Believer: My Forty Years in Politics (54 page)

That night, at a warm and intimate Nobel dinner, I was seated next to Gro Brundtland, a physician and public health crusader who, in 1981, became the first woman to serve as Norway’s prime minister. Brundtland was a warm and witty dinner companion who shared the lessons she had learned through three stints at Norway’s helm. “If you’re going to lead, you have to make decisions, some of them hard, and you can’t look back,” she said. “And you have to make them with the long term in mind. If you’re just worrying about the politics of the moment, you’ll never get much done.” Glancing at Obama, she added, “He seems to understand that.”

He certainly did. Few of the decisions he had made would satisfy the politics of the moment. But at home and abroad, Obama was playing a longer game.

T
HE
ENTIRE
WORLD
STOOD
with
A
merica after the 9/11 attacks, but the war in
I
raq and the bellicose, go-it-alone
B
ush-
C
heney foreign policy had squandered much of that goodwill, straining our relationships even with long-standing allies.

That’s why, as powerful as the scenes were in Grant Park and across America the night Obama was elected, I was moved to tears as I watched the footage of the joyous, spontaneous celebrations that broke out in other countries. As Obama predicted back in 2006 when we discussed whether he should run, it would speak volumes to the world if a relatively young African American, who came from little, could be elected president of the United States. His election also spawned the hope that a president whose father was from Africa and who had spent part of his childhood in Indonesia would have a richer sense of the world and its interconnectedness. So while he worked to shore up the economy and end two wars, Obama was also focused on mending old partnerships and building new ones to address common problems, from terrorism to nuclear proliferation to climate change. To that end, he would visit twenty-five countries on four continents during the two years I was there.

Some of the early trips were consumed by the economic crisis—G20 and G8 meetings, at which Obama argued for coordinated action among the world’s leading economies to stem what had become a global recession. Others were NATO meetings, where he shared his strategy for winding down the war in Iraq and refocusing the war in Afghanistan. Everywhere he went, he lobbied relentlessly, leader to leader, for America and its allies to coordinate punitive economic sanctions in order to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions—sanctions that ultimately gave us the leverage to force Iran to the negotiating table.

One of the extraordinary benefits of my job was a ringside seat on many of these journeys. I watched a president eager to change the equation on the world’s knottiest problems only to confront obstacles, such as age-old tribalism and parochial politics every bit as intractable as those he faced at home.

 • • • 

The fifty-kilometer stretch of road from Riyadh to Jenadriyah was how I had always pictured Saudi Arabia, parched and brown, a difficult climate in which to make things grow—that is, until we arrived at the sprawling horse farm of Abdullah ibn Abdilaziz, the king of Saudi Arabia. As we approached, the terrain suddenly changed from brown to green, the result of the elaborate irrigation system used to keep grass growing for the enjoyment of his majesty, his guests, and, perhaps most important, his thoroughbred treasures. Abdullah, then eighty-four, was the country’s sixth king since his father founded the modern Saudi Arabia, a country beneath which sits nearly one-fifth of the world’s oil. That bounty, coupled with the monarchy’s shrewd, iron-fisted rule had made the House of Saud a regional and global power.

So many of the world’s troubles emanated from this region. Osama bin Laden was a Saudi national, as were fifteen of the nineteen hijackers who struck America that September day in the name of Islam. The president’s mission on this journey was to reach out to the mainstream Islamic world, and in doing so, to isolate the extremists. So it made sense to begin in Saudi Arabia, home of Mecca, birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad. On this journey, Obama also hoped to breathe life into the stalled efforts to forge peace between Israel and the Palestinians, a conflict that had defied the entreaties of generations of American presidents and was a continuing source of tension in the region.

We were greeted with a welcoming luncheon for U.S. and Saudi officials dining in what the Saudi royals told us was a “tent.” That would be like Americans calling the Grand Canyon the “Little Hole in the Ground.” We weren’t exactly squatting under canvas or eating food cooked at a campfire. The “tent” was, in the parlance of less exalted worlds, a huge and elegant banquet hall. The president chatted amiably with the king at the head of a long square table. I was seated next to one of the king’s many sons. Like most of the men in the family, he had significant governmental responsibilities.

