Return to the Article
September 16, 2012
Obama Destabilized the Middle East on Purpose
By Karin McQuillan
On Fox News Wednesday night, both Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity were full of self-congratulatory comments about how they had easily seen the Muslim Brotherhood problem with the "Arab Spring," and how could Obama have failed to see it? Duh. Of course, our State Department and White House knew that the Muslim Brotherhood would be taking over Egypt. It was obvious to any reasonably informed ordinary citizen.
The same debate we've seen over Obama's destruction of the American economy has already begun over his Middle East policy. Did Obama hand Egypt over to jihadis, and is he giving a green light to nuclear Iran, because of incompetence or his leftist ideology?
John Hinderacker over at Powerlineblog.com writes:
You could call his actions in the region incoherent, except that it's worse than that, especially if you take into account his hostility toward Israel. If a consistent principle can be deduced, it is that Obama wants to avoid doing anything that might advance U.S. interests. Maybe that's the answer, or maybe he just doesn't care enough to formulate a real policy. Be that as it may, one thing is clear: but for Obama's feckless participation in the overthrow of Egypt's and Libya's governments, yesterday's events would not have happened.
The answer, of course, is both incompetence and ideology. Muddle-headed ideologues of the left, such as our president, want America to be brought down to size. They truly believe that violent jihadi hate-groups can be tamed by appeasement, because the evil parties are Israel and America. So Obama helps depose Mubarak and Gaddafi, knowing they will be replaced by Islamic supremacists. He tells Israel they are on their own, we didn't really mean it about being allies. He blocks attempts to prevent a nuclear Iran, even by economic sanctions, because he doesn't like American shows of force and thinks we can live with a nuclear Iran. We lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, didn't we? Are we against Arabs, that we think they shouldn't have nuclear weapons, too? It sounds like a joke, but it isn't.
Incompetence was also in full force this 9/11. The attacks in Egypt and Libya were preventable. Why weren't our embassies and consulates in the Middle East properly protected? Why are fifty Marines sent in after the fact? Why didn't we have intelligence in advance? When the mob was gathering outside the Cairo embassy, the frightened staff issued an apology. What is wrong with our diplomatic corps if that was their response? Clinton should have gotten on the phone to the Muslim Brotherhood President Morsi and explained to him what would happen if he didn't protect our embassy. The rent-a-riot, inflamed purposefully by publicizing an obscure anti-Mohammed video, should have been stopped before they got anywhere close to our embassy.
When the embassy did issue their pathetic attempt at appeasement, and reissue it after our flag was torn down, Obama should have made a strong statement immediately, one that indicated that there are repercussions for attacking America. Instead, he allowed the apology to stand (for nine hours) until Romney condemned it. Desecrations of our flag didn't get the president's attention, but electoral politics did.
Obama's incompetence is an outgrowth of a broadly based Democrat ideology that wants us to believe that the war on terror was a stupid Bush idea. They accuse Republicans of exaggerating the jihadi threat. They smear any public figure who is concerned about the global Islamist war with the label "Islamophobe."
Obama, along with many liberal Democrats, believes that American strength is immoral. We shouldn't impose our views on other nations. So when the Muslim Brotherhood made its move last year, using the "Facebook revolution" as cover (and a very transparent cover it was), we abandoned Mubarak and told the Egyptian military to stand aside. We purposefully let the Middle East's oldest terror organization take over the Middle East's most populous country.
The Muslim Brotherhood is considered the father of the jihadi movement. It was adopted by Adolf Hitler under the Third Reich and grew from a languishing 10,000 members to a million strong by the end of World War II -- Hitler's permanent legacy for world destruction. Yet our president and State Department believe in embracing the Brothers as modernizing moderates.
The Brothers started the modern jihadi movement, complete with a genocidal program against Jews. In the words of Matthias Kuntzel, "[t]he significance of the Brotherhood to Islamism is comparable to that of the Bolshevik Party to communism: It was and remains to this day the ideological reference point and organizational core for all later Islamist groups, including al-Qaeda and Hamas."
Mubarak was the reason there have been no attacks by Arab states on Israel for thirty years. The 1979 Camp David accords neutralized Egypt as a player in the Arab war against Israel. To protect his own life and power, Mubarak kept the Muslim Brothers of Egypt under control. In return, Egypt has been receiving a billion and a half dollars a year -- payoff money from the United States. Egypt didn't agree to a friendly peace, and it wasn't a democracy, but in terms of Middle East geopolitics, supporting Mubarak was a critical success factor.
Obama and Hillary threw all that away with their embrace of the Arab Spring. It could have gone differently. We could have spoken out in support of Mubarak, showing the world that we are trustworthy allies. Instead, we abandoned a crucial ally when the mob howled. We could have told the Egyptian military that they had better make sure the Muslim Brothers don't take over the country. Instead, we told them to step aside and usher the Brothers into power.
Hillary's State Department proclaimed that the Muslim Brothers had become moderates. Anyone having a flashback to the Carter era, when all the liberals knew that the Ayatollah Khomeini would be a partner for peace?
