Planning for a post-Obama world
A fascinating piece in the American Thinker this morning about how to
clean up the Middle East post-Obama. A couple of highlights.
The chief new reality is the de facto coalition among Israel, Egypt, and the Sunni Gulf states. This comprises a potential new source of stability in the region, a stability that has been lacking since the collapse of the Ottoman imperium. The dream of an Arab equivalent of Europe -- a region of independent nation-states united through ethnicity and religion -- lies in ruins. The possibility that it can revived are minimal. Libya, Syria, and Yemen are all failed states and, left to themselves, the UN, or Europe, will remain that way. The fantasy of nation building was punctured by Iraq and Afghanistan. These people are not only incapable of governing themselves, they are incapable of maintaining a viable social system. This role must be filled by an overarching power, as it was by the Ottomans and the European imperialists.
It must be done because we require order. This is not the 19th century. The Jihadis have clearly demonstrated a global reach. They can get at any target anywhere simply by parasitizing well-established Western communications and transportation systems. The sole way to deny them this capability is through control of the failed states that act as incubators for their mujahedin.
...
The two major goals in the Mideast are the defeat of the Jihadis and the denial of Iranian hegemony. The coalition can encompass both, with support from interested Western powers. Despite all the appeasement rhetoric, the Iranian nuclear threat can be shut down in short order. No one has considered the possibility that Israel might utilize tactical nukes fitted to bunker-buster warheads. These would “drill” deeply into the overhanging mountains before detonating, rendering the Iranian nuclear program unsalvageable with little in the way of fallout or residual radiation. This would a bold step on the part of Israel, but existential challenges encourage that kind of thing. Sanction from the Gulf States is likely to be easily obtained.
Iran would attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz, but in the age of fracking, this is nowhere near the threat it once was. Fracking could take up a large part of the oil shortfall within months. There would be a serious economic earthquake, but the West has it coming.
Turning to the Jihadis, the long war, which the U.S. and Europe have proven incapable of maintaining, would probably be best fought by nations in the area. Saudi Arabia has valuable knowledge about these people. Israel has one of the most effective intelligence agencies in the world. Pooling their efforts should bring results that would difficult for outside actors to match. The current collaboration between the Israelis and the Egyptians could act as a model here.
Failed states such as Syria and Yemen are likely to remain non-nations on the Somalia model. As such, they will have to be controlled. Civilized forces will need to enter these degraded pea-patches on an irregular basis on punitive missions, much the same as the British mounted expeditions into Afghanistan and Somalia during the imperial period. (Libya is different, virtually bordering on the West as it does -- it must be brought under control, the sooner the better.)
This is effectively a form of neocolonialism, one that should be carried out by locals with a deep understanding of the stakes. It could of course, be “better,” in the abstract, if Somalis and Syrians could govern themselves, but they can’t, and that’s the end of it. They are a problem, and a new Mideast coalition offers a solution. Such a coalition will share goals with the West: elimination of the Iranian threat, destruction of ISIS and similar Jihadi gangs, and beyond that, a new status quo. While such a solution is far from perfect, it is the best that can be expected from a horrendous situation.
What would the U.S. role be? Basically, everybody’s benign uncle. To act as an honest broker, mentor, and guide for both sides, to ease the natural conflicts between Jewish and Arab interests, to work out strategies and policies, and nudge either side in the right direction.
Even this is asking too much at this point. Obama has, of course, downgraded the U.S. relationship with Israel even as the new modus vivendi has been working itself out -- a remarkable development that he has ignored. There’s nothing that reveals Obama’s utter fatuity more than this.
Of course, if Hillary Clinton becomes President, things might not be any better. What could go wrong?
Read the whole thing.
Labels: al-Qaeda, Barack Hussein Obama, Egypt, Gulf states, Hillary Clinton, Iran, Iranian nuclear threat, Iraq, ISIS, Islamic State, Israel, jihad, Libya, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen
Obama's Middle East policy collapse a question of priorities
John Hinderaker takes note of the collapse of President Obama's (@potus) Middle East policy, highlighted by what appears to be an
imminent Islamic State takeover of Iraq (Hat Tip:
Memeorandum).
The “sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq” that Barack Obama and
Joe Biden hailed as one of Obama’s “great achievements” in 2014 has
regressed into chaos as a result of Obama’s premature withdrawal of
American troops. But it isn’t just Iraq. Syria is the closest thing to
Hell on Earth. Iran is working away on nuclear weapons and delivery
systems. Yemen has fallen to Iran’s proxies. Saudi Arabia is looking for
nuclear weapons to counter Iran’s. ISIS occupies an area the size of
Great Britain. Libya, its dictator having been gratuitously overthrown
by feckless Western governments that had no plan for what would follow,
is a failed state and terrorist playground.
It seems as though things couldn’t possibly get worse, but they
almost certainly will. We are seeing the fruit of a set of policies that
were based on the false premise that problems in the Middle East are
mostly the fault of the United States. Not only were such policies
misbegotten, they have been executed incompetently. The resulting
collapse is occurring with sickening speed.
John doesn't even mention that none of these hotspots is President Obama's priority for the Middle East. Indeed, the President's priority for the Middle East - indeed for all his foreign policy - is the creation of a '
Palestinian state,' which he apparently sees as a panacea for all his foreign policy miscues. He has gone so far as to threaten the new Netanyahu government with the
withdrawal of support for Israel at the United Nations.
