's AIPAC speech, his candidacy seemed far less conspiratorial.

"There's no difference between them. All American presidents are the same. Nothing will change here; nothing ever changes," Ahmed, the cabbie driving me to Beirut, said emphatically. It summed up what I would hear throughout Syria and Lebanon in the days that followed.

Domestically, the senator's speech was likely a play to alter perceptions of what the Obama doctrine might resemble. Thus far John McCain seems to have succeeded in branding Obama as the candidate of choice for Hamas and extremists. Obama's been forced to drop two foreign policy wonks from the campaign roster: one, Rob Malley for having met with members of Hamas. As a sidebar, if one understands the role Malley plays working for the International Crisis Group — a nonprofit that seeks to prevent and end crises by facilitating dialogue with all parties involved — his having had communications with Hamas seems far more banal.

But here, in the region, Obama's revisionist tone — for those able to believe he is a legitimate candidate — had resonated deeply before his speech.

Just as the wave of "hope" eventually took over so many Democrats in America, some in the Middle East seemed willing to wonder what Obama's vision for the region might yield: rethinking of old postures and procedures; realignment and reassessment with rationality, not standard protocol, as the benchmark. The doctrine might weaken tyrants, quell economic woes, or even force the U.S. to reassess its strategic allies in the region. It was a hope that caught hold in the minds that allowed it to fester.

This region longs for something new, a shift in the paradigm. Obama, before last week, offered a scent of that. If he finds his way to the Oval Office, he should remember how powerful that smell might become.

Last night I found myself at dinner with a young woman whose parents had been absent for most of her childhood, imprisoned as political opponents of the Assad regime in Syria.

"Everyone from America seems so busy, like there's never any time to waste. You're always off to accomplish something," she said. "It's not like that here. We have our whole lives to waste, drinking and smoking and thinking and making theories, 'cause it won't change. There's nothing we can do to make change."

Obama before, and hopefully again soon, will shower this region with the possibility of change. Iraqis my age have never seen change; they have only seen war. Lebanese my age have also only seen war. Syrians, Iranians, Egyptians and Saudis have all lived under the same structures of tyranny for decades.

They're prevented from crying out for change, though not from longing for it. Mistaking their silence as support for the status quo, or current U.S. policy, or the regimes they live beneath would be a mistake. Watching them as they follow from afar, it was impossible not to notice the disappointment Obama's speech inflicted, especially amongst the young, some of whom had allowed themselves — for a moment at least — to consider possibility of a drastically different U.S. policy in the region. A possibility we, too, might take time to consider.

Brian Till can be contacted at brian.m.till@gmail.com. To find out more about the author and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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