Editor's Note:

Each fall the National Council on US-Arab Relations brings together a distinguished group of diplomats, government officials, business people, military officials, scholars and others to tackle the thorny issues surrounding US-Arab relations. SUSRIS has provided AUSPC speakers' remarks, which touch on the Saudi-US relationship, to you for over the last five years. In keeping with that practice we again provide for your consideration a collection of AUSPC presentations. 

Today we present the first of two parts of the AUSPC media panel addressing how the Arab world views the 2008 U.S. President election and transition. The panel was chaired by Dr. Abderrahim Foukara, Washington Bureau Chief for Al Jazeera International; Hisham Melham, Washington correspondent for several media outlets in the Middle East; Dalia Mogahed, Senior Analyst and Executive Director of the Gallup Center of Muslim Studies; and Mohamed Elmenshawy, editor in chief of Taqrir Washington. Part one provides the initial round of discussions among the panelists and part two will include the subsequent open Q and A session. The panel was introduced by Dr. John Duke Anthony, President of the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations.�

Additional AUSPC sessions which address U.S. and Saudi issues will be provided by SUSRIS in the coming days. For more transcripts online check the index and link below.

17th ANNUAL ARAB-U.S. POLICYMAKERS CONFERENCE
�Transitioning the White House: Challenges and Opportunities for Arab-U.S. Relations�
October 30-31, 2008 | Washington, DC

U.S. Presidential Election 2008: Views from the Arab World

Chair: Dr. Abderrahim Foukara
Speakers:
Mr. Hisham Melham
Ms. Dalia Mogahed
Mr. Mohamed Elmenshawy

[DR. JOHN DUKE ANTHONY] Ladies and gentleman, many people focus inappropriately on the role of the media and its position in the discourse of people�s effort to obtain relevant and truthful information and insight, and the relevance of both to enhance awareness, to increase knowledge and to deepen understanding. We have four individuals who do this all day, nearly every day of the week. And this has been their career. It represents among the four of them at least a century of effort of trying to tell the truth and do the right thing in the right way, for the right reasons, at the right time. It�s an uphill battle and if indeed the media, in many cases in the United States, has confused and misled us, it also has enormous potential to approach the soft underbelly of objectionable policies, namely public attitudes and key to public attitudes is information and the media plays a central role in that, not a marginal one.

We have Doctor Abderrahim Foukara to chair this session. Many will remember him from last year when we asked him to speak as much from the heart as from the head in terms of Arab feelings toward the United States in their multifaceted dynamics, aspects and dimensions. Born in Morocco � Morocco not being a marginal country at all � it�s an Arab country, Islamic country, Mediterranean country, African country � also happens to be without any competition, as America�s first friend during the time of the Administration of our first President George Washington. He went to Great Britain and obtained his doctorate at Columbia on Western and Colonial Imperial Literature and American and Western Literature focusing on the apartheid system of South Africa. He worked for the BBC for at least a decade, this was when I first met him, before relocating to the United States to Boston and New York where he has been involved in educational programming ever since and been in Washington as the head of the bureau of Al Jazeera International for the last two years where he produces and hosts a program called �From Washington� to help millions of Arabs understand American issues and policies. Doctor Foukara..

[ABDERRAHIM FOUKARA] Thank you very much, Doctor Anthony. It�s a real pleasure for me to be here today, to chair this panel. We are, as already has been pointed out, on the threshold of an American election obviously of historic importance. 

This is actually my fourth election in terms of coverage. I covered 1996, 2000, 2004 and now this one and as far as my memory can go back every time that I approached the election thinking this is a historic event but I think there�s general consensus that this one is the one. For all the various reasons that we were going to try to look at in this panel. I�m obviously a journalist and we journalists tend to think that the world revolves around us. In some ways it does because we end up shaping perception. We, the four of us here, are responsible to one extent or another for shaping, or at least contributing to the shaping of Arab perception of this particular U.S. election. Without further ado I�m just going to open it up for discussion. I�m going to go to the panelists, introduce them quickly, and we�ll get going. 

Hisham Melham is the Washington based correspondent for Annahar, the leading Lebanese daily; Al-Qabas, the Kuwaiti daily; and Radio Monte Carlo in France. He is currently the host of Across the Ocean a weekly talk show for Al Arrabiya. Hisham can be seen as a contributor to various programs and he has tremendous experience on the Washington scene. It will be interesting to hear his insights.

Then we have Dalia Mogahed. She is Senior Analyst and Executive Director of the Gallup Center of Muslim Studies, a non partisan research center dedicated to providing data-driven analysis on the views of Muslim populations around the world. With John Esposito, she is co-author of the book �Who Speaks for Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think.� She is based in Washington, DC.

