Opinions | Columnists
Ignorant of Mideast
Americans are more concerned about their own wars than they are about other people's.
- By Gordon Robison, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 23:38 April 8, 2008
- Image Credit: Illustration: Nino Jose Heredia/Gulf News
Say what you will about the Iraq War, as a news story it has a way of driving all else before it.
After months of hearing that the war had pretty much gone away as an issue in this year's presidential campaign (a line of argument I, for one, never bought into, though it has been remarkably popular with America's pundit class all winter) the spike in Iraqi violence that began in late March pushed it back onto the nation's front pages.
The moment was not auspicious. The fighting, which began in Basra, spread to Baghdad. President George W. Bush grandly hailed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki's ill-planned offensive as a triumph of Iraqi ingenuity, "a defining moment in the history of a free Iraq" - just as American and British forces had to join in to prevent a rout of the Iraqi troops.
Later reports, citing Iraqi officials, noted that large numbers of Iraqi troops deserted, refused to fight or joined forces with the militias they were supposed to be driving out. The fighting finally ended, mainly, through Iranian political intervention.
It is safe to say this is not the storyline the administration would have chosen for the week before General David Petraeus and US Ambassador Ryan Crocker were scheduled to make the Washington rounds to report on progress in Iraq since last September.
Where Iraq does succeed, however, is in dropping the rest of the Middle East, from Iran's nuclear programme to Darfur to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, straight out of sight and off of the American agenda.
After decades in which the words "Middle East" were, for many casual observers, synonyms for "Israeli-Palestinian violence" it is hard to find any evidence that the US currently much cares about anyone's problems in the Middle East other than its own. Grant Iraq this: it has succeeded in marginalising the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Historically speaking, that is quite an accomplishment.
The clearest evidence of this lies in the coverage, or rather the lack of coverage, of the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's most recent visit to the Middle East.
Detailed accounts of her talks with Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President of the Palestinian National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, were out there, but it took a dedicated newspaper reader or web surfer to find them.
Similarly, last week's interview with the Palestinian newspaper Al Ayam in which Hamas leader Khaleed Meshal seemed to support the idea of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on the 1967 borders received virtually no attention here.
A decade ago that story would probably have been on the front page of the next morning's New York Times and Washington Post.
Why this sustained lack of interest in a conflict that has been a staple of American journalism for decades?
Broader pattern
In part, it fits a broader pattern: American media, print and broadcast alike, have steadily pared back their coverage of all foreign news over the last ten or 15 years.
There is also Palestine's seeming intractability. For anyone not obsessed with the conflict's nuances (i.e. for about 99 per cent of the viewing/reading public) very little about it ever seems to change.
This causes a lot of otherwise sympathetic and interested observers to throw up their hands in frustration and look for something else to engage their attention.
Then, of course, there is Iraq. It is surely understandable that the American public is more concerned about its own wars than it is about other people's. But while many in the Arab World see two conflicts as linked, Americans, mostly, do not.
Nor do most Americans accept the idea (a given in much of the Middle East) that Washington's failure to push for a real, lasting settlement complicates its position in the wider region generally and Iraq specifically.
When James Baker and Lee Hamilton's Iraq Study Group cited the link in late 2006 and called on the US to make a serious push for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement it proved to be the single most controversial recommendation in their report - and the one first to be shoved aside.
One might argue that removing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the glare of public attention has historically proven to be one of the better ways of achieving at least some progress. But that only works when it is accompanied by serious, high-level focus and engagement. If there is anyone outside the State Department who thinks that is really what is happening just now, it would, indeed, be interesting to meet them.
Gordon Robison is a journalist and consultant based in Burlington, Vermont & Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has lived in and reported on the Middle East for two decades, including assignments in Baghdad for both CNN and Fox News.
Share this article
More from Columnists
More from Opinions
Popular in Opinions
-
Opinions
Speak Your Mind: Tough love
What ways do you use to discipline your child?
Opinion Editor's choice
-
Obama has lost sight of centre
The US president needs to show voters he is listening, even if his allies in Congress are not
-
Building a knowledge society
Arab Knowledge Report examines the current state of Arab knowledge
-
Trust is the issue with Iran
Resolution is unlikely because of the lack of faith between the 5+1 Group and Tehran
