Changing the Narrative in the Middle East

Former Clinton NSC officials Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon take to the pages of the New Republic to argue that John McCain doesn't understand the threat America faces from Islamic terrorism.

Deriding McCain's insistence that U.S. troops in the region do not inflame the jihadists, they write:

Above all, it ignores the motivational power of the jihadist "story"--the contention, made by Osama bin Laden and others, that the United States is a predatory power which seeks to occupy Muslim countries, destroy Islam, and steal the Middle East's oil wealth. Undermining that narrative, most counterterrorism analysts believe, must be a central part of the strategy against radical Islamism. Yet McCain's insistence that the U.S. military stay in Iraq for the long term does just the opposite.

Here's the thing, if you agree with that, what's Obama offering? To dismantle Central Command? To shutter our bases in Qatar and Kuwait? To severe our cooperation with the Saudis or Jordanians? To withdraw our protection of Israel? To renounce our interest in Middle East stability and the free flow of oil from the region?

What, exactly, is Obama's plan to "change the narrative?"

The article leads us inferentially to believe that Obama is superior because he would get American forces out of Iraq quicker than McCain. But by the author's own standards that move is obviously insufficient if the goal is to fundamentally change the "narrative" of U.S. involvement in the Middle East.

In fact, I suspect that under either a President McCain or a President Obama, U.S. military involvement in the region will only deepen as Iran progresses toward a nuclear bomb. Under the aegis of containment, American support for the Sunni autocrats so reviled by al Qaeda will only deepen. The underlying political dynamic - the narrative, if you will - that sustains Islamic radicalism isn't going to be altered, especially by Obama, who, one assumes, prefers containment to bombardment.