Skip to content
  • Image
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Youtube
  • Podcasts
  • Email
  • Contact
  • Home
  • Opinion
  • News
  • Features
  • Comment
  • Store
The Arab Daily News

The Arab Daily News

Original news, features, opinions from Chicago to Jerusalem

  • About
    • About
    • Our Writers
    • Subscribe to Ray’s Columns
    • Book Store
    • Contact
    • Submit Book Reviews, Press Releases
    • Advertise
    • Privacy Corrections Policy
    • Profile on Ray Hanania
    • Submit Press Release
  • Features
    • Food
    • Book Review
    • Humor
    • Movies
    • Travel
  • Arab Stores Targeted
  • Arab Community Network Page
    • Arab Community Network Page
    • Arab Heritage America resources
    • Directory
      • Groups & Organizations
      • Mosques, Churches
      • Restaurants
      • 2008 & 2014 Arab Media Directories
    • National Arab Heritage Month
    • Video: Chicago Arab History
    • Video: Photo Array of Chicago Arabs
    • Overview of Arabs in America
    • Hanania standup comedy
    • Arabs on the Titanic
    • Obituaries
  • Podcasts
    • Arab News Ray Hanania Radio
    • Ray Hanania on Politics Podcast
    • Podcast Info
    • Hanania Podcast intro
    • Live Arab Radio
  • Your Views
  • Hanania on Tiktok
  • Toggle search form
  • Arab Democratic Club Feb 12, 2023 Forum & Brunch flier
    Arab Democrats host forum for Chicago and suburban candidates Feb. 12 American Arabs
  • The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) announced Dr. Manal Fakhoury has been elected to the position of Chair of the National Board of Directors, and that attorneys Spojmie Nasiri of California and John Floyd of Texas have joined the organization’s National Board.
    CAIR Announces Dr. Manal Fakhoury as New Board Chair, New Board Members Spojmie Nasiri and John Floyd American Arabs
  • AHRC Executive Director Imad Hamad
    AHRC: Honor Dr. King Day with Civility, Unity, and Action American Arabs
  • Citgo Gas Station and Quik Mart at 3759 W. Chicago Ave in Chicago ordered closed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot because a street gang member with an AK-47 killed someone in front of the store. Only Arab and Muslim stores are being closed by the Mayor
    When Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot targeted Arab businesses in 2021 and 2022 Activism
  • Hussam al-Mayman, The Mayman Show, podcast Arab News
    Arab News launches third season of The Mayman Show podcast Arab News
  • State Rep. Cyril Nichols interviewed on live Arab American radio in Detroit with host Ray Hanania Friday Dec. 9, 2022
    Nichols discusses need to improve Arab-Black relations in Chicagoland American Arabs
  • Voting sticker issued to voters in Cook County elections in 2016. Photo courtesy of Ray Hanania
    Gov. Pritzker Announces Six Appointments to Boards and Commissions — no Arabs included American Arabs
  • Closure notice posted on the doors and windows of Arab American businesses during Mayor Lori Lightfoot's closure of Arab owned stores in June - Sept. 2021. Photo courtesy of Ray Hanania
    Pritzker again ignores needs of Arab businesses in latest appointments Activism
  • Arab American Democratic Club (AADC) official candidate endorsements for the November 8, 2022 General elections.
    Arab American Democratic Club issues endorsements for Nov. 8, 2022 Cook County Illinois elections Activism
  • Arab Democrats urge NO VOTE on Gov. J.B. Pritzker re-election bid Activism
  • Assyrian American GOP issues endorsements in Nov, 8, 2022 elections
    Assyrian American GOP group endorses candidates in Illinois Activism
  • Abdullah Hammoud, elected Mayor of Dearborn Nov. 2, 2021. Photo courtesy of Abdullah Hammoud Facebook Page
    AHRC’s 2022 Spirit of Humanity Gala a Great Success American Arabs
  • Interlink 2022 Cookbooks Make the Best Holiday Gifts
    Interlink 2022 Cookbooks Make the Best Holiday Gifts Arab World
  • Rep. Cyril Nichols to be feted by supporters at fundraiser Saturday Oct. 22 Activism
  • Stand up For Human Rights website, United Nations
    UN experts condemn Israel’s ‘sadistic’ punitive measures against French-Palestinian rights defender Salah Hammouri Activism
President Barack Obama meets with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in the State Dining Room of the White House, March 1, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

President Trump’s Audacity for Action

Posted on December 7, 2017December 7, 2017 By Abdennour Toumi No Comments on President Trump’s Audacity for Action
SHARE ...
          
