BY BARRY RUBIN OCTOBER 14, GLORIA
There are two problems with current U.S. policy toward the Middle East: both the analysis and response are not simply wrong, but rather make the situation in the region much worse.
The White House has supported the antisemitic, anti-American Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria; insisted the Brotherhood is moderate; gave untrained, unreliable Libyans control over the U.S. ambassador’s security leading to his death; denied that revolutionary Islamists attacked the U.S. embassy and ambassador in Libya for reasons having nothing to do with a California video; apologized for the video in a way that escalated the crisis elsewhere; wrongly claimed that al-Qaida is finished when it is still strong in several countries; defined the Afghan Taliban, despite its involvement in the September 11 attacks, as a potential partner, etc.
Meanwhile, the Obama Administration responds with a democracy-will-solve-everything approach that the same people ridiculed when President George W. Bush advocated it.
Now the errors are deepened and the lessons of experience once again rejected in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s latest defense of these wrong-headed policies in a speech given at my first employers, the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC.
Her argument is that the United States should ignore violence and extremism while helping to build democracies. The problem is that most of the violence and extremism comes from forces that the Obama Administration supports or groups basically allied with those forces. The violence and extremism are the inevitable outcome, not a declining byproduct, of this process.
Everything she says lays a basis for disaster:
–The U.S. government must not be deterred by “the violent acts of a small number of extremists.”
The problem is not a “small number” of extremists—implying al-Qaeda–but a large number of them. Extremists now rule in Egypt, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Tunisia, and—despite camouflage—Turkey. They may soon be running Syria.
More than a decade after September 11, the Obama Administration is fighting the last war—the battle against al-Qaida—rather than recognizing that a small group committing periodic terrorist acts is less important than a huge organization taking over entire countries.
–”We recognize that these transitions are not America’s to manage, and certainly not ours to win or lose,”
Of course, the United States doesn’t manage these transitions but does—or can—have influence. In Egypt, the Obama Administration began with the pro-Brotherhood Cairo speech (defining Middle Eastern identity as Islamic rather than Arabic; seating Brotherhood leaders in the front row) and then used its influence to push the military out of power in 2011 and encourage the Brotherhood.
In Syria, it backed management by the pro-Brotherhood Turkish regime and the choice of a Brotherhood-dominated exile leadership. In Bahrain, if not stopped by the State Department it would have helped bring to power a new regime likely to have been an Iranian satellite. Thus, inasmuch as the U.S. government has some role it has used it on behalf of America’s enemies. As an ally, Egypt is lost.
– “But we have to stand with those who are working every day to strengthen democratic institutions, defend universal rights, and drive inclusive economic growth. That will produce more capable partners and more durable security over the long term.”
Yet the Obama Administration has definitely not stood with those people! It has not channeled arms to moderates in Syria but to the Brotherhood and tolerated Saudi weapons’ supplies to Salafists. It has done nothing to protect the rights of women or Christians.
Moderates in Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt—as well as Turkey and Iran—know the Obama Administration has not helped them. The Turkish regime and the new governments emerging from the “Arab Spring” work every day to undermine human rights.
–”We will never prevent every act of violence or terrorism, or achieve perfect security. Our people cannot live in bunkers and do their jobs.”
Yes, perfection is hard. But what does that have to do with sending the ambassador to Libya into a lawless city with no protection?
And of course you can’t achieve even minimal security if you refuse to recognize where unrest and anti-American hatred originate. For example, the Egyptian government knew that there would be a demonstration outside the U.S. embassy in Cairo and must have known the demonstrators would storm the compound. Their security forces did nothing to protect the embassy. Why? Because they want to stir up anti-Americanism and use it to entrench themselves in power, even as the Obama Administration praises the Brotherhood’s regime and sends lots of money.
– ”For the United States, supporting democratic transitions is not a matter of idealism. It is a strategic necessity.”
This is absurd. Are “democratic” regimes always better for American strategic concerns than dictatorships? That’s untrue in Egypt and many other countries in the last half-century. Moreover, that ignores the fact that the Obama Administration has supported transitions in a way strengthening the likelihood of radical, anti-American rule.
– Clinton said there has been a backlash by moderates against extremist groups in Libya and Tunisia. But the backlash is by frightened people who fear with good reason that the extremists are winning.
– ”We stand with the Egyptian people in their quest for universal freedoms and protections….Egypt’s international standing does depend both on peaceful relations with its neighbors and also on the choices it makes at home and whether or not it fulfills its own promises to its own people.”
In fact, Egypt’s people voted 75 percent in parliamentary elections and about 53 percent in presidential balloting for those opposing universal freedoms and protections. And if Obama won’t get tough the Brotherhood regime knows it can repress people at home and let terrorists stage cross-border attacks against Israel without concern for its international standing.
– “We have, as always, to be clear-eyed about the threat of violent extremism. A year of democratic transition was never going to drain away reservoirs of radicalism built up through decades of dictatorship.”
Drain away? This year has empowered radicals!
An Obama Administration so far from reality subverts U.S. interests and makes the Middle East a more tragic and dangerous place. It is doubling down on their errors and will no doubt continue to do so if it has four more years to continue making costly mistakes. People in the region will pay for these errors in blood and so will some Americans.
@ Donald freyman: The US permitted slavery in the South until the time of the Civil War. After that, blacks were still excluded from many private clubs until this very day. I think the Mormon Church is a voluntary organization such as a private club. But candidates for office now are criticized even for belonging to a private club that excludes blacks so your criticism is certainly relevant. But I would prefer a President who belonged to such a club over one who embraces a terrorist organization such as the Muslim Brotherhood and claims it is a peaceful organization as Obama does. In Israel the Arabs have closed communities that exclude Jews and the Jews have close communities that exclude Arabs. I have no problem with that — do you?.
