By Stephen Zunes, FPIF, May 20, 2011
Although President Barack Obama’s May 19 address on U.S. Middle East policy had a number of positive elements, overall it was a major disappointment. His speech served as yet another reminder that his administration’s approach to the region differs in several important ways from that of his immediate predecessor, but he failed to consistently assert principled U.S. support for human rights, democracy, or international law.
Obama was most eloquent in noting how popular nonviolent struggles were the driving agent of change in the region, and how this had in many ways made al-Qaeda decreasingly relevant even before the killing of Osama bin Laden earlier this month. Correctly recognizing that, through the use of nonviolent action, “the people of the region have achieved more change in six months than terrorists have accomplished in decades,” the president also observed, unlike the problematic efforts of “democracy promotion” in Iraq, “It is not America that put people into the streets of Tunis and Cairo – it was the people themselves who launched these movements, and must determine their outcome.”
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