America will never meet Arab expectations

Arabs have a love-hate relationship with America. Why? Because they don't understand this country and the strange and complex system it is founded on.

Take, for example, the Arab view of Obama. Arabs loved him during the 2008 election campaign, and were among those who cheered loudest in the international community when he was elected. Fast forward to one year later and many of these same Arabs are disheartened by what they see as Obama's failure to make good on the promises he made during his campaign.

Considerable segments of the Arab population were waiting for the president to give the Palestinians their rights back, to get American troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq, to "fix" the Iran problem, and solve the situation in Lebanon. They also thought that it would be nice if, along the way, the president could brighten the gloomy international image of Arabs and Muslims, and maybe even act as a catalyst for development and progress in the region.

All of this, in the eyes of many Arabs, would take no more than a few presidential decrees that Obama could sign in his first few weeks in the Oval Office. And then everything would be wonderful. In exchange for these "small" measures, many Arabs were prepared to express their unending support for Obama in giant demonstrations across the region.

This is reality. It is unfortunate, but it describes the status quo in the Arab world, frankly and honestly.

But if we are to understand this phenomenon, we have to remember that this is how problems are solved in the Arab world. When leaders in most Arab nations want to deal seriously with a specific problem, governmental decrees and presidential orders are issued, and so the whole "world" must work to satisfy the demands of the man sitting at the top of the pyramid. The impossible becomes easy and the problem is solved within hours. Issues that Cabinet after Cabinet was unable to solve for decades are suddenly fixed. The infamous Arab bureaucracy, in which signing a birth certificate can take several weeks, disappears. Endless funds and human resources, much-needed and missing for years, suddenly pour out of the state. In sum, activity and dynamism replace stagnation and laziness, and the "world" really does work to provide just what the man at the top demanded.

Great expectations

So what for Obama, who is nestled comfortably in the most powerful political seat in the world? He could do even better and faster what Arab leaders can do in the blink of an eye. Well, before jumping to conclusions, let's look at one small example: the closing of the prison at Guantanamo.

Only two days after taking office, Obama ordered that the infamous Guantanamo prison should be closed. But in America, the "world" doesn't work to satisfy the big man's orders, like it does in the Arab states. Closing the prison meant dealing with several issues.

For example, there are massive political forces in America that want to keep the Guantanamo situation the way it was under the Bush administration. And it took Obama's White House a long and drawn-out struggle until the courts decided that the prisoners in Guantanamo should be tried by American civilian courts that would ensure their rights. And during this time, Obama and his aides engaged in countless negotiations with countries that might be willing to take in the freed Guantanamo prisoners as political refugees, offering them some political and economic incentives. Keep in mind that the prisoners' home countries refused to take them back.

Back home, few Americans were willing to have suspected terrorists imprisoned near their homes, and it was these same American citizens who would have the final say on the matter — not the president. Forcing them to accept the presence of suspected terrorists near their homes was out of the question, so the Obama administration had to be creative enough to convince them to do so. After months of refusals by many states and cities, the president's home state of Illinois was at last convinced to accept the Guantanamo prisoners.

It took America 11 months of political manoeuvring and diplomacy to solve a problem that could have been solved in no more than a few days by a simple presidential decree in the Arab world. That is, if such a problem existed in the region. Remembering what happens to suspected terrorists in most Arab states makes the existence of a problem like Guantanamo unlikely.

In the end, no one can solve the problems of the Arab world except the Arabs themselves, both citizens and governments.

As for America, we can at least say that the current administration is trying to do its part. Just a few weeks ago, the Obama administration was able to revoke a policy that the Bush administration had established: the rejection of those who come into the country asking for political asylum. Now it is possible for these individuals to legally reside in the United States until they are called to trial by the appropriate parties. So hello and welcome to those who think of, or insist on, resigning from around the world.

Dr Wael Merza is a freelance journalist and media analyst. He works from Dubai and the US.