Oh my: Op-ed in London pan-Arabic daily calls Obama 'weakest American President evah'

Remember when President Hussein Obama was supposed to improve the way that the Arab-Muslim world viewed the United States? Well, that one isn't going too well.... The Arab-Muslim world is now calling Obama the 'weakest American President evah.' And they're right. This is from a MEMRI translation of an op-ed in Tuesday's edition of the London pan-Arabic daily al-Sharq al-Awswat.

Al-Zaydi wrote that Obama's handling of the Syrian crisis had proven his failure as president, showing him as completely lacking in leadership ability, hesitant and diffident, and overall the weakest president in the history of the United States. He added that it is because of these failings that Obama allowed the crisis in Syria to escalate to the current situation, and that it is he who "caused the wound to become deeper and the bloodshed to continue." He also stated that Obama's hesitant and failed leadership in the Middle East, and especially in Syria, had laid the groundwork for the development of extremism and sectarian violence greater than those of Al-Qaeda.

This column by Al-Zaydi joins a series of recent articles in the Saudi press that attacked America's policy on Syria following the American-Russian agreement to hold an international conference at which a political solution to the Syrian crisis will be sought....Baina Al-Mulhim, a columnist for the government daily Al-Riyadh, asked whether the U.S. had "sold out the Syrian revolution," and wrote: "The crisis of the Syrian revolution changed with the appointment of [John] Kerry as U.S. secretary of state. Kerry is known as a friend of Bashar Al-Assad… and now he is traveling around the world trying to save Assad's regime and to eliminate the so-called 'Al-Qaeda in Syria'…"[2] Tariq Alhomayed, the former editor of Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, wrote that Obama's hesitancy was increasing the bloodshed and the extremism and allowing Russia to play a role in the region.[3] 

The following are translated excerpts from Al-Zaydi's column: [4]   

"The problem of U.S. President Barack Obama can be summed up in a single word: hesitation. The man is short-sighted, confused and diffident. It seems that the gist of his policy is disagreeing with every position of his predecessor, George W. Bush, and that is quarrelsomeness, not policy.

"This assessment of Obama's policy is not voiced only by his Republican rivals in the U.S., or by those who hate some [aspects] of his global [foreign] policy, but also by some proponents of his own school of thought, like the well-known American author David Ignatius, who recently wrote a critique of the Obama administration's policy that was not confined to foreign [policy] affairs... Summarizing the problematic aspects of  Obama's conduct, he said that the public is more afraid of a weak administration than a strong one!

"We are not talking [only] about harsh critics of this administration, inside or outside the U.S. This is apparent from a recent article by Lebanese-American writer Fuad 'Ajami, who slammed Obama for his feebleness, his lack of leadership, and his inability to take bold decisions under difficult circumstances, especially when it comes to his position on the Syrian catastrophe. Nor is it only Republicans who attack [Obama]. [Criticism is also voiced] by people who were overjoyed by the arrival [in the White House] of a black Harvard graduate with African and Islamic roots, the son of Hussein Obama. [They expected him] to have a better understanding of the Islamic and Arab societies and their nature. But eventually, as the helplessness of the international community  [to address the situation] in Syria increased due to the [conduct of] the U.S. and Obama, it became apparent that this man is unable to lead and that he hides his failure and ignorance behind a lot of hypothetical talk about red, green and purple lines..."

Read the whole thing.