LA TIMES: President Obama will seek to define his administration’s stance toward the rapid changes in the Middle East and North Africa in a major address Thursday in which he will cast the U.S. as a facilitator rather than the instigator of political change in the Arab world.
As uprisings have swept through the region, Obama has been criticized from both the left and the right for taking too passive an approach. In Egypt, as demonstrators began demanding the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak, a longtime U.S. ally, the administration initially seemed to vacillate on its course, and ended up angering Mubarak’s supporters as well as his opponents…
One senior administration official said Obama wanted to prevent critics of the Arab democracy movement from being able to accuse the U.S. of meddling. He wants the U.S. to be in a position to offer support for expression of the popular will without “inserting the U.S. into the process.” … (more)
