A few months back I had a quick exchange with President
Obama about the U.S.
standing in the Arab World. When I mentioned that we would be conducting a poll
to assess Arab attitudes two years after his Cairo
speech, he responded that he expected that the ratings would be quite low and
would remain low until the U.S.
could help find a way to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Well, the results are in, and the President was right. In our survey of over
4,000 Arabs from six countries (Morocco,
Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan,
Saudi Arabia, and the UAE),
we found that favorable attitudes toward the U.S. had declined sharply since our
last poll (which had been conducted in 2009 after Obama's first 100 days in
office).
Back then, Arabs were hopeful that the new President would
bring needed change to the U.S.-Arab relationship and the early steps taken by
his administration only served to reinforce this view. As a result, favorable
attitudes toward the U.S.
climbed significantly from Bush-era lows. But as our respondents made clear in
this year's survey, those expectations have not been met and U.S. favorability
ratings, in most Arab countries, have now fallen to levels lower than they were
in 2008, the last year of the Bush administration. In Morocco, for example, positive attitudes toward
the United States
went from 26 percent in 2008 to a high 55 percent in 2009. Today, they have
fallen to 12 percent. The story was much the same in Egypt,
where the U.S.
rating went from 9 percent in 2008 to 30 percent in 2009, but has now plummeted
to 5 percent in this year's survey.
A review of the poll's other results makes it clear that the
continuing occupation of Palestinian land is seen by most Arabs as both the
main "obstacle to peace and stability in the Middle East" and
"the most important issue for the U.S. to address in order to improve its
ties with the Arab World". That Palestine trumps all of the other issues
measured in the survey throws cold water on the wishful thinking of some
analysts in the U.S. and Israel who want to imagine that, in the context of
this "Arab Spring", Arabs now feel
"that the Israeli-Palestinian issue is not as central to their lives as
they were led to believe."
What our respondents tell us is the second highest ranking
"obstacle to peace and stability" is "U.S. interference in the
Arab World", which explains why the U.S. role in establishing a no-fly
zone over Libya is neither viewed favorably in most countries, nor is it seen as improving Arab attitudes
toward America. In fact, when presented with several countries (e.g. Turkey,
Iran, France, China, the U.S. etc.) and asked to evaluate whether or not each
of them play a constructive role "in promoting peace and stability in the Arab
World" eight in 10 Arabs give a negative assessment to the U.S. role --
rating it significantly lower than France, Turkey, China, and, in four of six
Arab countries, even lower than Iran!
All of this might have been expected, as it was by the
President, but it is still sobering news that should send a strong signal to
all Americans and should serve as a check on the reckless behavior of some lawmakers.
For example, when Congress invites the Prime Minister of Israel to give an
address that challenges and insults the President -- and then gives the foreign
leader repeated standing ovations -- they are telling Arabs that America can't
and won't play a constructive peace-making role. And when Congress continues to
obstruct diplomacy and supports bills cutting much needed assistance programs
to the Palestinians, Lebanon,
and Egypt,
they are sending Arabs the wrong message at the wrong time. And when neoconservatives
continue to argue for a more muscular Middle East
foreign policy, urging the White House to use force or to make more demands on
various Arab parties, they are blind to the realities of the region and are
treading on dangerous ground.
To his credit, the President understands the dilemma America
confronts across the Arab World. He began his term in office with the right
intentions and sent signals he would move in the right direction. But, as I
have noted, on Inauguration Day Barack Obama did not receive a magic wand.
Instead, he was handed the shovel that George W. Bush had been using to dig
deep holes all over the Middle East. Getting
out of those holes has been harder than he imagined. In addition to confronting
the worst domestic economic crisis in generations, the President had to face
down two failed wars, an incorrigible and manipulative Israeli leader, a
divided and dysfunctional Palestinian polity, and a wary but hopeful (maybe too
hopeful) world that expected him to deliver on promised change. If that weren't
enough, the President was confronted from day one by a deeply partisan Washington, in which a
unified Republican opposition behaved as if they wanted nothing more than to
see him fail.
If anything, the results of this latest poll of Arab opinion
demonstrates how precarious the position of the United
States is in the Middle East
and how important it has become for American policy makers to pay attention to
what Arabs are saying. Some may play politics with critical Middle East issues
and gloat at their success at having stymied the President's efforts to make
peace and restore America's
image in the region. But as the results of this survey make clear, their
success has come at a price; one that is being paid by the entire country.
Dr. James Zogby is
Founder and President of the Arab American Institute
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