Al-Reuters, the Islamophilic news service, would like us all to know that Arab terrorist groups will not be supporting George W. Bush for President: Arabs No Longer Want ‘Devil They Know’ in White House.

CAIRO (Reuters) - In U.S. presidential elections Arab leaders usually prefer the devil they know over any candidate challenging the man in the White House, however much they view the incumbent as an overbearing partner.

But as Americans choose between President Bush and Senator John Kerry on Nov. 2, analysts say many Arabs wonder whether anyone could be worse than a U.S. president who occupied Iraq, aligned himself with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and turned his back on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Bush, they say, has also blotted his copybook by repeatedly ignoring Arab opinion and advice on foreign policy and launching a heavy-handed campaign for reform which has earned him credit only with a tiny number of middle-class liberals.

“I don’t believe that anyone worse could possibly come,” said Mohamed Habib, deputy leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, one of the Arab world’s most influential Islamist groups.

If the Muslim Brotherhood thinks there’s no one worse than Bush, that’s a pretty strong reason to vote for him.

Notice how Arab “intellectuals” prefer Kerry because they see him as easily manipulated, and believe he will cut and run from Iraq:

On the positive side, from the Arab point of view, is his commitment to multilateralism, which implies he might take into account the views of others and adjust U.S. policy for the sake of common action.

On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he has promised to name a high-level envoy — a signal that he might resume the intense diplomacy abandoned when U.S. President Bill Clinton handed over the White House to Bush in 2001.

Abdel Moneim Said, director of the al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, said he expected U.S. priorities in the Middle East to shift, away from Iraq and toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which most Arabs see as the core of the region’s problems.

In the long run, although they would prefer a weak president who will allow a resurgence of Clinton’s intifada, it doesn’t much matter to most Arabs who’s elected—because after all, he’ll be the President of the Great Satan:

The U.S. presidential election campaign is hardly the talk of Arab cities or villages, where indifference to the result and contempt for both candidates are widespread, analysts say.

“The great majority, even more than 70 percent, don’t think that Bush or Kerry make a difference because both are evil, because the United States is evil,” said Abdel Moneim Said.