Home pagePress CenterIn the Media Anthony Cordesman, the CSIS Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy, and Jon Alterman, director of the CSIS Middle East Program, were quoted by the Washington Times, "Bush Bound for Mideast."
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Anthony Cordesman, the CSIS Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy, and Jon Alterman, director of the CSIS Middle East Program, were quoted by the Washington Times, "Bush Bound for Mideast."
President Bush will cover thousands of miles but find it hard to break any new ground as he embarks tomorrow on the longest Middle East tour of his presidency.
While Mr. Bush and his advisers once talked of the "birth pangs" of a new, democratic, pro-Western Middle East in the heady days after the 2003 ouster of Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Lebanon's 2005 "Cedar Revolution," the White House is determinedly talking down expectations for the trip.
But Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said most Middle East leaders see the terrorism problem much differently.
"Their attitude is, this is a religious issue, it is an ideological issue. It is a matter of dealing with their own young men and finding ways to bring them back into society. It is not a focus on Iraq," he said.
While such a trip would be a high-risk security move, Jon B. Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at CSIS, said it was "hard to imagine that the president will be so close and not seek to do something that will strengthen the hand of Prime Minister Siniora and his allies." Read the article
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