 
  

  • Tweet

President Trump’s Audacity for Action

President Trump’s decision killed the two-state solution and the MENA doctrine (Realpolitik) of the former Presidents H.W Bush and Bill Clinton.

By Abdennour Toumi

Eight years ago the political pundits and the rejectionist politicians made the story of then-President Obama’s first year in the White House sound like American voters hired a one-year President. The comments had been going unfairly out of context. 

Though he ran a campaign that inspired millions to join his caravan for “change” and hope, some of his followers wouldn’t dare admit he was a politician because they were seeing him as an acolyte of the Dalai Lama, if not more.

Recall during the heated campaign season 2007-2008 during the primaries in New Hampshire, how Senator Clinton, his then-challenger for the post, contemptuously ridiculed his followers, saying, “the skies will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect…”

Guess what, recent American voters elected a businessman, an unconventional politician who knows the world is complicated and far from perfect; on the contrary, what his opponents in the U.S. and abroad think, he is an ignorant player — he masters the art of politics without reading The Prince, nor the Art of War. 

English: President Barack Obama meets with the...
President Barack Obama meets with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in the State Dining Room of the White House, March 1, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Hence, President Trump promised to change Washington, D.C. (“drain the swamp”) and bring the power to the people; nonetheless, elections are the means and not the end, but in President Trump’s world, elections are the end.

One tends to forget that President Trump was elected as the anti-thesis to the liberals, the Clintons and the Obamas alike. The country was politically divided and America is not just New York City and San Francisco.  President Trump told America and the world that he would turn the page of the Obama administration policies. He tried to repeal Obama care and build a beautiful wall on the U.S.-Mexican border; on the Middle East front, he boldly acted and decided to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem.

Yet his Middle East foreign policy is a giant-step diplomacy; he dismantled ISO from Iraq and Syria, but brought it to Sinai. He destabilized the Gulf countries, lost the trust of Ankara, and now the world leaders are nervous about his Iran nuclear deal, the P5+1.

The speed rate in the process of President Trump’s actions has created an emotional reaction to his audacity in the camp of his haters in the U.S. and in the world, notably in the Middle East.

However, in the eyes of the Muslim and Arab worlds, he looks like President G.W. Bush with a sharp baton in his right hand. President Trump has promised to relaunch the tiring peace process, but in the wake of his last night’s decision, there is neither process nor progress. He just killed the ambulance driver and then bombed the ER of the hospital. 

He is not mentioning the infamous phrase of “War on Terror,” which former President Obama changed to “Overseas Contingency Operation.”  Nevertheless, in the light of the attempt to combat terror, President Trump has been issuing profiling rules on travelers from Muslim and Arab countries.

“Change” in politics is a rhetorical electoral slogan. Former President Obama is an excellent orator and storyteller. Theoretically he deceived in particular the left wing of the Democratic party and the idealists abroad alike. Many people, including the Nobel Prize Committee, had a sort of idea fixe, an obsession, about the charisma that he generated during the campaign, which let them dream that change would come.

Coincidently President Trump has commenced his first year with the Republican leaders in the House and Senate feeling stronger about their “no” attitude; the passive Democratic senators and congressmen are in a panic mode in light of Senator Al Franken’s and Congressman John Conyer’s sexual misconduct allegations. President  Trump’s first year in office hasn’t disappointed his evangelical base who believe in God-given rights, and has certainly pleased his donors and strong Jewish lobbies in D.C.

From the core of the political scenario all the promises that have been implemented are also wagging the dog, diverting attention from the General Flynn scandals that could prove to be President Trump’s “Russia Gate.”

If Senator (then candidate) Obama believed Jerusalem was the undivided capital of Israel in his speech before the AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee), a bi-partisan orthodox Jewish lobby in Washington, D.C., then President Trump’s turning-point decision in the role of the U.S. in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is what every U.S. President believed, but did not dare act upon.

President Trump’s decision killed the two-state solution and the MENA doctrine (Realpolitik) of the former Presidents H.W Bush and Bill Clinton.

President Trump’s bully MENA foreign policy is idealistically tackling the complex subject from the angle of local politics with electoral votes at stake, ignoring that the policy’s evolution has to be subjected to the political culture of his public policy trajectory and not the establishment and the think-tanks in Washington, D.C. toward Middle Eastern dynamics. Why? because President Trump thinks tank first.