Then we have Mohamed Elmenshawy. He is editor in chief of Taqrir Washington. Before joining Taqrir Washington Mr. Elmenshawy worked as the managing editor for Global Issues, an Arabic-language bi-monthly publication. He also served as a Washington correspondent for the daily pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Alawsat where he covered the White House, the State Department and Congress. Now we get down to it.

Hisham if I may start with you. As I said in my opening remarks there�s virtually universal consensus that this is a historic election whether you talk to people from Africa, Latin America, Asia, they all agree that this is a historic election. In what way do you think we Arabs see it as being historic as different from the way others in other parts of the world do?

[HISHAM MELHAM] The world that the next American President is going to inherit from George Bush, probably Barack Obama, or at least if the world had any say, they already voted for Barack Obama, the world that the new President will inherit including the Middle East is radically different than the world George Bush inherited from Bill Clinton eight years ago. This is a more brittle world, this is a world that is facing economic and political uncertainty. As you�ve seen in this country recently. 

As far as the Middle East is concerned the region that now during the George Bush reign we call it the Greater Middle East. after George Bush�s tsunami, or rampaging years, it�s more fragmented, politically, economically it�s facing a great deal of uncertainty with few islands of exceptions, such as in the Gulf, but even there, there�s new uncertainty on the horizon. 

There is something that you haven�t seen in recent years, that is the rising tensions, the sectarian tensions between the Sunni and the Shia. Various entrenched Arab autocratic regimes as well as Iran, which is worse than autocratic, are facing tremendous social, economic challenges, not only from assertive and at times armed groups but also from the growing army of young men and women who are facing an uncertain future. Many of them are underemployed, many of them will be unemployed. 

Beyond that obviously President Bush is going to bequeath to a new President two costly, bloody wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Two wars where we don�t see an end in sight anytime soon. A �war against terror� which is badly framed, conceptually flawed � because you cannot wage a war against a tactic � because terrorism is a tactic not an ideology. Instead of saying clearly we are waging a relentless, unmerciful, unending war against Al Qaeda and its like minded groups which will be understandable. Waging a war where we don�t talk about Crusades and where we don�t talk about Islamofacism, borrowing from European history and experiences things that are alien to the Middle East and then project them over the Arab and Muslim world. 

Even the so-called Freedom Agenda that the President waged in the Middle East led to very painful results. In fact, George Bush, I give him credit, in his second inaugural speech he did say something that no previous American President since the Second World War dared to say, which is simply we the Americans through both Republican and Democratic administrations for the past 60 years looked the other way, when our buddies in the Arab and the Muslim world, our friends that we slept with were engaged in massive violations of the human rights of their own people, not their citizens, because they don�t have citizens, they have subjects there -- and we look the other way in the name of stability, free flow of oil from the Gulf, and striking alliances with these regimes against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. 

There was this na�ve approach on the part of the Bush Administration that if you have snap elections in societies in the Middle East you will have the right people elected. Someone should have reminded them that democracy requires tradition, vibrant � or more or less � lively civil societies, and yet in a region that was pulverized literally and physically by autocratic regimes since the Second World War, political life was destroyed. The so-called liberal era in between the First War and the Second War, in places like Egypt and Iraq, where you did have a semblance of political life, this was destroyed and then we had these elections, these snap elections, in which the wrong people as far the Bush Administration, as far as I�m concerned got elected. So this legacy, two unending wars, two bloody wars, a badly framed war on terror, a badly executed freedom agenda � this is the legacy that George Bush is going to leave. 

There is very good reason to be fascinated with the American election this year. It is the first time we see a credible woman candidate, Hillary Clinton, getting almost 18 million people, and then you have the candidacy of Barack Obama, because of his biography, because of his history, because of his views, because where he grew up, he fascinates the whole world, including the Arab world, people are looking at this election with a mixture of fascination and cynicism, fascination and even horror. 

And the cynicism is understood because in the year 2000, who were cheerleading George Bush because they thought that he was going to be like his father were disappointed obviously. So people would tell you nothing will happen. The Americans will continue to be, you know the friends of Israel and the friends of Arab autocratic regimes and nothing will change. 

On the other hand people look at Obama and they would hope that his views on Iraq, withdrawal, timetable for withdrawal, engaging Iran, could lead to a new page with the Middle East. And I think it is going to be funny watching Mahmoud Ahmadinejad trying to demonize an American President whose full name is Barack Hussein Obama. Good luck, Ahmadinejad. So, if Obama is elected the world will be more charitable to America. They will probably give us a longer honeymoon, a longer grace period. And, one final word, it�s funny in the Arab world when they, like the Europeans, like to lecture the Americans about tolerance and this and that. Many of my friends, people who studied in this country, speak beautiful English, got PhDs from the best American schools, come and whisper in my ear, �Do you really believe that the Americans will elect a black man?� They don�t know that they are projecting their own silly, stupid biases and prejudices and discrimination on the American electorate and I tell them, �Yes.� And if you want to know I voted for him. Anyway, the point is if Barack Obama is elected the world will be more understanding of America and I think the world will give us some more time to sort out the mess that was created during the eight years of the Bush reign.

