Obama Wants Middle East Summit

PARIS (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama told a French magazine in an interview that if he wins office, he will hold a summit with Muslim countries to better the United States' image in the world.

"Once I'm elected, I want to organize a summit in the Muslim world, with all the heads of state, to have an honest discussion about ways to bridge the gap that grows every day between Muslims and the West," Thursday's edition of Paris Match quoted Obama as saying,

"I want to ask them to join our fight against terrorism. We must also listen to their concerns," Obama said in the French-language transcript.

I love it. He wants to "ask them to join our fight against terrorism." Who is he going to ask? Will the Taliban join our fight against Terrorism? Pakistan has already "joined" our fight. Iran is going to fight terrorists? Saudi Arabia? What this shows is Obama's naive view of the world and world politics.

As Abe Greenwald writes:

Is he planning on doing this before or after bombing Pakistan? Because that could have an effect on that gap he’s talking about. And in what phase of their nuclear program will Iran be when Obama has this sit-down with the mullahs? And will he require Tehran to rebuild the cobwebbed American embassy first or is he through with international law altogether? And when it’s the Iraqi prime minister’s turn to speak, what will Obama do when he requests the return of the 100,000 troops he just withdrew from that country?

Obama represents a foreign policy disaster of untold proportion. With a doctrine of pre-emptive appeasement and the perfect advisory team to institute it, every gain made by the Bush administration would evaporate. The greatest overarching accomplishment of the past five years was implementing the imperative that we will not deal with hostile nations on their terms. In many Muslim countries, the “gap” Obama talks about is not a side-effect of cultural differences, but the stated goal of anti-American policies. The only course of action is to support Muslim moderates in their efforts against extremists and secular tyrants. Our president doesn’t need to sip tea with Bashar Assad or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and hear about the evils of Israel in order to work towards that goal.