US Candidates Under Scrutiny

The official Syrian media focused this weeks on the changes that a new United States president could bring.



Issam Dari, editor-in-chief of the official newspaper Tishreen, warned in a July 26 editorial that anyone who believes Democratic hopeful Barack Obama is a saviour and the Republican John McCain is a disaster are mistaken.



He claimed that any new president must have “the blessing of the Zionist lobby and Jerusalem”. Obama has pledged to support Israel, but has totally ignored the concerns of Palestinians, Dari argued.



His conclusion was that Arabs should not place any faith in either candidate.



"The only bet should be on the unity of the Arabs,” he wrote. “Otherwise, there will be a thousand [George] Bushes waiting for them in the future, and Arab security and rights will remain a lost cause."



In a slightly different point of view, Asad Abbud, editor-in-chief of the official newspaper Al-Thawra, penned an op-ed on July 28 praising Americans for having a black person as a presidential candidate, given their country’s past history of racism.



He argued that former Secretary of State Colin Powell and his successor Condoleezza Rice – both of whom are African-American – “were perhaps closer to being objective than the rest of the members of the [Bush] administration”.



But he added that such factors would not make much of a difference to the formation of US foreign policy, which he believed would remain largely unchanged.



Abbud referred to the international optimism about Obama, noting that he drew large crowds in Germany last week.



Europe is “clearly welcoming the probability that Obama will come to the White House,” he wrote.