That'll stop Islamic State, clean up Syria and convince Iran not to develop nuclear weapons....
What could go wrong?
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Iranian nuclear threat, Iraq, ISIS, Islamic State, Libya, Middle East peace process, Palestinian state RIGHT NOW syndrome, Saudi Arabia, US foreign policy, Yemen
Unbelievable: ISIS executes Christians, Israel gets blamed
The link goes to
this Haaretz article (who else in Israel would publish such a thing?). But when you read the story, blaming Israel doesn't exactly add up.
At least one of the three asylum seekers, T., was held in the Holot
detention center in the Negev before leaving Israel. T.'s relative,
Mesi, told Haaretz that the family identified him in the ISIS video. "He
appears in the video and in the photographs, definitely," she said. "He
had been in Israel since the end of 2007. He decided to go back after
the [Israeli] Ministry of Interior told him he would be better off."
According to Mesi, T. "went back to Uganda or
Rwanda – I think Rwanda – where they are not accepted. From there he
went on to Sudan, and from Sudan to Libya." She said that he was not
able to remain in Libya, and tried to reach Europe by boat. "I
understood that the boat was returned to Libya," she said, "where they
were arrested. Rumors have it that the extreme Islamic group snatched
them from the jail itself."
Mesi said she tried to dissuade T. from going to a
third county. "They told him he would be better off if he flies. I asked
him not to. He didn't tell us he had signed [papers] to leave." She
added that she and other friends of T. tried to tell him things could
change for the better, "that [asylum seekers] would be released from
Holot."
Mesi added that she did not keep in touch with T. after
he left Israel, but received updates from his brother, who resides in
Norway. "He told me that T. arrived in Sudan and Libya and that he
hadn't spoken to him in a long time because he was in Libyan prison."
She said T.'s brother saw the images of ISIS' execution, but did not
think his brother was among the group of Ethiopian Christians.
So why is Israel being blamed? Who sent the boat back to Libya? Why isn't Uganda or Rwanda or Sudan blamed? Why isn't the United States blamed because President Hussein Obama
led from behind to depose the Gadhaffi's? Why isn't ISIS blamed?
But wait, it gets worse. There's
this hit job from the Daily Beast (the title is enough to tell you where this article is headed).
At least three of the victims were Eritrean refugees who had been
deported from Israel. An Eritrean named Mesi Fashiya who works as a
translator for The Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, an Israeli NGO
that advocates for Israel’s estimated 46,000 refugees, identified the
victims.
Sadly, one was her relative.
Fashiya told the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz
that her cousin, identified as “T.,” was deported from Israel “back to
Uganda or Rwanda—I think Rwanda—where they are not accepted. From there
he went on to Sudan, and from Sudan to Libya.”
“I recognized my relative, T., from the photos published by ISIS that
appeared on Facebook before the video was released,” Fashiya told +972 magazine.
T. was sent abroad in a program that Israel initiated to deal with
its burgeoning refugee problem. In a brochure obtained by The Daily
Beast, the Israeli Population and Immigration Authority “offers foreign
nationals from [Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, and Guinea
Conakry], who entered Israel illegally, the option to leave the country
voluntarily, in a fair and dignified manner.”
In the brochure,
Israel offers to assist in the “arrangement of travel documents,
purchase of airline tickets, and a financial grant in the amount of
$3,500 per person, including children,” to asylum seekers who agree to
leave.
While this may seem a fair deal, Israel’s record with asylum seekers and migrant workers is, for lack of a better word, awful.
Excuse me, but since when is little Israel responsible for solving the world's problems? Until ISIS came in, these people were economic refugees - what country in the world grants asylum to economic refugees? (Answer: The United States under Obama, but there are a lot of people who are unhappy about that, and it will likely change in 2017). The financial grant is quite generous for that part of the world. And note that Libya is not one of the countries on the list. These people could have gone to Eritrea or Ethiopia where they came from.
Funny how Israel is the only country blamed for this. Coincidence? I think not.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Eritrea, Ethiopia, illegal immigration, Islamic State, Libya, Sudan
The Arabs know how to handle their own
The Arabs know how to deal with their own. Libya has announced that it is banning 'Palestinians,' Syrians and Sudanese from the country, because...
they're terrorists.
Libya has immediately and indefinitely banned
Palestinians, Sudanese and Syrians from entering the country, because it
suspects those citizens of belonging to armed groups operating in the
country, Arab News reported.
The report, picked up by the Kuwait news agency Kuna, said that Omar al-Sanki, Libya's interior minister, based the decision on a thorough screening of those nationals.
In addition, the ministry said it would require
Maltese nationals to receive security clearances before entering Libya,
because of suspicions that some have been providing logistical help to
militias in Libya, the report said.
I know. A lot of you Americans are wishing that the US would do the same....
Labels: Libya, Palestinian terrorism, Sudan, Syria
Egypt and UAE attack Islamist rebels in Tripoli
If you happen to own a commercial jetliner, I sure hope you didn't park it in Tripoli.
In yet another indication that the Arab world understands the implications of an Islamist takeover, while much of the West does not, the New York Times reports that Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have taken matters into their own hands,
'secretly' carrying out airstrikes in Libya (Hat Tip:
Memeorandum).
The
United States, the officials said, was caught by surprise: Egypt and
the Emirates, both close allies and military partners, acted without
informing Washington or seeking its consent, leaving the Obama
administration on the sidelines. Egyptian officials explicitly denied
the operation to American diplomats, the officials said.
