It's cool to be an American again...From Jakarta to Johannesburg; Americans who travel or live abroad are being hugged when strangers hear their accent.
—Washington Post, January 16, 2009
Having just returned from a trip to Syria and Saudi Arabia, let me just say that one place it is not automatically "cool" to be an American is in the Arab world. In discussions with government officials, journalists, intellectuals and businessmen, I heard a dangerous combination of anger, despair and rekindled disillusionment.
Everywhere you go, you encounter sadness, not only for the thousands of innocent lives wrecked in the Gaza conflagration, but also for the hopes that had been ignited by the prospect of a new president. For many Arabs, the Inauguration is a sideshow.
While most people I spoke with recognize that President elect Obama is not responsible for the situation in Gaza, many fear that mounting rage is killing life the very idea of peace itself.
Of course, the region has witnessed periods of equal or greater violence. But two factors give the Gaza tragedy a political and symbolic meaning that we can ignore only at our peril.
First, the citizens of the Middle East and the US have experienced two different wars. Americans have watched sporadic images of violence recede from their TV and computer screens as the Gaza news cycle runs its course. By contrast, Middle Easterners have watched an escalating horror movie in which more and more women and children are maimed or killed every day. This is their reality 24/7.
Second, while young people have been transfixed by this reality, they are not sitting still. In Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Thailand and Indonesia (not to mention Europe), tens of thousands have taken to the streets.
Still, the Arab or Muslim "street" is not the central story. What distinguishes this period of confrontation is the unprecedented level of social mobilization that is unfolding in cyber space. Meeting on countless blogs, Face Book and its many offshoots, young people are channeling shared anger into action. As one Saudi businessman told me, while his daughter cannot protest, she and her friends are showing solidarity by giving blood, and by gathering supplies for relief efforts. In this way they are creating a sense of community built around renewed support for Palestinians, and an implacable opposition to Israel.
The vast majority of these young people are hardly radical. But if the heartbreak of Gaza ends up extinguishing the ray of hope kindled by Obama's election, the allure of Islamist extremism could turn today's moderates into tomorrow's militants.
This is the nightmare that worries our friends and allies in Europe, the Middle East and wider Muslim world. And this is why they still hope that after inaugural celebrations wind down, President Obama will help Palestinians and Israelis climb out of their deepening morass.
Daniel Brumberg is an associate professor of government and director of democracy and governance studies at Georgetown University. He is also a senior nonresident fellow at the Project on Middle East Democracy. His work focuses on political, social and economic change in the Middle East and wider Muslim World.
