Obama Starts New Muslim Outreach With Killing Of Bin Laden (Updated)

The Wall Street Journal reports that President to Renew Muslim Outreach, and in fact the assassination of Osama bin Laden is suppsed to be connected to that outreach:

"It's an interesting coincidence of timing—that he is killed at the same time that you have a model emerging in the region of change that is completely the opposite of bin Laden's model," Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser at the White House, said in an interview.


Since January, popular uprisings have overthrown the longtime dictators of Tunisia and Egypt. They have shaken rulers in Libya, Bahrain, Syria, Yemen and Jordan, marking the greatest wave of political change the world has seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

While it is awfully generous of Mr. Rhodes to give us a preview of Obama's speech, it is somewhat odd to claim that bin Laden would be displeased with the current turn of events and that they are inimical to his goals.

After all, bin Laden did not look favorably on the rulers of these regimes--and indeed a number of them appear to be on their way out.

Osama bin Laden wanted a return to Sharia law--and the Muslim Brotherhood is edging towards that goal in Egypt. In other Arab countries facing similar upheavals, there is fear that regime change may result in similar opportunities for Islamists.

Obama has been caught flat-footed before in the Middle East, insisting on the centrality of the creation of a Palestinian State to Middle East stability at a time when according to Wikileaks the Arab leaders were--and are--more concerned with the threat of Iran.

Likewise, Obama's insistence on Israeli   concessions on settlements, instead of leaving it as an issue for negotiation, as it had always been before, arguably forced Abbas to insist on the same concessions and set peace talks backwards.

Now Obama will insist that Osama's dream was dead before he was.

He will have to convince an  Arab world that had already begun losing confidence in Obama even before the US had killed the man many Arabs  call a martyr and Holy Warrior.

Bottom line, this trip with this goal at this time is something of a risk for Obama--both for his foreign policy and his reelection chances.

UPDATE: I think my pessimism is justified:

Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt: Brotherhood and Brotherhood and Salafists to form election coalition

Egyptian newspaper Al Masry Al Youm reports Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist groups to form coalition in parliamentary elections to ‘preserve the Islamic nature of Egypt’.

...This move contradicts a current tendency in the British media to emphasise distance between the two Islamic movements. Muslim Brotherhood Member Sobhi Saleh is quoted, saying that‘recent attacks on the Islamic groups brought us together’.

Although they now claim to have renounced violence, Jama'a al-Islamiya was responsible for a number of terrorist atrocities in Egypt throughout the 1990s, including the 1997 Luxor Massacre, in which 62 people were killed.

And yes, bin Laden was Salafist.

Posted by Daled Amos