The
strikes are another high-risk and destabilizing salvo unleashed in a
struggle for power that has broken out across the region in the
aftermath of the Arab Spring revolts, pitting old-line Arab autocrats
against Islamists.
Since the military ouster of the Islamist president in Egypt one year
ago, the new Egyptian government, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates have formed a bloc exerting influence in countries around the
region to roll back what they see as a competing threat from Islamists.
Arrayed against them are the Islamist movements, including the Muslim
Brotherhood, backed by friendly governments in Turkey and Qatar, that
sprang forward amid the Arab Spring revolts.
Libya
is the latest, and hottest, battleground. Several officials said that
United States diplomats were fuming about the airstrikes, believing they
could further inflame the Libyan conflict at a time when the United
Nations and Western powers are seeking a peaceful resolution.
“We don’t see this as constructive at all,” said one senior American official.
The Obama administration is so enamored with political Islam that they don't get (or don't want to get) that for most people in this region, political Islam is a death sentence. It's being thrown back to the 8th century with no chance of escape. It's going back to an agrarian economy that doesn't produce enough of anything, and to a brutal 'justice' system. And if you're not Muslim, it's even worse....
By the way, what do these 'American officials' think? That these countries are going to come and beg them for permission to act? This is their territory! Since when do they have to ask the Lord King Hussein Obama for permission to act in their territory? They at least understand that they have to protect their populations (Egypt shares a border with Libya).
Officials said that the government of Qatar has already provided weapons
and support to the Islamist aligned forces inside Libya, so the new
strikes represent a shift from proxy wars —where regional powers playout
their agendas through local allies —to direct involvement.
The only complaint I have is that the strikes were not successful - the Islamists have taken control of the airport. But the old line Arab countries have decided that it's better to go down fighting than passively. And they're right. If the Islamists take over this region, no one will be happy except for Obama.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Egypt, Islamist, Libya, Qatar, Turkey, United Arab Emirates
The one-state solution is on our doorstep
David Goldman argues that because of changing demographics in the Middle East, the one-state solution is on our doorstep. Only one state is capable of ruling Judea and Samaria.
That state is Israel.
In the background of the region’s disrupted
demographics, a great demographic change overshadows the actions of all
the contenders. That is decline of Muslim fertility, and the unexpected
rise in Jewish fertility. The fall in Muslim birth rate is most extreme
in Iran and Turkey, with different but related consequences. When
Ayatollah Khomeini took power in 1979, the average Iranian woman had
seven children; today the total fertility rate has fallen to just 1.6
children, the sharpest drop in demographic history. Iran still has a
young population, but it has no children to succeed them. By mid-century
Iran will have a higher proportion of elderly dependents than Europe,
an impossible and unprecedented burden for a poor country. Iran’s sudden
aging will be followed by Turkey, Algeria, and Tunisia.
...
Israel is the great exception to the decline in fertility from North Africa to Iran, as I argued in a 2011 essay
for Tablet magazine. The evidence is now overwhelming that a Jewish
majority between the Jordan River and the sea is baked in the cake.
The CIA World Factbook estimates
total fertility of Arabs in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza at just 2.83 in
2014, versus 3.05 in 2011. The total fertility of Israeli Jews,
meanwhile, has risen above three children per female. Yakov Faitelson reported in the Middle East Quarterly:
From the beginning of the twenty-first century the TFR of
Israeli Muslims decreased considerably, from 4.7 in 2000 to 3.5
children per woman in 2011. The TFR of all Arabs decreased still further
to 3.3 children per woman, very close to the 3.09 for Jews born in
Israel. In November 2011, a new comprehensive ICBS projection was
published in which the government office admitted that in the past it
had overestimated Israeli Arab fertility and underestimated Jewish
fertility.
Jewish immigration is consistently positive and accelerating, while Palestinian emigration, at an estimated 10,000 per year
since 1967, is reducing the total Arab population west of the Jordan
River. Palestine Authority data exaggerated Arab numbers in Judea and
Samaria by about 30 percent, or 648,000 people, as of the 1997 census.
As Caroline Glick observes in her 2014 book The Israeli Solution,
Jews will constitute a 60 percent majority between the river and the
sea, and “some anticipate that due almost entirely to Jewish
immigration, Jews could comprise an 80 percent majority within the 1949
armistice lines and Judea and Samaria by 2035.”
Israel therefore has little fear demographically from annexation. Net
Jewish immigration and net Arab emigration will combine with higher
Jewish fertility to establish a Jewish supermajority over time. The
character of the West Bank population is changing: It is becoming older
and more educated, and increasing numbers of Arabs are benefiting from
the strong Israeli economy. Over time, West Bank Arabs may embrace
Israeli citizenship—when it is offered—as firmly as their counterparts
inside the Green Line. The so-called apartheid issue is a canard.
Israeli Arabs lived under martial law between the end of the War of
Independence in 1949 and 1966, and no one spoke of apartheid. Israel’s
most pressing problem in the near future may be Arab refugees trying to
get in.
