Uncategorized | 1:30 pm | February 3, 2011 | By David Burt

Law professor says Obama needs a doctrine

Just as President George W. Bush ’68 developed the “Bush Doctrine” in the wake of the attacks on 9/11, the protests in the Middle East call for President Barack Obama to create a doctrine of his own, Law School Professor Stephen Carter LAW ’79 argued in The Daily Beast.

“We need more than ever a clear Obama Doctrine that offers guidance to people who, yearning for liberty, might want to know before they go into the streets whether the United States will be on their side,” he wrote.

He said although Bush and Obama have believed that democracy can succeed in the Arab nations, their advisers have expressed doubt. But that may soon change:

Both were subjected to lectures from experts who insisted that somehow even to speak about democracy and freedom in the Arab lands was to show oneself to be a hopeless romantic, insufficiently hardheaded, out of touch with reality. As of today, that essentially racist assumption is dead.

Carter said the desire for greater liberties is spreading quickly to other countries in the region, a phenomenon that will accelerate if Mubarak is ousted. It is in the United States’ best interest to facilitate a movement towards freer democracies, he said.

Carter has taught at the Law School since 1982.

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