In his first formal interview as president, Barack Obama told Al-Arabiya, “[T]he same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there’s no reason why we can’t restore that.” Does he mean partnership as in
- the 1979-1981 Iran hostage crisis?
- the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War?
- the 1975-1990 civil war in Lebanon?
- or the 1978-1989 Soviet war in Afghanistan?
Surely he couldn’t mean that Ronald Reagan had more respect for the Muslim world than Bill Clinton did. Or was we just not sure when the Persian Gulf War started (1991)?