As a non-Israeli, I do not wish to recommend a particular course of
action to Israel’s government. But the notion that the Palestinians
could stay clear of the riptide that has engulfed their neighbors was
fanciful to begin with and has now been trampled by events. Over the
past two decades, since the Oslo agreements were signed, the Palestine
Authority shown little ability to govern anything. After Egypt’s
military government suppressed the Muslim Brotherhood, it turned
viciously against the Brotherhood’s Palestinian wing, Hamas, and
blockaded Gaza. If the PA were capable of ruling the West Bank, it would
have allied with Egypt and Saudi Arabia to further isolate Hamas:
Instead the PA formed a national unity government with Hamas. Events
have shown that the PA cannot rule without Hamas, and it cannot rule
with Hamas; it can neither support nor suppress terrorism on the West
Bank. The inability of the Palestine Authority to govern, the inability
of Hamas to distance itself from its patron in Tehran, and the collapse
of the surrounding states eventually will require Israel to assume
control over the West Bank. This time the Israelis will stay.
Israel can’t rely on the PA to conduct counterterrorism operations
against Hamas, its coalition partner. Israel’s border with the Hashemite
Kingdom in the Jordan Valley, meanwhile, has become a strategic pivot.
ISIS is now operating in strength at the common border of Israel, Syria,
Jordan, and occupied Iraqi-Syrian border towns close to the common
frontier with Jordan. Jordan’s own security requires a strong IDF
presence on its western border.
When Israel absorbs Judea and Samaria—and it is a when, not an if—the
chancelleries of the West will wag their fingers, and the Gulf States
will breathe a sigh of relief.
The historical homeland of the Jewish people
will pass into Israeli sovereignty not because the national-religious
will it to be so, or because an Israeli government seeks territorial
aggrandizement, but because Israel will be the last man standing in the
region, the only state able to govern Judea and Samaria, and the only
military force capable of securing its borders. It will happen without
fanfare, de facto rather than de jure, at some moment in the
not-too-distant future when the foreign ministries of the West are
locked in crisis session over Iraq or Syria. And it will happen with the
tacit support of Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.
Israeli authority will replace the feckless regime of the Palestine
Authority in order to maintain public order and ensure that the
electricity works, and the roads are secure, and that bands of jihadist
marauders or Shiite terrorists do not massacre entire villages; this
action will elicit the reflex condemnation from bored and dispirited
Western diplomats. The realization of the Zionist dream will then be
consummated not with a bang, but a whimper; the bangs will be much
louder elsewhere.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: demography, Egypt, Iran, Israel is a Jewish state, Jordan, Judea and Samaria, Libya, one-state solution, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey
The end of the Iraq war? Will Jordan be next?
No, the picture at the top of this post isn't from Baghdad... yet. It's from the US embassy in Saigon nearly 40 years ago, and it's an image that's etched into my mind and into the minds of anyone who watched television in America in 1975. It's an image of Vietnamese who had worked for the United States attempting to escape before the North won the war, and being pushed away by embassy staff. It's an image that's so well remembered that Mark Steyn's piece about Iraqi cities falling to ISIS - a group that's too 'militant' even for al-Qaeda - is called
Helicopters on the Roof.
Three years on [from the Bin Laden assassination], just one malign al-Qaeda progeny, the Islamic State
of Iraq and the Levant, now commands more territory than ever - from
Aleppo in western Syria to the gates of Baghdad. It has all the tanks and weaponry abandoned by the Iraqi "army" we trained. It has the cash reserves of the second largest city in Iraq, and control of the northern oil fields.
Meanwhile, the White House has apparently canceled its cable
subscription and daily newspaper. On Tuesday, as half-a-million Iraqis
were fleeing Mosul, Administration flacks were talking up Hillary's Greatest Hits:
Earnest was asked by a reporter at the daily press
conference to describe Clinton's accomplishments while she was Secretary
of State.
"Ending the war in Iraq and winding down in a responsible fashion
the war in Afghanistan, and doing that after the success of our our
efforts to dismantle and destroyed Al-Qaida core that had established a
base of operations in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan,"
Earnest answered.
Obama and Clinton ended the war in Iraq by losing it. They "pivoted"
from Iraq to Afghanistan, and wound up losing both. Hillary crowed over
Gaddafi's corpse - "We came, we saw, he died" - and then sat by as her
ambassador and best friend "Chris" was devoured by the mob: He died, she
sat by, we're gone. The Arab Spring that Zakaria claims "crippled"
al-Qaeda delivered Egypt to the Muslim Brotherhood and a military coup,
Tunisia to soft Islamists, Libya to ever harder Islamists, and much of
Syria and Iraq to jihadists too hardcore for "mainstream" al-Qaeda.
Events are moving fast on the ground. As I said on Fox News on Tuesday night:
In Iraq, the al Qaeda flag flies in Fallujah on
buildings American troops built. And as we have just heard, al Qaeda has
taken hold of Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq, earlier today.
On Wednesday, they took Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, where in the spring of 2003 I strolled with gay abandon. Where next?
Iraq Militants, Pushing South, Aim at Capital
And not just Baghdad says Khaled Abu Toameh. ISIS is
threatening Jordan, which would put them on Israel's border.
The terrorists, who belong to The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria
[ISIS -- known as DAESH in Arabic] and are said to be an offshoot of
al-Qaeda, are planning to take their jihad to Jordan, Lebanon, the Gaza
Strip and the Sinai Peninsula -- after having already captured large
parts of Syria and Iraq, the sources said.
The capture this week by ISIS of the cities of Mosul and Tikrit in
Iraq has left many Arabs and Muslims in the region worried that their
countries soon may be targeted by the terrorists, who seek to create a
radical Islamist emirate in the Middle East.
