well, in the president's defense, even if this story about the highest priority of nasa being outreach to the middle east (which it likely isn't), what the hell is NASA for nowadays anyway? As far as I know the whole point of their existence is to explore space, with the idea being that it'll help promote new technologies/resources for living on earth or the u.s. or whatever. In other words... why? It's sorta gimmicky anyway, we already went to the moon and I don't see them heading for mars anytime in the near future, though a manned mission to mars would obviously be "cool," a moment of pride for humanity, etc. Back when the Soviet Union was around it seemed kinda like a friendly competition thing, which was cool, since it promoted national pride peacefully and all that. Fine. But what is NASA doing nowadays? Sending probes everywhere, gathering data, etc.
As far as mideast outreach (and presumably outreach to the rest of the world) goes, why not? We're not exactly diverting NASA's attention from anything, are we? A lot of mathematical knowledge came out of the mideast, right? The theory of algebra, countless Arab math-philosopher guys... it's gotta be all on Wikipedia somewhere or something. Don't we use an Arabic number system? I thought we did, maybe that's an urban legend or something if someone wants to tell me otherwise. If we want to promote peace everywhere, including the middle east, we might need better technology for growing food or negotiating with the terrain for better living conditions in adverse environments, which is the kind of crap NASA really should be exploring--more efficient water purification tech, alternative fuels (i don't really care if their cleaner or not, just make 'em better/renewable), etc.
I know this whole thing plays into the conservative portrayal of Obama as obsessed with negotiating pointlessly and being a "citizen of the world," but as far as that goes, it's really just blind nationalism in disguise and they sound like they're eight, so, suck it up, the world isn't as simple as you think it is and sometimes it pays to talk to other countries. Even Reagan knew that, he was a lot friendlier with other nations (i.e. the Soviets) than people think, there was an article about it in "Foreign Policy" magazine recently (I know no one reads it, but my grandmother had a copy in her living room...meh)