Bush and the Arab World

I posted the following on the Conservative Life Fourm -talk about extremists. It was in response to this article posted on the Fourm. The article basically talked about how some people in Damascus would be happy to vote for Bush and this really surprised the conservatives.
My Response:

For me this isn't too much of a surprise as I lived in Saudi Arabia during the 2000 elections. My school had no Saudis in it but it was about 30% muslim and about half of them were arabs from Eygpt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and some Palestinians. It would have be hard to find a Gore supporter among the Muslims. Muslims in general and Arabs in particular are very conservative and certainly on the Republican side when it comes to abortion, gay marriage, death penalty, drug and gun issues. Also they were impressed by Bush's stated foriegn policy where he gave a traditional conservative stance in saying America does not do nation building. They saw Clinton as being soft on Israel by letting Barak slip out of a peace accord. They saw the fact that Gore had a Jewish vice president as
disturbing. Bush was seen in Arab eyes as being more pro Palestinian then his
Democratic foes. I told them it wouldn't matter as any American president would follow the much same in policy in that area but I was wrong. Bush turned out to be more pro-Israel then his father or Reagan. So it is in foriegn policy where muslims differ in their beliefs. Most of the Arabs in Congress are Republicans notably former Sen. Spencer Abraham. But in these elections a huge majority of Muslim and Arabs voted for Kerry. Where in 2000 only a scant 8% of Arabs voted for Gore and 20% going to perhaps the most famous Arab American Ralph Nader and the other 72% going to Bush. If Bush had maintained the containment policy to Iraq and adopted a neutral or even continued Clinton's position towards Israel the Middle East would be solidly Bush to this day. About ferrathouse's remark with Iran being the first arab nation to tranform itself: first Iran is certainly not Arab which most likly explains why it is already the first country in the Middle East to transform itself. In 1979 the Irani people overthrew the brutal American backed dictatorship of the Shah. For better or for worse the Islamic fundamentalists beat the Communists in the struggle for power. So they got sidetracked into a Islamic pseudo-democracy which comes close to the Shah's brutality but it is only a matter of time before the reformers prevail. The only other violent attempted revolution that I can think of of the top of my head was when Islamic fundamentalists took over the third largest city in Syria but of course it was sealed off and overwheming air power and artillery destroyed the city while hardened baathist army soldiers retook the city street by street. Quite an interesting parallel to Fallujah. In conclusion most in the Islamic world greatly admires American freedom and conservative nature of the current adminstration but are opposed to American Middle Eastern policy and the large amount of American money that goes into the dictatorships that are oppressing them.

My polling might be a little sketchy but if anything the high students will proboly be more liberal then their parents. So I think Bush defintly 'shat the bed' on Middle Eastern policy. But hell this election even the Iranians still endorsed him.