Obama vs. the Middle East?

Note: This is not my appeal post, just something I finished up

After a summer of eating my first meal of the day with "The Boston Globe" or "The Wall Street Journal" in hand, I've developed a brand new idiosyncrasy: whenever I sit down to eat, I get an overwhelming urge to read something political. This time, I picked up the most recent print of Newsweek, a magazine I'm a fan of. While there were quite a few interesting articles on the movie trailer that has sparked Islamic rage across the world, the article that caught my eye was entitled "Obama's Mideast Meltdown" by Niall Ferguson. In it, Mr. Ferguson describes how he believes Obama botched foreign relations with the Middle East. This article certainly stimulated thought for me, although I'm still trying to figure whether or not I agree. Mr. Ferguson, does however, write very persuasively and succinctly.
Mr. Ferguson's first starts with a flashback to Jimmy Carter, another Democrat in the White House while a violent Islamic revolution was occurring. He quotes speeches by both presidents, pointing out how similar they both are and then makes the claim that as Jimmy Carter's hopes for respect and tolerance were met with extremism, so have Obama's hopes for respect and tolerance. While I was still skeptical of the claim that foreign relations were as strained as they were in 1980, Mr. Ferguson's use of primary sources is pretty darn powerful.
After that, Mr. Ferguson began backing up his claim with statistics, mostly polls showing how many of the population dislike America. While the blatant and occasionally brutal use of these statistics is very effective, my skepticism was not quite allayed. For one, any poll coming out of an area as unstable as that is going to be pretty inaccurate. For two, I have a hard time blaming a president for a region's opinions on the entirety of America. For example, the movie trailer that has recently gone viral has caused massive outrage among Muslim countries, but there is simply no way for Obama to prevent that. This section really does work though, because simply put numbers are very effective.
While I don't feel that Mr. Ferguson managed to completely convince me, his article was certainly well written, as they usually are.