Op-Ed, Media Show What the Arab World Really Thinks of the Obama Administration

Barbara Boland | March 18, 2015
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Criticism of the Obama administration's dealings with Iran is widespread across Arab media these days. And, Obama's popularity with the Arab public has bottomed out, as well.

“Obama’s administration has been silent over daily crimes of genocide,” writes Abdulrahman al-Rashed, former editor-in-chief of a London-based Arab daily in a scathing op-ed. After prohibiting arming the opposition to Syria’s dictator Assad, it “now wants to reconcile with murderers in broad daylight,” he writes.

“If the aim of [Secretary of State John Kerry’s] statement is to please the Iranians, the American government must think twice, because this harms everything it has built over long decades,” wrote al-Rashed.

“Kerry has heralded the gates of hell on himself and his country in [the] angry region” of Iraq and Syria, writes al-Rashed. “Despite many of his slips, Kerry's latest statements were his worst.”

A child victim of Assad's crimes against humanity

Syria’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad, has used chemical weapons on his own people and is entering into a fifth year of genocide. He has killed a quarter of a million people and displaced 4 million people, nearly half Syria’s population.

“We have to negotiate in the end with Assad, ” Secretary of State Kerry (D-Mass.) said this weekend.

One person who works for relief organization Al-Noor tweeted:

Why is Kerry suddenly interested in negotiating with Assad? Maybe because he is interested in “pleasing” “Iran into signing a nuclear deal,” writes Al-Rashed.

However the effects of negotiations would be disastrous for the region.

Assad’s government is “the worst regime the region has ever known,” and has “done worse than Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq and worse than Moammar Qaddafi’s regime in Libya,” writes al-Rashed.

Regional cooperation is crucial to crushing ISIS but negotiations with Assad would undermine and erode that collaboration, postulates al-Rashed. It will also cause “volunteers and donors” that hate the atrocities of Assad to join with ISIS.

The U.S. course of action “subjects its interests to bigger threats and poses a threat to the region,” he concludes. “In the end, the U.S. will get nothing but more regional problems from the Iranians, the Syrian regime and Hezbollah.”

Al-Rashed is not alone in his opinion of the Obama administration’s missteps in the region.

A parody sketch posted to the purported Youtube page of the Iraqi Army and Military Academy shows an actor playing Obama calling ISIS’ leader al Baghdadi “my dear friend” and calls the caliphate “my friend and ally.”

In a March 2, 2015 article published in Saudi daily Al-Jazirah Saudi columnist Ahmad Al-Faraj calls President Obama an “ally of political Islam, [which is] the caring mother of [all] the terrorist organizations.”

The lyrics of a pop song by Egyptian singer Shaaban Abdel Rahim call Obama “a coward” and “a traitor” who supports ISIS and Hamas.

Rahim sings:

“We don’t want anything from you; Game over Obama! Egyptians are well aware of your relationship with ISIS and Hamas! You said, ‘as-salamu alaykum’ [peace be upon you] and tried to fool us, but you just came in order to divide us.

In 2014, just 10% of Egyptians have a favorable opinion of Obama; and countries in the Middle East have increasingly viewed Obama with distaste, according to data from the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project.

In fact, Obama’s popularity has sunken so low in the Middle East that in several countries, he is less popular than George W. Bush was during his last year in office.

Warning: Graphic Photo Below of Assad's Genocide in Syria

 

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