This administration, to be kind, is in a fog dreaming of one world with equality and equal rights for all.
There is no sense of reality and complete ignorance of geopolitics.
It appears we are headed by a narcissist who thinks he rhetoric makes him correct
HE HAS DOUBLE CROSSED OUR ALLIES, BROUGHT FOR A MIDDLE EASTERN SITUATION WHERE GOVERNMENTS WERE OUR ALLIED ARE NOW HEADED BY OUR ENEMIES
I THINK OF FDR WHEN COMMENTING ON ANASTASIO SAMOSA “HE IS A BASTARD BUT HE IS OUR BASTARD”
The world is a mostly hard and even place. The Presidents first obligation is the protection of the United States – not some fantasy of a world without evil.
He came to power the same way Adolph Hitler did, by a fair election – but he violates the constitution, continues to spend us into bankruptcy, and wants all to sacrifice except his chosen few
@ Samuel Fistel:
Up to 1978 the good Mormon church banned Blacks from membership. Something about blacks having been punished for some past misdeeds. However everything changed. In 1978 President Carter threatened to rescind the Mormons’ tax exempt status for their anti black creed.
Then voila, The president of the Mormons had a miraculous revelation. In a vision it was revealed that blacks are now kosher and can be admitted to the fold.
What a humane and compassionate religion and what does that say about MITT.
The difference between Romney and Obama is simple — Obama has embraced the Musllim Brotherhood as having abandoned violence as its method, — its peacefulness was recently renounced by its current head . Romney recognizes the Muslim Brotherhood as an enemy organization.
link
I think the spam filter got the link…I’ll try again…
J.S., do you happen to have a link to that N.Y.Times article? 1. It’s dubiously phrased. 2. Maybe a few Stingers and anti-tank missles have been sent by clandestine means, and that’s just a maybe. Assad has jetfighters and tanks. There have been zero reports of either one being blown up by rebels.
There was an article published in the NY Times (June), titled: “CIA said to aid in steering arms to Syrian rebels.” Ammunition, anti-tank weaponry, RPGs, etc. we’re being delivered (according to the article) to a shadowy network in Turkey (which included the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood). (?) Then, again, it is, after all, the NY Times.
The U.S. has NOT sent Stingers and anti-tank missles to the Syrian rebels. Behind the scenes, Israel has opposed arming the FSA. Assad’s atrocities are Rwandan in scope and monstrosity and he will not last despite Russia and Iran’s help. But, the West is not arming the rebels, whomever they might be.
Middle East Policy: Romney versus Obama is meaningless
Romney and Obama pretend to argue over how their Middle East Policies differ; but it is merely theater, and is completely bogus.
Romney says he opposes Obama’s withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan in 2014. But of course, he will not say what he will do differently. Just as in Vietnam, the war there was unwinnable. At the start, we accomplished our main objectives in just a short time: defeating the Taliban and driving al-Qaida into Pakistan.
But then came the insanity: attempting to bring “democracy” to ignorant, dirt-poor, savage, primitive Afghan muslim fanatics, and “winning their hearts and minds”. As a result, we have lost the war, at incredible cost to us in blood, and in money (most of which we borrowed from China).
But both Republicans (Bush, Romney) and Democrats (Obama, Clinton) thought, and continue to think, that this is possible. They are both equally delusional about the true nature of islam: an evil religion which promotes savage violence in the name of their war-god allah and his “glorious prophet”; which despises all non-muslims, and cannot rest until it conquers the world.
Both Romney and Obama refuse to believe that any religion might actually be evil. They both insist that every muslim country is composed of an invisible, silent majority of reasonable people who don’t take islam seriously, and just want to live in peace. They feel there is just a small group of extreme muslims who control the muslim masses through fear and terror, and that if you just defeat this small group of extremists, the masses will emerge, gratefully praising their American liberators, just like the black slaves in the Confederate South, or the French in World War Two.
And what is the reality that Romney and Obama refuse to accept? That islam is a religion (actually a means of thought-control) specifically designed for low-IQ, primitive savages, like those we see in arab countries, Afghanistan, and Africa. Islam promises you that, although you may be poor now, allah still loves you; but you must fight for him to prove your faith. If you win, you get to steal the riches of the defeated, and take their wives and daughters as sex slaves; and if you lose, allah will whisk you to paradise and provide you with endless sex with 72 ever-virgin angels created just for you. So, the muslim masses don’t see the Muslim Brotherhood and the Taliban as evil tyrants; they see them as good muslim warriors defending the faithful muslim masses from invasion by the infidel Crusaders.
But you know, this could just be HaShem’s plan. Just like He hardened Pharaoh’s heart, He is making American and European liberals delusional. The muslim world will inevitably just get more fanatical, crazier, and poorer, making a “Peace Process” unthinkable. And fanatical muslims will pour into a welcoming liberal Europe in ever greater numbers; which may be HaShem’s revenge on the European christian savages who killed six million of His Chosen People. (With respect to the enemies of the Jews: The Babylonians destroyed the Assyrians, the Persians destroyed the Babylonians, the germanics destroyed the Romans, and the muslims destroyed the Greek christians. So the European christians may be next. And yet, Ohd Amaynu Khai (Our Nation still lives). And of course, Ohd Aveenu Khai (Our Heavenly Father lives forever).