Opening up to Islamists

Hussain Abdul-Hussain

NOW Lebanon

The Arab Spring is undisputedly turning into an Islamist one. This has divided the world over how to deal with it. The realism school of Henry Kissinger supports opening up to Islamists, the same way Kissinger reached out to Communist China in the 1970s. The Chinese turned out to be more pragmatic than Communist, and eventually became America's biggest trading partners and the world's second-biggest capitalist country.

As far as the president of the United States is concerned, governments can call themselves Islamist and anti-American all they want, as long as they realize that it is in their best interests to grab America's hand, extended to Iran since Obama's first day in office.

Obama, like many world and Arab intellectuals, reasons that once in power, the Islamists—like the Chinese Communists before them—will be forced to behave realistically in order to maintain their rule.

This realism approach is not partisan. Kissinger was a Republican. Obama is a Democrat. Other Republicans who see benefits in ignoring Islamist rhetoric in favor of engagement include former Senator Chuck Hagel, a man who made a fortune off his investments in China and a close friend of Obama. Before he retired in 2008, Hagel advocated repeating the China experiment with Iran and preached "engaging" with Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.

Meanwhile, the Chamber of Commerce, a very Republican-leaning body, received delegations from Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood not so long ago. Talks focused on common trade and commercial interests. While the chamber is a staunch Israel supporter, its position did not seem to bother the visiting Brothers. Maybe when financial interests are at stake, anti-Zionism can take a hike.

John Brennan, President Obama's counter-terrorism tsar, has gone on the record several times to call for talks with Hezbollah. Lebanon might not offer Washington lucrative business, but if Hezbollah settles for becoming a bunch of businesspeople in return for giving up their arms, that would be a worthwhile deal for the US government.

But realism can also misfire. If opening up to America does not yield economic benefits—and therefore social and political stability despite the lack of freedom and democracy like it did in China—the Islamist regimes of Egypt, Iran and elsewhere will certainly rebound, fold and endorse more anti-Americanism.

The realism option may bring America success with the mullahs of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood in some Arab countries. It certainly spells trouble, however, for Arab and Iranian liberals and pro-democracy activists.

A prerequisite for America's "opening up" would be Washington's relinquishing of any support of freedom and democracy in Iran, Egypt, Iraq and other countries. Any tangible support for the spreading of these principles, save for lip service and the annual human rights reports from the Department of State, would be seen as a deal breaker for the Islamists.

The Islamists would then get a free hand to tighten their grip on power. The Iranian state will continue basking in its self-bestowed divinity, forcing women to cover their heads and men to grow their beards, censoring the press, destroying art, killing homosexuals, and prohibiting alcohol. By opening up to Islamists, America would be throwing every non-Islamist in the Middle East under the bus.

While still not there yet, Egypt is on its way to recreating a medieval state similar to the one in Iran. Several post-revolution reports have it that Coptic Egyptian women are now covering their heads when in public to spare themselves unwelcome stares, jeers and harassment. Being able to consume alcohol in public places will become as rare in Egypt as it has in Baghdad, Tunis and Tripoli. Such changes are taking place without even being enshrined in any constitution or state law.

Popular uprisings in Arab countries are only half the work toward an Arab Spring. Completion would require the cultivation of the principles of freedom, democracy and liberty, and that is impossible with Islamists in control.

Neither the Mullahs nor the Brothers intend, or even know how, to lead their countries to becoming prosperous and stable democracies. Their idea of government is a hodge-podge of divine teachings and archaic national chauvinism.

Yet the problem is that no alternative to Islamism is anywhere to be found in Iran or many parts of the Arab world. Arab liberals are weaker than Islamists, who usually go underground during the days of dictatorship and emerge after revolutions, mostly unscathed, to take over governments.

America's realism might pay off in the short and medium terms. But a world where democracy is only practiced in a handful of nations does not look like a happy or stable world.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain is the Washington Bureau Chief of Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai

Obama vs. Romney: What is at stake?

Hussain Abdul-Hussain
NOW Lebanon

Unless you have a stance on Roe vs. Wade, have an interest in whether Medicare turns into a voucher system or want tax loopholes closed with income tax lowered to 20 percent, whoever is elected president of the United States on Tuesday will have little or no effect on your life.

For the rest of the world, what matters is foreign policy, and this rarely shifts drastically no matter who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Those who were in America in 2008 might remember that then-candidate Barack Obama promised a US withdrawal from Iraq six months after his election. Yet on Obama's watch, America did not pull its troops out until December 2011, in line with the Status of Forces Agreement that had been negotiated by former President George W. Bush.

Also consider that for a president who promised Palestinians progress and called Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal, Obama has not been the least invested in any peace talks. It was rather Bush who deployed a couple of retired generals to train Palestinian police and revive liaisons between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. And it was former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice who threw her weight behind the peace process and hosted a peace conference in Annapolis, (which, incidentally, gave the regime of Bashar al-Assad a free get-out-of-jail card.)

On Iran, one should remember that the "P5+1"—the five permanent Security Council members and Germany, which led the world's diplomatic engagement with Iran—was created on Bush's watch in 2006 and revived in March 2008 after Washington had led the world to adopt the third batch of sanctions on the Islamic Republic. But to give the incumbent president his due credit, he successfully used his clean sheet with world leaders to enforce further "sanctions that bite" on Iran.

It was also the Bush administration that first signed on for phantom sabotage operations in Iran, and initiated the Osama Bin Laden hunt that culminated in finishing off the world's top terrorist at his safe haven in Pakistan in May 2011.

On Syria, Obama picked up from where Rice had left as he carried on with engaging Assad.

Then came the Arab Spring.

The popular Arab uprisings not only caught America by surprise, but came at a time when the US was busy looking inward, doing some economic house cleaning and putting its affairs in order.

America's two wars during the first decade of this century have taken their toll. While the United States still commands the world's most powerful army, its economy—by the time Bush had left—was in ruins. Washington knew that without an economy as powerful as the army, its influence around the world would inevitably wane.

A preoccupied Washington became divided on the Arab Spring. The nation's right wing, once the driving force behind Bush's world agenda, has fallen apart. While the "neo-cons" still support democracy-spreading and the use of the military—including in Syria—to that end, the more traditional conservatives prefer that Washington take the side of Arab dictators, who have been trusted allies for decades, for the sake of stability.

Mitt Romney, the right wing’s candidate for president, endorses neither of these options. His statements, and those of his running partner Paul Ryan, clearly illustrate that should they get elected, they would be strictly opposed to sending American troops to Syria or putting American fighters in its airspace.

On the left, war fatigue has made Democrats want to support the Arab uprisings against dictators, only from afar. Beyond diplomacy and humanitarian aid, America's left is not willing to raise a finger to come to the rescue of those threatened in Syria. From a leftist perspective, it is time for "nation-building here at home in America," as Obama would say.

America's economy is not roaring, but it is making a modest comeback, with 32 consecutive months of job-creation, exports growing at nearly 40 percent and gas production slated to put America on top of the world's list of Liquefied Natural Gas exporters. And unlike the slowing growth of the big economies across the world, including China, America's economy has been growing better-than-expected at an average of two percent per quarter and four percent in the fourth quarter of the year, when Americans go out on a shopping spree for the holidays.

No matter who gets elected on Tuesday, America will remain focused on its economic comeback. It will take some time before it turns its attention back to world affairs, and when that happens, it will not differ widely between a Democratic and a Republican president.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain is the Washington bureau chief of the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai