'All Too Often the United States Starts By Dictating'

What's worse, giving your first interview as president to an Arab network or trashing your own country while doing so?

What a jerk.

President Barack Obama gave his first formal television interview as president to an Arabic cable TV network, telling Al-Arabiya that when it comes to Middle East matters "all too often the United States starts by dictating."

Obama taped the interview with the Dubai-based network Monday as his envoy to the Middle East, former Sen. George J. Mitchell, set out for an eight-day trip to the region and elsewhere.

"My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy," Obama said. "We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect."

The interview complemented the new administration's first efforts to reach out to Arab leaders in the region, who have been wary at best of U.S. efforts to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Obama said he felt it important to "get engaged right away" in the Mideast and had directed Mitchell to talk to "all the major parties involved." His administration would craft an approach after that, he said in the interview.

"What I told him is start by listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating," Obama told the interviewer.

If only he pandered to Republicans and conservatives this way. But no, they're the enemy.

He fails to understand that we dictate from a position of strength, although with him in charge we won't be for long.

It never fails with these Democrats. They never praise their own country. All they do is badmouth it and drag us down.