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Opinions/Editorials Title: The Good Word: With Turmoil In Middle East, It Is Good To Have Obama At The Helm in the U.S. With all of the turmoil in the Middle East — a new opposition government not fully supported by the United States and Israel in Lebanon; a Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia; and massive demonstrations in the streets in the capital cities in Cairo; Sana’a, Yemen; and Amman, Jordan, against autocratic, repressive regimes — there is total uncertainty as to what the region’s future will be. What is certain is that while each country in the area is unique, whatever occurs in one country affects what occurs in other Mideast countries, if only because of satellite TV, the Internet and cell phones. What is also certain is that U.S.-Middle East interests are very complicated due to (1) our dependence on the region’s oil; (2) our alliance with Israel; (3) our military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan; (4) our never-ending confrontations with Iran; and (5) the chaos in Pakistan. While there are obvious parallels between the 1989 fall of the Soviet Empire and what is happening today in the Middle East, there are great differences. Primarily, while all the countries experiencing street demonstrations are Muslim, there is no overreaching political reality comparable to Soviet communism. Al-Qaida in a variety of manifestations has a presence throughout the region along with strong strands of Islamic fundamentalism. However, each country has a capitalistic, middle class, but not of equal strength — strong in Tunisia, very weak in Yemen. What 1989 in Eastern Europe and 2011 in the Middle East do have in common is a nontraditional man in a powerful position who transcends the traditional definition of the usual occupant of the position. In 1989, the pope, Karol Wojtyla, for the first time in centuries, was both non-Italian and from a Communist country, Poland. In 2011, for the first time ever, the U.S. president is an African-American with a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas who was a single welfare parent for years. In retrospect, when Pope John Paul II publicly prayed together with Solidarity leader Lech Walesa in Gdansk, Poland, in 1987 the fall of the Berlin Wall was inevitable. The same might be said in the future of President Barack Hussein Obama’s June 2009 speech in Cairo before a college crowd of 3,000, calmly proclaiming the need for peaceful change in the governance of Middle Eastern countries to allow for the free expression of ideas — political and otherwise. Four months later, Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize as a beacon for future peaceful global change toward democracy and freedom. When historians look back on 2011 and how the Middle East changed then, the fact that Obama was president will undoubtedly be seen as having a huge impact on events. Former Republican Secretary of State James Baker said on the “Today Show” on Wednesday that he thought Obama was doing a great job in dealing with the fast-moving events in Egypt. He agreed with the call for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to step down quickly and not wait until new elections in September and for the administration in engaging the protesters’ consensus leader, Mohamed El-Baradei, a Nobel Peace Prize winner. The Egyptian army has shown great restraint in dealing with the hundreds of thousands of protesters who have taken to the streets. Hopefully, that will continue, but the possibility of violent actions by either the government or the protesters, or both, makes any prediction as to how things will play out very tenuous.The United States having supported Mubarak for decades, as well as other repressive regimes that are being toppled one after another, portends a difficult road ahead in our relations with the new governments that are forming in the region. But the fact that an African-named black son of a Muslim Kenyan is the U.S. president should be of immense value for the credibility of America’s moral stature in this time of profound change in the Middle East.
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