The Obama Doctrine on the Middle East was hinted at in the president's 2009 Cairo speech, during a Middle East tour in which Obama did not visit Israel. Obama apologized for our war on terror. "The fear and anger" after 9/11 "led us to act contrary to our ideals," he told the Egyptian crowd. In a speech in France, Obama declared that America must make deep cuts in our nuclear arsenal, because otherwise we don't have "the moral authority to say to Iran, don't develop a nuclear weapon."
President Obama fought Congress tooth and nail on imposing economic sanctions against Iran this year -- already too little, too late. According to vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, the White House did everything they could to stop Congress from requiring sanctions, and then they used the waiver provision to gut them. There is no benign explanation for this. Left-wing anti-colonialists -- and our president is one -- think Iran will use its nuclear weapons responsibly.
One of the most chilling visuals in 2016: Obama's America is a map of the world's nuclear arsenals. Obama has already cut our nuclear warhead arsenal from 5,000 to 1,500 (in an "arms treaty" that allowed Russia to increase its arsenal). He has asked the Pentagon to report to him on reducing our nuclear warheads to 300. That's about the same number as France. Pakistan has 110 nuclear weapons. Obama, it seems, believes in equality in national defense, as well as in class warfare.
In July, five conservative congressmen, including Michele Bachmann, expressed alarm over evidence that the Muslim Brotherhood has succeeded in placing operatives in key positions throughout the Obama administration. In Bachman's words, State Department polices "appear to be a result of influence operations conducted by individuals and organizations associated with the Muslim Brotherhood." Instead of backing up Bachmann, our Republican leadership joined in Democrat attacks on her.
The policies Bachmann listed are not trivial. The Obama/Clinton team defied a congressional resolution to hold up our 1.5 billion dollars to Egypt until we knew they were still allies. Paying off Mubarak made sense. Handing billions to a Muslim Brotherhood Egypt, not so much. Do you think Egyptian President Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, would have allowed a mob to attack our embassy if these funds were in play?
Congressman Bachman is concerned, based on Frank Gaffney's analysis, that our Department of Homeland Security may have eight Muslim Brotherhood members in key advisory roles, including the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE)'s Working Group, which is responsible for training homeland security agents. The CVE will be using federal Homeland Security funds to funnel money to Muslim Brotherhood organizations in the United States, in the name of a "community-oriented policing approach." The Homeland Security Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties has established the policy of protecting "terrorism-precursor activities" as "cultural behaviors."
Congressman Bachmann questioned why the DHS official lexicon equates jihadi extremists with "Christian patriots" and "Constitutionlists." She asked about Huma Abedin, Hillary's closest adviser at State, who formerly worked for a Brotherhood organization, founded and funded by Abdullah Naseef, who also finances al-Qaeda. There is no question that Abedin helps Clinton formulate U.S. Middle East policy.
The sorry list goes on and on. (For more details, see Frank Gaffney's "The Muslim Brotherhood in the Obama Administration.")
The point here is not only that the Muslim Brotherhood is influencing American foreign policy. The arrow points in both directions: the Obama/Clinton policy of tolerating and even promoting the power of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is the same policy that promotes their front groups in America. It is the liberal idiocy that our enemies are friends, and our friends enemies.
Obama has signaled clearly and repeatedly that America no longer has Israel's back. He could not have done anything more effective to sabotage negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians than his public pressure on Israel to declare unilaterally they will withdraw to their 1948 borders. Obama bypassed congressional limits on aid to the Palestinian Authority after their alliance with Hamas, putting $200 million into the hands of one of the most vicious and dangerous terror groups in the Middle East. And he has signaled to the Iranians that Israel is on its own. Then there are the personal but well-publicized snubs to the Israeli prime minister, and the open mike revelations of Obama's contempt and dislike for Bibi. Obama has time to go on the Letterman show in New York next week, but he refuses to meet with Netanyahu, as the go/no go decision on bombing Iran stares Israel in the face.
Abandoning Israel invites war. But in Obama's mind, he is promoting fairness. He thinks Israel is the problem. He thinks that harming Israel will win America friends among Arabs. He thinks he is pressuring the Israelis to stop being bad guys.
Obama is purposefully harming American interests, but he thinks it will turn out okay. He attacks the American economy and free-enterprise system, and he thinks it will turn out okay. He attacks our energy industry, and he thinks it will turn out okay. He attacks the rule of law and our Constitution, and he thinks it will turn out okay. He undermines the hard-won stability of Egypt and thinks it will turn out okay. We have a president who thinks American national security interests, power, and prosperity are the problem. Then, when it's a broken mess, he's surprised, and he asks for more time to do more of the same. Obama is the problem.
The Middle East is a harsh taskmaster. It is no place for an aging schoolboy leftist like our president. In the real world, stupid ideas such as the one dominant in Obama's administration, that jihadis really want peace -- such ideas have very bloody consequences. The tragic deaths of our diplomats in Libya are only the beginning. Iran looms over us all.
Page Printed from:
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2012/09/obama_destabilized_the_middle_east_on_purpose.html at September 16, 2012 - 06:05:21 AM CDT