According to the sources, ISIS leader Abu Baker al-Baghdadi recently
discussed with his lieutenants the possibility of extending the group's
control beyond Syria and Iraq.
One of the ideas discussed envisages focusing ISIS's efforts on
Jordan, where Islamist movements already have a significant presence.
Jordan was also chosen because it has shared borders with Iraq and
Syria, making it easier for the terrorists to infiltrate the kingdom.
Jordanian political analyst Oraib al-Rantawi sounded alarm bells by noting
that the ISIS threat to move its fight to the kingdom was real and
imminent. "We in Jordan cannot afford the luxury of just waiting and
monitoring," he cautioned. "The danger is getting closer to our
bedrooms. It has become a strategic danger; it is no longer a security
threat from groups or cells. We must start thinking outside the box. The
time has come to increase coordination and cooperation with the regimes
in Baghdad and Damascus to contain the crawling of extremism and
terrorism."
The ISIS terrorists see Jordan's Western-backed King Abdullah as an
enemy of Islam and an infidel, and have publicly called for his
execution. ISIS terrorists recently posted a video
on YouTube in which they threatened to "slaughter" Abdullah, whom they
denounced as a "tyrant."
Some of the terrorists who appeared in the
video were Jordanian citizens who tore up their passports in front of
the camera and vowed to launch suicide attacks inside the kingdom.
Security sources in Amman expressed deep concern over ISIS's threats and
plans to "invade" the kingdom. The sources said that King Abdullah has
requested urgent military aid from the U.S. and other Western countries
so that he could foil any attempt to turn Jordan into an
Islamist-controlled state.
Urgent... military... aid.... Like in Iraq? Or the non-Islamist Syrian rebels? Or Libya? It's so bad that even the Washington Post - which helped to get Obama elected - is
starting to get it - slamming Obama for his total withdrawal from Iraq and for his efforts to implement the same policy in Afghanistan.
In Syria, where for three years Mr. Obama has assiduously avoided
meaningful engagement, civil war has given rise to “the most
catastrophic humanitarian crisis any of us have seen in a generation,”
Mr. Obama’s United Nations ambassador Samantha Power said in February.
In
Libya, Mr. Obama joined in a bombing campaign to topple dictator
Moammar Gaddafi and then declined to provide security assistance to help
the nation right itself. It, too, is on the verge of civil war.
In
Iraq, Mr. Obama chose not to leave a residual force that might have
helped keep the nation’s politics on track, even as the White House
insisted there was no reason to worry. Denis McDonough, then deputy
national security adviser and now White House chief of staff, told reporters in 2011
that Mr. Obama “said what we’re looking for is an Iraq that’s secure,
stable and self-reliant, and that’s exactly what we got here. So there’s
no question this is a success.”
No question it's a success? For whom? Well, apparently, for a lot of foolish Americans. Here's Steyn again.
And yet 67 per cent of Americans regard Hillary as "a strong leader" - presumably for her success in "ending the war in Iraq" and "destroying al-Qaeda". Who needs Pravda when a free people are happy to live at this level of delusion?
Out there in the rest of the planet, the soundbites - "bin Laden is
dead and General Motors is alive" - are a tougher sell. Here's what I
wrote over seven years ago:
If you happen to live in Ramadi or Basra, Iraq is
about Iraq; if you live in Tehran, or Cairo, or Beijing, Moscow,
Pyongyang or Brussels, Iraq is about America. American will. American
purpose. American credibility.
To the people who cheered when those towers tumbled 13 years ago,
there is no Bush, no Obama, no Clinton. There is only America. And when
the black flag of al Qaeda is raised in Baghdad it will be seen,
correctly, as an American defeat. We have told the world something about
ourselves, and the world will conduct its affairs accordingly.
As to the suggestion that it doesn't matter because we should "come
home" to a domestic Green Zone, ask those seven-year-old moppets pouring
across the southern border how impressed they are by "Fortress
America".
And Jordan won't be the end of it either. Guess who's the real target (aside from Big Satan)....
Abu Toameh:
ISIS is a threat not only to moderate Arabs and Muslims, but also to
Israel, which the terrorists say is their ultimate destination. The U.S.
and its Western allies need to wake up quickly and take the necessary
measures to prevent the Islamist terrorists from achieving their goal.
Failure to act will result in the establishment in the Middle East of
a dangerous extremist Islamist empire that will pose a threat to
American and Western interests.
In World War II, it took Pearl Harbor for many Americans to realize that what's going on in the rest of the world makes a difference for them too. I'd say that I'm hoping for another Pearl Harbor (not that I want to see Americans killed - but I do want to see them awakened to reality) but it's only been 13 years since 9/11 and already so many have forgotten, wallowing in their
political correctness.
What could go wrong?
Labels: 9/11, al-Qaeda, Barack Hussein Obama, Hillary Clinton, Iraq, Libya, Osama Bin Laden, Syria
Iranian ex-spy: Khomeni ordered Pan Am 103 attack as revenge
A former Iranian spy who has defected to Germany claims that
Ayatollah Khomeni ordered the 1988 bombing attack on Pan Am Flight 103, which blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, as revenge for the (accidental) downing of an Iranian airliner by the United States.
Let's go to the videotape.
The Lockerbie bombing was ordered by Iran and carried out by a Syrian-based terrorist group, a former Iranian intelligence officer has admitted.