Once again, the dichotomy of domestic-foreign policies is used as a tactical instrument to direct the foreign policy of leaders in the current turbulent period. President Trump is already thinking ahead to the 2020 re-election; for that he will need the Jewish vote in the swing States, this time in blue States and the evangelists in the south.

The failure of the U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East under former Bush President and Barrack Obama led to multiple factors challenging the U.S. foreign policy. New supranational actors emerged as a serious threat to the conventional states. For instance, ISO and its franchise in the Maghreb and Europe have provoked an academic rejection in the political scientists’ milieu of the classic definition of the inter-States system, the Westphalian order.

On the other hand, the return of geo-politics in the region post-Arab Spring has found a legitimate approach following the emergence of conflicts there.  President Trump’s Middle East (Riyalpolitik) doctrine seems to be taking those challenges and dealing with them separately — whether facing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict or Syria, Libya, Yemen, the Gulf monarchies crisis and eventually Iran. How will the U.S. handle this?

  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Abdennour Toumi
Follow me:
Abdennour Toumi
Abdennour Toumi:
- France correspondent for The Arab Daily News.
- www.bareed-areej.com Editor-in-Chief
رئيس تحرير مجلة بريد الأريج
- Political consultant at IMPR a Think-Tank based in Ankara, Turkey.
- Member at the European Observatory for Arabic Language Teaching based in Paris, France.
- Affiliated with Sociology of Islam Journal and contributor at Middle East Studies / International Studies, Sociology of Islam and Muslim Societies Center, Portland State University in Portland, OR.

EDUCATION: Diplôme des Études Approfondies (DEA) in Political Science from Toulouse University I, France. Master’s degree in Law from Algiers University, Algeria.

Email im at: nourhty@gmail.com
Abdennour Toumi
Follow me:
Latest posts by Abdennour Toumi (see all)
  • The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Is the Neither-Peace-nor-Security As-sumption Dominating Again? - June 7, 2021
  • Algeria: “I Can See Clearly Now” - August 5, 2019
  • Majesty Mohammed VI and General Gaïd Salah Tear Down This Wall! - July 29, 2019

  • Tweet

SHARE ...
          
 
  
 
          
 
 Tweet 
Abdennour Toumi, Arab World, Bloggers, Commentary, Israel, Opinion, Palestine & Jordan Tags:Barack Obama, Israel, Jerusalem, Middle East, Palestine, President Trump

Post navigation

Previous Post: President Trump is the catalyst the Arabs need to force them to act
Next Post: The inseparability of peace, security, development and human rights

Related Posts

  • Palos Township official apologizes to Arabs, Muslims Activism
  • Targeted Paris stadium symbolizes pitfalls of war against the Islamic State Arab World
  • Eid al Adha holiday to be observed on Sept. 11 Arab World
  • Israel struggles with racist underground Arab World
  • Tiktok.com/@RayHanania
    Israeli-push behind effort to ban Tiktok in the United States Activism
  • Love Story by USS Liberty Survivor of The Six-Day War Arab World

More Related Articles

UEFA Euro 2016: Fraternity, Unity and Diversity Abdennour Toumi
Gaza students call for speedier repair and rebuilding of schools Arab World
Mordechai Vanunu Could Be Free for Christmas American Arabs
Mansour Tadros, publisher of Chicagoland's The Future News Newspaper, and Christopher Kennedy, the son of the late U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, speaks at a governor's candidates forum Sept. 16, 2017 at Reza's restaurant in Oak Brook hosted by the American Muslim Task Force. Photo courtesy of Ray Hanania Arab American empowerment continues to grow American Arabs
420: Trump’s Inaugural and the Israeli Connection American Arabs
World sees Israel’s brutality in Occupied Palestine Arab World

