The Carroll Standard

What Obama Isn't Telling You About the Middle East

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The biggest issue Israel faces today is not the garden-variety Arab Spring. It also is not whether equality and democracy reign in Israel. It’s also surprisingly not the Palestinian-Israeli conflict many associate as the bone of contention of the region.

The mother-of-all-issues, as I learned Monday from Dr. Andy David, Israel’s Consul General of the Pacific Northwest in an American Jewish Committee-sponsored room of pro-Israel folks from across the political aisle, is that the Arab world has shifted from a conversation of nationalism and secularism to one subjugated to Islam. In other words, welcome to the Islamic Winter.

After blogging in 2010 about how Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s noticeably distanced and in many ways lessened his relationships with Western democracies like Israel and the US to fully embrace radicalized, Islamic-leftist countries like the Islamic Republic of Iran, David’s words caught my attention.

When the region had once dealt with the Pan Arabism model and the rest of the world still looked at the Middle East with “Lawrence of Arabia” lenses, Islam was not present in the conversation. Yet an exposure event occurred and it can be easily identified by analyzing something as inconsequential though colorful as the duds of a former dictator. Really.

For example, Libya’s former President Muammar al-Gaddafi donned European suits until he tossed those for a clownish collection of multi-colored (sometimes even the infamous Barney-purple) African-inspired Islamic garb. Remember those gold should-be-pajamas he wore at the UN? No doubt Gaddafi was a chided character, among other things, but his often-garish attire still didn’t clue anyone outside of the region into its significance. [...] continues...