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Opinion: Obama’s Bubble | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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The Atlantic magazine published a long story about the US President Barack Obama and his view of foreign policy under the title “The Obama Doctrine”. As a result, Arab newspapers said that Obama is attacking Saudi Arabia and hates Arabs.

It is wrong to portray Obama’s view as a stance against Arabs or Saudi Arabia as this is not true. We should not move emotionally in this direction, as Obama’s view is not about a specific party and shows that he lives in a bubble where he prefers to read fiction rather than books on politics or history. He probably also reads reports presented to him and thus demonstrates that the president is able to ignore and override institutions in America!

What the magazine published is not against a particular individual because Obama criticised everyone except Iran and Russia, of course. He criticised the Europeans, the former French President Nicolas Sarkozy and described the British Prime Minister David Cameron as “absent minded”.

He criticized Netanyahu, the Turkish President and Gulf states and is of the opinion that they seek to use America’s “muscles” to serve their interests and demand a free ride! The article also stated that Obama told a foreign guest that he had heard a member of congress criticising him and told the foreign guest that he should have confronted the member over those criticisms. Obama also interrupted the Israeli Prime Minister whilst he was explaining the circumstances of the region by asking him whether he believes that the first African-American president and the son of a mother who provided for him financially does not know the region!

All of this indicates that we are dealing with a man who lives in a bubble, is full of arrogance and idealism. He dreamt of seeing Wael Ghoneim as the president of Egypt and according to The Atlantic, thinks that ISIS does not constitute an internal threat to America but that climate change does! It is also said that he called for the departure of Bashar Al-Assad because he believed that Al-Assad would leave at the same speed as the former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak!

The article also shows that Obama criticised the former and current Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry respectively. It also indicates that he was irritated by his ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power as well as the US National Security Advisor Susan Rice, and that he was worried that the reports submitted to him were misleading and would lead to foreign interventions that he did not want to undertake. What is worse is that his close team describes the street on which the most important research centre in Washington is located as the Arab occupied area. After this, can it be said that Obama, who has attacked Arab societies and their values just as he attacked Europeans, hates Arabs or only Saudi Arabia?

Of course not, by attacking everyone including members of his administration and his western allies, the article published by “The New Atlantic” shows that the president lives in a bubble, is a dreamer and is frustrated. He rushed into attacking everyone before he left and here is his administration trying to limit the damage caused by his undiplomatic views.