How Arabs See Bush's Mideast Tour

Are we there yet? It hasn't been a fun eight days in the Middle East for President Bush, who's been received with less than warm welcomes by the Arab public and a good portion of the Israeli public as well. (Photo by David Silverman/Getty Images)

It's instructive to read the Arab press' perspective on President Bush's nine-day tour of the Middle East. It's not only what various newspapers choose to highlight that's instructive, but how they highlight it (the prominence of one news story or another being a subtly subjective decision purportedly objective editors make all the time) and why.

Bahrain Talks Weaponry

In Bahrain, for example, where Bush stopped by on Saturday, the Daily News ("The Voice of Bahrain") was playing up Bush's pledge to push through a massive arms deal with Saudi Arabia. "The deal," the Daily News wrote, "appeared to be part of Bush's effort to persuade Saudi Arabia to help contain Iran and counter what he has branded a growing threat to the world's security." Bahrain is essentially a Saudi Arabian client state. What Saudi Arabia wants and fears, Bahrain's ruling Al Khalifa family wants and fears. These days, Iran's Shiite revolution is the fear, as are Saudi Arabia's and Bahrain's restless, lorded-over Shiites.

Curiously, that story in the Bahrain times didn't mention the breadth of the arms deal with the United States. No wonder. It's a mammoth, $20 billion package, including 900 satellite-guided bombs for $120 million, that amplifies a policy of armament pioneered by Henry Kissinger, the U.S. secretary of state during the Nixon and Ford administrations until 1976: Kissinger thought that arming Israel and its neighbors to the hilt would keep the peace. Instead, it's heightened suspicions and made tensions worse. The deal with Saudi Arabia isn't likely to frighten Iran so much as further intensify an arms race in the most dangerous part of the world.

Kissinger had also pledged that the United States would always ensure that Israel would maintain military superiority in the region. So the Bush administration is pairing the $20 billion Saudi deal with a $30.4 billion, 10-year arms deal for Israel, surpassing all previous such packages. The difference between Israel and Saudi Arabia, of course, is that Israel has an army. Saudi Arabia only has the pretense of an army. Expensive hardware doesn't repel invasions or quell internal unrest. Good diplomacy and foresight do, two qualities that have gone wanting during the Bush years in Arabs' eyes. The reaction to Bush's visit tells the story.

"Empty Words, Yet Again," says the United Arab Emirates

"Despite his renewed interest in the Middle East, Bush failed to introduce any new vision or overarching mission, and he spoke in generalities which ignored the Middle East's need for specific solutions," wrote Francis Matthew in Gulf News, the United Arab Emirates-based daily. "In part he focused on anti-Iranian rhetoric, but his main theme was the importance of introducing democratic reform across the region, of justice and freedom, and ensuring the accountability of leaders and government to the people. But by leaving these broad aspirations very vague, Bush did not link his rhetoric to any specific political initiatives."

Osama al-Sharif, a Jordanian-based journalist also writing in Gulf News, but about Bush's belated involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was less kind:

If anything the presidential visit to the beleaguered Holy Land underlined the feebleness of US influence on the outcome of the negotiations. The so-called honest broker looked bemused, sometimes indifferent to the realities that millions of people on both side of the divide now face as a result of an entangled conflict. The American president, making his first - and most likely his last - visit to the Palestinian territories failed to deliver one thing that the people of this region need most: hope.

What Saudi Hospitality?

Bush might have expected a warmer welcome in Saudi Arabia. But even there, the press was in a more snubbish than reverential mood. Khaled Almaeena, writing in Arab News, didn't waste a moment before reminding the president of the long trail of Arab tears behind him:

“Your friend is he who tells you the truth,” goes an old Arab saying, and that is why I am sharing with you, President Bush, these lines echoing the sentiments of millions of Arabs around the world. Your first “crusade” remark immediately after 9/11 spawned apprehension, later amplified by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the subsequent unfortunate incidents at Abu Ghraib, rendition, Guantanamo and other acts deemed by many in this part of the world and others as openly hostile to Arabs and Muslims.

Almaeena then goes on to lecture the American president on sixty years of American involvement in the Middle East, much of it respectful if not favorable to Arabs, all of it squandered during the Bush years over the talk of democracy on one hand and the continued support of Israel's occupation and repression of Palestinians on the other: "Media reports of strikes against Iran and references to World War III cause alarm and anxiety," Almaeena writes. "We believe that dialogue and political goodwill can bring rapprochement and progress, but it is important for all to see what has caused these grievances to build up and, then, work to remove them."

Egyptian Heat

At this writing Bush hadn't yet arrived in Egypt, the last leg of his tour. But demonstrators were already on the streets, saying "Bush is an unwanted guest," in the words of Egypt's Daily News. Among the brandished banners: “Baghdad is Cairo, and Cairo is Baghdad,” “Down with America, and down with the occupation of Egypt,” “Bush the butcher, sitting comfortably in our country,” and, “Leaders of the Arab states are cowards.”

Meanwhile in Beirut, a bomb targeted a United States embassy vehicle, killing four people but not reaching its intended target. American presidents battered by unpopularity at home have always taken to the escape hatch of foreign tours, where they're generally better received and more unabashedly feted (Nixon, Reagan, the first Bush, Clinton during the Lewinsky mess). It hasn't been the case with Bush. Hard as it is to believe, he just may be looking forward to coming home to the cozy comforts of Helen Thomas questions (Thomas, by the way, is the daughter of Lebanese immigrants) and Henry Waxman's congressional investigations.

See also:

• "Bush Seeks to Answer Arab Skepticism" (Washington Post)