Abolghassem Mesbahi, a defector to Germany, said Pan Am flight 103 was downed in 1988 in retaliation for a US Navy strike on an Iranian commercial jet six months earlier, in which 290 people died.
He claims the Ayatollah Khomeini, who was Iran’s Supreme Leader, ordered the bombing “to copy exactly what happened to the Iranian Airbus”.
Previously unseen evidence gathered for the aborted appeal hearing of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the former Libyan intelligence officer convicted of the bombing, supports Mr Mesbahi’s claim and suggests that the bombers belonged to the extremist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC).
Documents obtained by Al Jazeera television for a documentary called Lockerbie: What Really Happened? name key individuals said to be involved in the bombing, including the alleged bomb-maker, the alleged mastermind and the man who may have put the bomb on the doomed Boeing 747.
Read the whole thing. Hmmm.
Labels: Ahmed Jibril, Ayatollah Khomeni, Iran, Iran Air, Islamic terrorism, Libya, Pan Am 103, PFLP-GC
America's newest diplomat?
Chelsea
Clinton will be 34 years old on the 27th and is looking forward to a
life of politics. Start her out properly as US Ambassador to Libya and
put her on our American compound in Benghazi. After all, what difference
does it make!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Labels: Benghazigate, Chelsea Clinton, Hillary Clinton, humor, Libya
Will anyone notice that the NY Times proved Obama wrong?
A New York Times story last weekend, which tried to revive the 'anti-Muslim film' theory for last fall's attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, unintentionally proves that President Obama's focus on the 'Zawhiri faction of al-Qaeda' as the
sole source of terrorism in the world is far off base. This is from Caroline Glick.
Kirkpatrick’s claim that al-Qaida played no role in the attack was refuted by the Times’
own reporting six weeks after the attack. It has also been refuted by
congressional and State Department investigations, by the UN and by a
raft of other reporting.
His claim that the YouTube video did spur some of the attackers to
action was categorically rejected last spring in sworn congressional
testimony by then-deputy chief of the US mission to Libya Gregory Hicks.
Last May Hicks stated, “The YouTube video was a non-event in Libya.
The video was not instigative of anything that was going on in Libya. We
saw no demonstrators related to the video anywhere in Libya.”
Kirkpatrick’s larger message – that the reasoning behind Obama’s
entire counterterrorist strategy and his overall Middle East policy is
totally wrong, and deeply destructive – has been missed because his
article was written and published to whitewash the administration’s
deliberate mischaracterization of the events in Benghazi, not to
discredit the rationale behind its Middle East policy and
counterterrorism strategy. This is why he claimed that al-Qaida wasn’t
involved in the attack. And this is why he claimed that the YouTube
video was a cause for the attack.
This much was made clear in a blog post by editorial page editor
Andrew Rosenthal, who alleged that the entire discourse on Benghazi is
promoted by the Republicans to harm the Democrats, and Kirkpatrick’s
story served to weaken the Republican arguments. In Rosenthal’s words,
“The Republicans hope to tarnish Democratic candidates by making it seem
as though Mr. Obama doesn’t take al-Qaida seriously.”
So pathetically, in a bid to defend Obama and Clinton and the rest of the Democrats, the Times
published a report that showed that Obama’s laser-like focus on the
Zawahiri-controlled faction of al-Qaida has endangered the US.
By failing to view as enemies any other terror groups – even if they
have participated in attacks against the US – and indeed, in perceiving
them as potential allies, Obama has failed to defend against them.
Indeed, by wooing them as future allies, Obama has empowered forces as
committed as al-Qaida to defeating the US.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: al-Qaeda, Barack Hussein Obama, Benghazigate, Islamophobia, Libya
Gregory Hicks 'This Week' Exclusive Interview on Benghazi Consulate Attacks
Wednesday marks the anniversary of the terror attack on the US consulate in Benghazi. Gregory Hicks is the only senior US diplomat who has been willing to talk about it.
Let's go to the videotape.
President Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, an apparent candidate for President in 2016, have a mutual interest in continuing to cover up this scandal. Shame on both of them.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Benghazigate, Hillary Clinton, Libya
A couple of great comments on Obama's use of military force
Shabbat Shalom everyone.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Libya, Syria
Will the US attack Syria? Should it?
Will the United States of Obama attack Syria, which is an Arab Muslim country? Should it?
The views on this question are all over the map. In my view, whether Obama should attack depends on what he hopes to accomplish, whether he can accomplish it, and whether the price he will pay by attacking (or not attacking) is a price worth paying. I'll elaborate on that toward the end of this post, but first, let's look at how some other people see it.
Robin Shepherd:
The reason why this effectively guarantees military action, and why
military action is right, is that the West simply cannot allow a
precedent to be set in which the use of chemical weapons is brushed over
and ignored. This does not, and must not, mean boots on the ground.
Ultimately, the Arab world should sort this out, not us.
But we can do something. Extensive cruise missile strikes against
Assad's military infrastructure (plus a nice little one on his
presidential palace) should be sufficient to make a very necessary
point.
In terms of the calculations, of course, there's the issue of the
humiliation of Barack Obama having set red lines and then allowed them
to be crossed. But that wouldn't be a problem for Obama whose foreign
policy credentials are rightly ridiculed even by many hard core
Democrats.
The problem is that there's just too much at stake, and there are too
many people around Obama in Washington, and in London, Paris, Berlin etc
that know there's no choice but to act.
