Possibility of McCain victory alarms Middle East
Wednesday, October 29 2008
The latest Doha Debate has conclusively warned America that a victory by John McCain in the US Presidential election would further damage relations with the Middle East.
In the largest margin yet recorded in the Debates, now in their fifth year, 87 per cent of the audience voted against a motion suggesting that the Middle East would be better off with McCain as President.
Hafez al-Mirazi, the former host of Al-Jazeera’s Arabic weekly television show From Washington said that just as President George W. Bush had made the Middle East “worse than it was eight years ago” so his “hawkish Republican mate” would do the same.
He suggested McCain was eager to “fight and engage in wars” against Iran, Syria “and anyone who would oppose America.”
“Like Bush he wouldn’t talk to his opponents and like Bush he shoots first and talks later.”
In an opening statement that drew loud applause from the packed 350-member audience, Mr. al-Mirazi warned that Sarah Palin, McCain’s running mate, was from the same warmongering mould as Dick Cheney, Bush’s vice-president, “who happens to be a quail hunter.”
“Can you imagine what would happen if Palin, a moose hunter, reached the White House? It would be the same thing.
“What did Palin do when she visited Kuwait on her only trip to the Middle East? She practiced shooting,” Mr. al-Mirazi said in reference to a visit by Palin to US troops stationed there.
“A McCain-Palin victory would do to this fragile relationship what Lehman Brothers did to the markets.”
Dr. Michael Signer, foreign policy adviser to Democratic Senator John Edwards’ presidential campaign in 2007-2008 and a foreign policy expert, also attacked the motion and the dangers a McCain victory would present.
Describing Barak Obama, the Democrat nominee, as “thoughtful and deliberate”, he said such qualities were of paramount importance during the present troubled times.
“It is time we had a president who thinks before he acts rather than acts before he thinks.”
He said Senator Obama was an African-American who spent his formative years in Indonesia, a Muslim nation, and would be a president “who wants to understand and listen, rather than just talk.”
Danielle Pletka, Vice President for Foreign and Defence Policy Studies at the American Institute for Public Policy Research, supported the motion, suggesting that Senator McCain was the only Presidential candidate who would not “walk away” from Iraq, leaving the region to return to sectarian violence.
She said Obama was constantly changing his opinions and had even offered to negotiate “unconditionally” with Iran.
Dr. Saad al-Ajmi, former Kuwaiti Minister for Information and Culture, said he supported the motion largely because he feared that Senator Obama would pull US troops out of I aq prematurely “before they had cleared up the mess they created.”
