U.S. is preparing for a long siege of Arab unrest By Peter Baker and Mark Landler

U.S. is preparing for a long siege of Arab unrest
By Peter Baker and Mark Landler
New York Times
Posted: 09/15/2012 06:16:23 PM PDT
Updated: 09/15/2012 06:16:26 PM PDT
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WASHINGTON -- After days of anti-American violence across the Muslim world, the White House is girding for an extended period of turmoil that will test the security of U.S. diplomatic missions and President Barack Obama's ability to shape the forces of change in the Arab world.

Although the tumult subsided Saturday, senior administration officials said they had concluded that the sometimes violent protests in Muslim countries may presage a sustained crisis with unpredictable diplomatic and political consequences. While pressing Arab leaders to tamp down the unrest, Obama and his advisers are left to consider whether to scale back diplomatic activities in the region.

The unrest has suddenly become Obama's most serious foreign policy crisis of the election season, and analysts say it is calling into question central tenets of his Middle East policy. Did he do enough throughout the Arab Spring to help the transition to democracy from autocracy? Has he drawn a hard enough line against Islamic extremists? Did his administration fail to address security concerns? Has his outreach to the Muslim world yielded any lasting benefits?

These questions come at an inopportune time domestically as Obama enters the last stages of a campaign season with a measurable lead in polls. His policies escaped serious scrutiny in the initial days after the attack that killed four Americans in Libya last week, in part because of the furor over a statement by his
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opponent, Mitt Romney, accusing the president of sympathizing with the attackers. White House officials said they recognized that if not for Romney's statement, they would have been the ones on the defensive.

The Egyptian government, responding to administration pressure, cracked down on protesters in Cairo on Saturday. But images from the past week of U.S. flags being torn down and burned, an Islamic flag being raised and embassies being overrun by angry mobs introduce a volatile element into a re-election effort in which foreign policy has been a strength. Some critics and commentators were already evoking the images of the Iranian hostage crisis that doomed another presidency.

"After Obama's success in killing Osama bin Laden, in killing Gadhafi and in not blowing up Iraq, I think Obama and his aides figured we've got this box pretty well taken care of," said Michael Rubin, a Middle East scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and former Bush administration official, referring to Moammar Gadhafi of Libya.

"Now that gets thrown up into the air," he said. "Instead of Obama being the successful guy that got bin Laden, we're talking about Obama as the second coming of Jimmy Carter, and that's not something the campaign wants to see."

Administration officials worry that the violence in Egypt, Tunisia and other countries is likely to rage for a while, because with every new protest more people are exposed to the inflammatory American-made anti-Islam video that has fueled so much anger.

"The reality is the Middle East is going to be turbulent for the foreseeable future and beyond that," said Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former State Department official in the Bush administration. "It's going to present the United States with any number of difficult choices. It's also going to be frustrating because in most instances our interests are likely to be greater than our influence."

Administration officials say that Obama's outreach has improved the position of the United States in the Muslim world. "We have made significant inroads in demonstrating that the U.S. is not at war with Islam, and isolating al-Qaida as an element within Islam," said Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser.

The twin challenges of dealing with the crisis overseas and the politics of it at home overlap in complicated and uncomfortable ways. Just hours after mourning the death of the U.S. ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, and the other slain Americans last Wednesday, Obama flew off to a Las Vegas campaign event. After greeting their flag-draped coffins at Joint Base Andrews on Friday, he headed to Democratic headquarters for campaign meetings and then to an evening fundraiser.

In his weekly address on Saturday, Obama referred to American anxieties about the unrest. "I know the images on our televisions are disturbing," he said. "But let us never forget that for every angry mob, there are millions who yearn for the freedom, and dignity, and hope that our flag represents."

During marathon meetings at the White House since the killings of U.S. diplomatic officials in Benghazi, officials have tried to anticipate the next developments and contemplate a U.S. response. But they were caught off guard when a U.S.-run school was ransacked in Tunisia.

Even as more Marines are sent to diplomatic missions, the Obama team is confronting the very nature of America's presence in the Middle East. With embassies already fortified after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, officials are asking whether they can be further secured or whether some activities need to be curtailed, like assistance and public diplomacy programs that leave Americans more exposed, though there are no plans at the moment to do so.

The trade-offs of such choices are stark. Pulling back on U.S. involvement in these countries would undercut the ability to build cultural bridges that in theory diminish the sort of hostility now vividly on display. Yet officials said continuing with business as usual seemed untenable as well, and they recognize that foreign aid, already a tough sell in a rigid fiscal environment, may become even tougher to extract from Congress.

At home, the challenge is political but no less daunting. Republicans have until now had a hard time putting up a fight on national security and foreign policy but believe the uprisings provide a new opening. Romney's campaign characterizes Obama's approach to the Arab Spring as naive and apologetic, and it has criticized him for not being supportive enough of Israel. In recent days, critics have accused Obama of not paying enough attention to intelligence briefings. Obama receives the presidential daily briefing in writing every day but does not always sit down with intelligence briefers for an oral presentation as President George W. Bush did. Critics like former Vice President Dick Cheney said it indicated an inattention to a dangerous world.