[FOUKARA] Thank you, Hisham. Dalia, just to pick up where Hisham left off. The issue of Barack Obama, if, and it�s obviously a big if, all was hunky-dory between the United States and the Arab world, do you think the Arab world would have been excited and enthused about Barack Obama just on the merit that he is the first African-American candidate with a real shot at the Presidency?

[DALIA MOGAHED] Well, let me first start by asking the question, �Do Arabs believe that a change in the White House is a significant change in regards to policy toward their region.� And the answer to that question is, the majority do not. 

So we have asked people around the world and the majority of Muslim countries if they think the change in Administration will make a difference, and the majority either say they don�t know or they say for sure they don�t think a difference will occur, primarily in the Palestinian Territories where 73% say it will make no difference. So let�s start with that as a basis. 

What we�re looking at is a contest between people who look at Barack Obama as a hope and people who are indifferent. So our election in the Arab world is between Obama and indifference. Very few people support McCain. Now is there significance to his biography, to the fact that he�s a son of an African immigrant. I think the answer is definitely yes, but it�s more anecdotal than anything that would be measured more broadly. I think the real story out of the Arab world when it comes to this election is as significant as it is, as you rightly point out, and as different as it looks to the world, the Arab public has become so cynical and essentially so short in hope when it comes to American policy that even Obama isn�t succeeding in making them believe that anything will change. They are much more likely now to look to the East. China is much more popular in the Arab world than even Europe, and certainly more than the United States and, probably positively, they are much more likely to look inward, not toward their own government but toward themselves. 

So when we ask Egyptians, what can Muslims do to help their own condition, the most frequent response Egyptians give is to stop depending on the United States, as just a spontaneous response, not something they are choosing from a list. So more and more I think we�re losing influence and people are losing any hope that America is the answer. 

[FOUKARA] Mohammed we all follow the debate here in the United States and we all hear the umpteen statements that are made every day about John McCain and Barack Obama but we also hear it from those two camps about how the media have covered them. We hear complaints from the McCain camp, that�s what we�ve been hearing over the past couple of days, that the American media have been way too biased in favor of Obama. Now in the Arab world there are obviously over 20 different countries, there�s even an even bigger number of Muslim countries. We know that Barack Obama is a dove in certain situations but he is a hawk in certain other situations when it comes to sitting with the Iranians and using diplomacy he is on the dovish side when it comes to dealing with Al Qaeda in Pakistan for example he�s a hawk. Given this diversity of sensibilities in the Arab and Islamic worlds, what is it that unites all countries of the region when it comes to favorability vis a vis Barack Obama?

[MOHAMED ELMENSHAWY] Actually when I look to the Arab world that I visited in the past few months I see big division between the public and the elite in the Arab world looking at Obama. The public always asks will America ever elect a black son of poor immigrants who has some Islamic roots, educated in Islamic school in Indonesia. The answer is obvious, he�s a step away from the White House. The elite connected to the ruling regimes don�t really favor it. They don�t really like someone who has come from nowhere, two years only in the Senate to head a state, not just a state the entire free world. The White House itself. A very traditional society. They admire age. And they don�t understand this two years old senator asked his running mate who is 30 years older in the Senate to be his assistant or vice president here. They can�t get it. The dynamics of American politics and American life is not understandable among the elite level in the Arab world. Because they like the status quo and the rule of old people unfortunately. 

When we talk about the public and I mean here the youth as we know Arab countries are very youthful in terms of the numbers. Seventy percent or plus are younger than 35 years old and they are really excited to a point I never saw before about the Obama thing. If you look at any Gallup poll 90 percent of average Arabs don�t like anything about the United States politics or American political system, or foreign policy, especially after 9/11, the invasion of Iraq, the relationship with Israel, or the Afghanistan war and occupations there. They can�t imagine with the reality that Americans are coming close to elect Obama, that two years old senator, who happened to be, has some Islamic roots. 

And after 9/11 to imagine a President in America who has any Islamic roots it�s unimaginable in the Arab world. So youths, I believe, are very excited. They have some hope in Obama. It�s maybe illusion here because no doubt they will be disappointed if Obama wins because it won�t make a great difference in their immediate lives and they will have great disappointment if McCain wins of course.

The media like any other media, most Arab professionals in the media are highly educated like Americans, they lean toward the most intelligent candidate in this campaign who is obviously Obama, so are no different compared with European or Asian or even American media favoring Obama for the White House.

[FOUKARA] Thank you. I think now we can open it up for discussion and questions from the audience.

[Q and A continued in part two of this panel.]

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Arab-US Policymakers Conference (AUSPC 2008)

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