I absolutely disagree with those who think that the fate of Syria is
any of our business in terms of its possible (fantasy world) transition
to democracy if Assad is deposed. I'd love to see him go, but I'm pretty
certain I'd dislike his successors just as much. No, that's not the
point; which is that we have to adopt a long term strategy that is in
our own interests.
That means making a decisive statement that psychopathic dictators who
think they can "normalise" the use of weapons of mass destruction via
our own apathy or cowardice are proved wrong.
Jennifer Dyer:
Bret Baier laid it out in his Fox News broadcast this evening: the opposition to intervening in Syria is by far the highest amount of public opposition to any proposed intervention or other military operation in the last 30 years. The numbers against Syria bear no resemblance to the numbers on anything Americans can remember, whether Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, the Balkans, Somalia, Haiti, Panama, or Grenada. Americans aren’t sold on the necessity or wisdom of a military attack on Syria; in fact, opposition to it, in the absence of conclusive proof that Assad used WMD, is a whopping 60 percent.
The fact that most Americans are opposed to a strike is not and will not be dispositive. Obama does not have to face reelection, and he has shown before (see
Obamacare) that he is willing to do things that most Americans oppose. If he does that and he's right, it's called leadership. If he does it and he's wrong, he ought to pay a political price.
There are brief, cogent things to say about Syria, about the threat its civil war poses to stability, and about the security problem of chemical weapons use by Assad. But no one in the Obama administration, from Obama himself down through his cabinet-level representatives to Jay Carney, is saying them. We literally do not know the administration’s answer to the most basic question about this whole thing: what would we be conducting a military attack on Syria for?
There is a big difference between proposing to punish Assad, with no decisive end-state in view, and proposing to take action designed to shape or at least promote a particular end-state. The different goals would entail different levels and types of military action. Ideally, they would entail different packages of non-military action as well: principally diplomacy, to lay out, sell, and negotiate any end-state we had in mind.
Yes, there has to be a plan (and the one that Robin Shepherd laid out above sounds reasonable) and no, I'm not convinced there is one. That, unfortunately, is typical of this administration. It makes decisions to get into (Libya) or out of (Iraq) hostile situations in this region with no strategy and no endgame. I'm not sure that there's time for diplomacy, but there's definitely time for Obama to make the case to the American people that it's in America's interest not to allow rogue regimes like Assad's to use weapons of mass destruction with impunity.
The problem is that for Obama, the great communicator, to make such a case, he would first have to respect the American people and believe that their opinions matter. He doesn't. It's plain to me on so many fronts that Obama has no respect for the American people and no empathy for the things with which ordinary Americans have to cope on a day-to-day basis. See, for instance,
Obamacare, the Obama family's numerous and exorbitant vacations at taxpayer expense, and the repeated golf games at times when the President's critical judgment is necessary (How many hours a week does this guy work anyway? I'd bet it's less than the average corporate lawyer).
Bottom line on this point: The reason that Obama is not making the case for attacking Syria to the American people is that he has no respect for the American people (nor for their elected representatives). Chew on that one for a while.
Jennifer goes on to outline three ways of looking at an attack on Syria: in terms of how much it will disrupt peace in the region, in terms of the damage to Obama's (largely non-existent) credibility in the region, and in terms of what Obama's goals are and whether they can be accomplished. Jennifer frames it this way:
With these three frameworks laid out, we circle back to the problem that the U.S. administration has addressed none of them before the public or Congress. We don’t know how much or if Team Obama, or our eager allies, have thought about what it will mean to the peace to cross Russia and Iran with a military action in Syria. For all we can tell, it has not even occurred to them.
We don’t know what their thinking is on the choice between evils: the evil of intervening or the evil of failing to after defining a red line.
And we don’t know what the driving objective of an intervention would be. That said, we do have an informative (if disquieting) data point from 2011.
Given all these factors, most of us can form a pretty solid opinion of whether we should intervene, and if so, for what purpose. What I have been unable to predict is what Obama is going to do.
Read the whole thing.
What will happen? First, Obama will not say anything to the American people until the attack (or its initial wave if there's more than one) is over. Since the attack is likely to take place under the cover of darkness in the pre-dawn hours (rumored to be tomorrow), I am looking for the same kind of midnight announcement that Obama made when Osama Bin Laden was killed (which did wonders for my traffic, but not much for anything else). And even then, only if it's successful. If a strike is unsuccessful, look for Obama to try to keep the lid on it for a couple of days until he can figure out what to say.
But yes, I believe that there will be an attack. It won't happen because Obama wants it to - he's long past caring about his credibility (if he doesn't respect the people who elected him, how do you think he feels about the rest of the world?). It will happen because
like in Libya and like with the disclosure of the Ira
nian
nuclear plant in Qom, the Europeans will push him to do it, and will largely take responsibility for it. Obama will '
lead from behind' again, possibly even with the same '
responsibility to protect' rhetoric that he used in Libya.
The attack will be inconclusive. Some chemical weapons facilities will be hit, and maybe some symbolic targets like Assad's summer palace in Latakia. But the attack will be low-scale enough to keep Russia and Iran out. With all of his
scorched earth talk, Assad will not respond either so long as the attack does not threaten his rule. Israel has already proven that with its raids on Assad's weapons shipments. While an attack like the one I'm describing will not stop Assad from using chemical weapons again, although it might make them weapons of an almost-last resort rather than a primary weapon.