“I liked President Bush,” the son said, speaking of Obama’s predecessor. “He was a good man. We would smoke cigars together. But my father told him on Saddam Hussein, ‘He can be the ring on the American finger.’ But President Bush said, ‘He’s a liar. I don’t trust him.’ My father told him, ‘Don’t stay in Iraq for long. That will lead to trouble. And don’t dissolve the army. They will come back to attack you.’ But he didn’t listen.

“We have great hopes for this president,” my seatmate continued. “He is here in the first year in the Middle East! He speaks with understanding.”

It was more than just Obama’s words that convinced him of that. Though Obama was a Christian, his ethnicity and his familiarity with Islam, while a source of dark, disgraceful inferences for our political opponents back home, was, for these people, a sign of hope. As we were leaving a brief ceremonial meeting with the king following lunch, the president spotted Abdullah’s chief of staff holding his son, an adorable, dark-skinned child with kinky, flowing hair. “I used to have a haircut just like yours,” Obama told the wide-eyed little boy, delighting his father and everyone within earshot.

There was power in such gestures, gentle signs that this was a new era and a different kind of American president. Still, as he would quickly learn, the intractable realities of the Middle East, defined by ancient rivalries between Sunni and Shia, Arab and Jew, would not yield easily to his charm, gestures, or persistence. The president met with Abdullah for three hours, leaving without the sought-after commitment for a renewed peace initiative between Israel and the Palestinians. Even kings have to be mindful of domestic politics.

After all the meals and meetings ended that evening, guests were escorted to elegant cottages, where large gift-wrapped packages awaited us on our beds. We might not be leaving the Middle East with peace, but the king didn’t want us to go home empty-handed. I ripped open the wrapping on mine to find a green alligator-skin briefcase stuffed with an assortment of jewels, necklaces, earrings, and watches. They had to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and would have had me all set for birthdays, anniversaries, and even Valentine’s Days for several lifetimes. It was considered bad form to refuse such gifts, but the next morning, the State Department protocol police scooped up the jewel-filled attaché cases to be inventoried and stored back home. “Aww, can’t we keep a
few
?” Valerie joked with a smile as she surrendered her loot.

The centerpiece of the trip was scheduled for the next day, in Cairo, where Obama would deliver a much-anticipated speech directed at the Islamic world. Determined to start a new dialogue and to repair the rift created by the war in Iraq, Obama had contemplated such an address from almost the moment he took office. He and Ben Rhodes had traded multiple drafts, and the president had spent much of the thirteen-hour overnight flight from Washington to Riyadh honing his words. Before delivering it, though, he would visit another of the region’s longtime rulers, Hosni Mubarak.

Obama was a college student when the former military commander became president of Egypt in 1981, following the assassination of Anwar el-Sadat. Mubarak had maintained tight control of his country ever since, while mostly upholding Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel, and maintaining a vital alliance with America.

While Obama was meeting privately with Mubarak, our delegation waited in a reception hall of Al Qubba Palace. The secretary of state was chatting up a tall young man. “That’s Mubarak’s son Gamal,” Hillary explained a few minutes later. “Everyone assumes that he’ll be taking over at some point.”

Soon we were ushered into a large bilateral meeting between the presidents and their respective delegations. Obama touched on a variety of issues, including the need to support a durable bulwark against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and to present a united front against Iran’s nuclear ambitions, an easy sell, given Egypt’s hostile relations with the Shia regime in Tehran. The president’s strongest appeal, though, was for a concerted push for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Mubarak, once an appealing, energetic leader, was now eighty-one and showing his age. Our visit was his first major event since the devastating loss, a few weeks earlier, of his twelve-year-old grandson. Whether it was grief or the burdens of almost three decades in power, Mubarak seemed weary and unfocused as he listened to Obama’s appeal to their shared interests. “Help us find progress in this peace process and we will reduce the influence of Iran in this part of the world,” Obama told him.

How many American presidents and their envoys have made similar appeals over the years? I wondered. The old man leaned closer and, in a gravelly voice, offered observations about the region he knew so well. It felt like a scene from
The Godfather
, an aging don sharing the weary wisdom accumulated over a lifetime of turf wars.

