Tonight, I attended Palestine Week's lecture by Asad Abu Khalil, who is a renowned scholar on the Arab-Jewish conflict and on Middle East politics. He is a Professor at Berkeley and Cal State. He was featured CNN and Al Jazeera numerous times and has a blog titled The Angry Arab. I've added it to my bloglist and urge you to check it out. His talk was truly captivating and centered on the Obama and the Middle East.
Personally, I've always been skeptical of Obama and never really fell for this whole Obamania that seems to have infected everyone I know. Even those who said they wouldn't vote for him, ended voting for him. His popularity was simply a reflection in his excellent marketing and campaigning. The only thing that may have attracted me about him was his socialist background, but he shun away from that, so I'm not so sympathetic with him. Anyways, I don't want to focus on Obama, but on the Angry Arab.
Professor Khalil started his lecture by notifying us by the current paraphernalia that has struck the Middle East, where we have come to envision him the next Mohamed Ali (i.e. the boxer) who will sympathize with the Arab and Palestinian cause, an image painted by the neo-conservatives to withdraw votes from him. Ironically, Obama is nothing of the like and tries to distance himself from the Arab/Muslim nation at all. Khalil went so far as to predict that Obama will attack another Arab/Muslim state as evidence of disassociation with anything Arab. I disagreed with Khalil on this point and brought it up during the discussion, by telling him that Obama's suck up to APAC disgusted the Arabs and his support of bringing up the sensitive topic of the Armenian massacre led to his detestment in Turkey as I experienced from confabulating with Turks over this summer. He agreed with me, but told me that the Arab media is propagating otherwise. He urged me to read Arab sources. I shall, but I don't think they'll be representative of the masses.
He then pointed out then pointed out Obama's hypocrisy by indicating that although saying, "None have suffered more than the Palestinians," he withdrew his comments and never mentioned the topic again. He then hired Rahm Emanual as his first member of his new cabinet, who was involved in the Israeli Army. Concidence?
After thrashing Obama, which was truly a ironic scene since he was actually guilt tripping all the Arab Americans in the room since it was evident they'd all voted for him, he then went to indicate that whether they like it or not, the Middle East will always pop up on the American President's agenda. I argued this point by pointing out that the M.E. doesn't just "pop up" on the U.S. agenda, but is deliberately there and will be there for some unforseeable future. America will only withdraw when it is stretched too thin, public opinion goes down, and its interests in the region wane, but other then that, its there to stay. America needs to identify a common enemy to rally support at home and justify its war crimes abroad. Simply put, America needs enemies to survive and after triumphing over the Nazis and Communists, the US has identified the Islamic civilization as its new enemy so that it can "legitimately" access the region geopolitical resources at complete freewill. Russia is smart enough to realize by installing its own missile system to couteract that being launched in Poland and Latvia by the US.
I believe the message the he drove home was that the US should halt its intervention in the Middle East and let them write their own history. I believe this message resonates the true aspiration of the Arab masses. Unless the US decides to do so, the turmoil will not end and the Americans shouldn't be so foolhardy to question "Why do they hate us so much?"
Anyways, the discussion dragged on and on, but I was truly intrigued by the radicalism of the Angry Arab and he actually revived feelings I had during my Guevarism phase. Anyways, I'll be following the blog and am keen to see how true his predictions of Obama will be. If there's one person that was convinced by his views though, it was definitely me.
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