Islamists’ New Power Upends Assumptions of U.S. Diplomacy
For the Obama administration, as it navigates the tumultuous effects of the Arab Spring, it’s a complicated day, as well. Long-held assumptions about who is a friend of the United States and who is not have been upset, leaving many Americans confused.
The overthrow of dictators across the Arab world and the rise of Islamists to new influence or power is forcing Washington to reassess decades-old judgments. The most important is in Egypt, where Mr. Morsi, representing the region’s most powerful Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, won a close election. His move on Sunday to revive the dissolved Parliament had Western experts scrambling to understand his strategy.
In Tunisia, a once-banned Islamist party, Ennahda, won a plurality of seats in elections last year, and Islamists have won new support in Yemen as well. In Saturday’s voting, Libya appeared to buck the trend, when a coalition led by a moderate political scientist edged out two Islamist parties.
In the decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Americans largely viewed the Middle East and Islam through the lens of the terrorism threat. The United States exercised stark judgments, encapsulated by President George W. Bush’s warning to the world nine days after the attacks: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/10/world/middleeast/fast-changing-arab-world-is-upending-us-assumptions.html?_r=1
The simple, if misguided, “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists” days are long gone. Dealing with democracies is more complicated than the black-or-white dictatorships that used to exist.
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