“Netanyahu says he would accept two states in the end,” Mubarak said of the Israeli prime minister. “‘We want to live in peace,’ he says. I told him that he has to be flexible. I told him, ‘
We
have peace, but the Palestinians don’t trust you. Do something big!’”

“We will work for this,” Mubarak told Obama. “But the Middle East is so complicated.”

After a symbolic visit to one of Cairo’s historic mosques, we made our way through empty streets to Cairo University. Cairo was a ghost town, shut down for Obama’s speech, which was broadcast live on state television and monitored closely throughout the Middle East. As I took a seat among the Egyptian dignitaries near the front of a gold-ceilinged reception hall, there was a palpable sense of anticipation. It would have been a major event if
any
American president had spoken there. That it was
this
president at this moment raised hopes that there might be greater understanding, possibly even genuine friendship someday, between America and the Islamic world.

When Obama punctuated his opening salutation with the traditional Muslim greeting,
Assalamu alaykum
—“Peace be upon you”—the Egyptians around me burst into smiles and applause.

“I’ve come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect . . . ,” he told them. “But I am convinced that in order to move forward, we must say openly to each other the things we hold in our hearts and that too often are said only behind closed doors.”

He then delivered on that pledge by acknowledging U.S. government actions that had inflamed the Islamic world: the war in Iraq, our use of torture as a tool of interrogation, and the open-ended detention, without trial, of some at Guantánamo Bay. He also pushed back against the defamation of America that had become the mantra of Islamic extremists.

“Now, much has been made of the fact that an African-American with the name Barack Hussein Obama could be elected president,” he said, a point that was lost on no one there. “But my personal story is not so unique. The dream of opportunity for all people has not come true for everyone in America, but its promise exists for all who come to our shores—and that includes nearly seven million American Muslims in our country today . . .”

The audience repeatedly interrupted Obama’s speech with enthusiastic applause. The clerics relished his every invocation of the words of the Koran. Veiled women in the audience heartily applauded the president’s plea for women’s rights, a sensitive issue in the Middle East. The audience warmly received the president’s call for a Palestinian state, and heartily cheered when he denounced Israel’s development of Jewish settlements in occupied territories as a barrier to peace. Yet the hall was conspicuously quiet when the president made a passionate case for Israel’s right to exist.

For the speech to be honest and credible, we felt it was essential both to stress our unbreakable bond with Israel
and
to include a statement condemning new Jewish settlements in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem. Opposition to new settlements had been U.S. policy for decades, but the president’s blunt restatement of that position in Cairo and his determined outreach to the Islamic community was seized upon by some critics to cast doubt on Obama’s commitment to Israel’s security and, ultimately, its survival. It was a canard, belied by the unprecedented military aid and unwavering support in international forums the president would give to Israel. And he viewed his persistent call for a resolution to the longstanding siege between the Israelis and Palestinians as a boon to both.

Obama also gave voice to the democratic aspirations of people across the Middle East, who had found inspiration in his election. “America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election,” he said only a few hours after we had sat down with the despotic Mubarak. “But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. These are not just American ideas; they are human rights. And that is why we will support them everywhere . . .”

Many of the Egyptian officials around me shifted uncomfortably as the president implicitly challenged their domestic politics, where opposition parties were marginalized or banned, the rule of law was administered at the discretion of the rulers, and speech was anything but free. Yet his remarks prompted a rousing response from the auditorium’s balcony, where the university’s students were seated. “Barack Obama, we love you!” one of them shouted.

Looking back, I am sure the student who shouted in approval was also in Tahrir Square two years later, when the Arab Spring swept Mubarak from power. Perhaps he was even the young man I saw on television proudly hoisting the handmade sign reading, “Yes We Can Too.” Yet that inspiring moment faded into the harsh reality that, as Obama noted presciently in Cairo, elections alone don’t ensure democracy. The democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood proceeded to subdue civil institutions, trample minority rights, and impose its theocratic agenda on the country, while Egypt’s problems continued to grow. Soon, a counterrevolution brought to power a new strongman in the Mubarak tradition, with whom America would necessarily have to deal. Across the region, the hopeful Arab Spring unleashed darker forces, as the impulse for democracy warred with ancient ethnic rivalries.