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

  • OPINION COLUMNS
  • Tiktok.com/@RayHanania
    Israeli-push behind effort to ban Tiktok in the United States
    January 19, 2023
  • Ghassan Rubeiz
    To what extent is Hezbollah responsible for the current crisis in Lebanon?
    January 17, 2023
  • Image from Rashid-al-Din Hamadani's "A Compendium of Chronicles. Image courtesy of Wikipedia
    Why allow religious extremists to re-define Islam in the West?
    January 10, 2023
  • CAIR Executive Director and co-founder Nihad Awad
    This Thanksgiving, let’s use our Blessings for good
    November 23, 2022
  • NEWS
  • Arab Democratic Club Feb 12, 2023 Forum & Brunch flier
    Arab Democrats host forum for Chicago and suburban candidates Feb. 12
    January 18, 2023
  • The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) announced Dr. Manal Fakhoury has been elected to the position of Chair of the National Board of Directors, and that attorneys Spojmie Nasiri of California and John Floyd of Texas have joined the organization’s National Board.
    CAIR Announces Dr. Manal Fakhoury as New Board Chair, New Board Members Spojmie Nasiri and John Floyd
    January 12, 2023
  • AHRC Executive Director Imad Hamad
    AHRC: Honor Dr. King Day with Civility, Unity, and Action
    January 11, 2023
  • Citgo Gas Station and Quik Mart at 3759 W. Chicago Ave in Chicago ordered closed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot because a street gang member with an AK-47 killed someone in front of the store. Only Arab and Muslim stores are being closed by the Mayor
    When Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot targeted Arab businesses in 2021 and 2022
    January 4, 2023
  • NEWSWIRE
  • Arab Democratic Club Feb 12, 2023 Forum & Brunch flier
    Arab Democrats host forum for Chicago and suburban candidates Feb. 12
    January 18, 2023
  • The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) announced Dr. Manal Fakhoury has been elected to the position of Chair of the National Board of Directors, and that attorneys Spojmie Nasiri of California and John Floyd of Texas have joined the organization’s National Board.
    CAIR Announces Dr. Manal Fakhoury as New Board Chair, New Board Members Spojmie Nasiri and John Floyd
    January 12, 2023
  • AHRC Executive Director Imad Hamad
    AHRC: Honor Dr. King Day with Civility, Unity, and Action
    January 11, 2023
  • Stand up For Human Rights website, United Nations
    UN experts condemn Israel’s ‘sadistic’ punitive measures against French-Palestinian rights defender Salah Hammouri
    October 19, 2022

Creative Commons License
All work on this website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Do not edit original work. Give credit to the original source.

  • 08-09-21-Ziyad-Ad-Pantry-essentials.jpg
  • ZiyadBrandLogo-2016BlackRedBackgrnd.jpg
  • 08-09-21-Ziyad-Sices-Ad.jpg
  • BOOK REVIEWS
  • Interlink 2022 Cookbooks Make the Best Holiday Gifts
    Interlink 2022 Cookbooks Make the Best Holiday Gifts
    October 24, 2022
  • Stories My Father Told Me by author and artist Helen Zughaib, book cover. Photo courtesy of Cune Press
    Stories My Father Told Me by author and artist Helen Zughaib
    November 1, 2021
  • ENTERTAINMENT
  • Hussam al-Mayman, The Mayman Show, podcast Arab News
    Arab News launches third season of The Mayman Show podcast
    December 15, 2022
  • Interlink 2022 Cookbooks Make the Best Holiday Gifts
    Interlink 2022 Cookbooks Make the Best Holiday Gifts
    October 24, 2022
  • Comedian Ramy Youssef courtesy of his Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/ramysfaceboo/
    “Ramy” cable series melds Arab world reality with every day American life
    October 22, 2022
  • The Ray Hanania Radio Show Live Wed 5 PM EST in Detroit, Washington DC, Ontario and on Thursday in Chicago. Watch the program live at Facebook.com/ArabNews
    Second Season of “The Ray Hanania Show” Arab American radio launches April 6
    April 4, 2022
  • American Arab CHamber President HassanNijem accepts the Proclamation from Chicago Ald. Roderick Sawyer at the Chamber dinner March 30, 2022
    Chicagoland celebrates Arab American Heritage Month
    March 31, 2022
  • New-iTunes-1400-x-1400-The-Ray-Hanania-Show-Podcast-Icon-300-x-300.jpg
  • The-Kings-Pawn-Book-300-x-300.png
  • Podcast-iTunes-Logo-Chi-City-Hall-1985.jpg
  • powerpr300x300ad.jpg
  • terroristbookcover-300-x-300.jpg
Arab News Newspaper Logo
Read the Arab News, the leading English language newspaper in the MIddle East

Follow Ray Hanania at Gab.com, MeWe.com and IDobbinate.com, the alternatives to Facebook and Twitter Censorship.

Click here to get information on The Ray Hanania Radio Show and its podcasts

Copyright © 2023 The Arab Daily News.

Powered by PressBook Premium theme