And I agree with the Israeli intelligence assessment that Israel will not be hit either. The last thing Assad needs right now is Israel destroying what's left of his weapons - both conventional and unconventional.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Bashar al-Assad, chemical weapons, Iran, Iranian nuclear threat, leading from behind, Libya, Qom, responsibility to protect, Russia
Krauthammer: Obama's incoherence has made the US irrelevant in the Middle East
Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer says that President Hussein Obama's incoherence has
made the United States irrelevant in the Middle East.
“The only constant in all of this is Obama as a candidate, as a Senator,
decided we should be out of these wars, we should be out of the Middle
East, the tide of war is receding, he repeats it over and over again and
pretends it’s true,” Krauthammer said. “We’re not in Iraq, we’re not in
Syria, we’re not in Libya – we’re getting killed in Libya as we did –
we’re not in Egypt. We are doing nothing. All the other actors are in
play – the jihadists, the Russians, the Iranians, Hezbollah, but not the
United States. We are irrelevant.”
Let's go to the videotape.
He's spot-on.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Charles Krauthammer, Egypt, Libya, Syria
Shocka: Females on Gaza aid convoy sexually assaulted in Libya
It doesn't just happen in
Gaza and
Egypt. Three female Leftists riding a Gaza aid convoy have been
sexually assaulted in Libya.
[Quoting from al-Guardian]:
Three women who were part of an aid convoy passing through Libya on the way to Gaza have been sexually assaulted in Benghazi, after a group of five British nationals were briefly kidnapped.
The
three women, two of whom are sisters, were part of a large aid convoy
travelling to the Gaza Strip. It is thought that they were part of a
group of five people who were briefly kidnapped near Benghazi in the
early hours of Tuesday and they were released some hours later. The
group is currently safe in the Turkish consul in Benghazi and is
expected to return to the UK.
Libyan security officials said the
attacks happened in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Abdul Barghathi,
commander of preventative security in the Libyan defence ministry, said
the women had been sexually assaulted, but not raped. "There was no
rape, just touching (sexual assault)," he said. "Because there is no
British consulate here they were handed to the Turkish consulate." The
three women are not badly wounded and are being attended to by consular
staff from the UK, he added.
The women were part of a large convoy
taking vehicles and aid to the Gaza Strip on a journey that had taken
them through France, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and then Libya. It
had intended to cross the border with Egypt but was prevented from
doing so by Egyptian authorities. The 10-vehicle convoy is still stuck
at the border but the five British nationals returned to Benghazi in
eastern Libya late on Monday night in order to return home.
I wonder whether these do-gooders will try to make their way back to Gaza again, or maybe this will finally be a wake-up call about the 'respect' that Arab Muslims give women.
Labels: Egypt, Gaza, Gaza blockade, Libya, Rachel Corrie, sexual assault
When Hamas doesn't want rockets
When would Hamas turn down a chance to get its hands on long-range rockets from Libya? When they've been
tagged with Israeli tracking devices.
The Egyptian paper Al-Youm A-Sabi reported on Monday that Hamas has
rejected 28 long-range missiles smuggled from Libya to Gaza through the
Sinai peninsula during the past few days, after Hamas operatives
discovered that Israel had tagged them with tracking devices somewhere
en route from Libya.
The existence of the tracking devices would allow Israel to identify
and target the Hamas rocket depots in Gaza from the air at some point in
future.
The Sinai desert has been flooded with weapons from Libya since the
fall of the Gaddafi regime in October 2011. Last June, for example, the
Egyptian army confiscated a huge weapons shipment, which included 138
deadly Grad missiles, and was en route to Gaza.
An anti-aircraft missile fired from Gaza at an Israeli helicopter (in
Israeli airspace) last year also came from Libya, according to Israeli
security officials.
I wonder how many rockets they already have with Israeli tracking devices they missed. Maybe they should get rid of all their rockets...
Heh.
Labels: Egypt, Gaza, Hamas rockets, Libya
Greece catches Turkish weapons ship
A Turkish 'cement ship' that stopped to refuel in Greece this past week turned out to be carrying a
huge cache of weapons. It's believed - but not yet proven - that the weapons were headed for Libya or for Islamist rebels in Mali (Hat Tip:
Joshua I).
According to a report from the Thessaly Journal, the ship "Alexandretta"
-which was flying the flag of Saint Vincent- was from Turkey, and
although it is registered as a cement bulk cargo ship was in all reality
suspiciously transporting a huge quantity of weapons and ammunition. It
said that unconfirmed reports also spoke of portable antiaircraft guns
and anti-tank missiles, ammunition and infantry weapons such as
Kalashnikov guns, etc.
The newspaper noted that the ship was bound for Libya, but also said
that it could have been headed towards Mali (which boarders Libya) to
arm Islamic rebels fighting there.
The newspaper, quoting reliable sources, said that as soon as Greek
authorities were notified, they surrounded the ship, and prevented any
embarking and disembarking to be conducted. For security purposes the
ship was then forced to dock at the port of Volos, where it was
immediately quarantined and under the watchful eye of competent
authorities.
According to legislation, ships transporting weaponry -bound for
countries such as Libya, Iran, Syria- are forbidden to pass through
Greece. The newspaper said that the ship's capacity is 4,000 tonnes, but
it did not disclose the exact weight of the cargo.
Hmmm.
Labels: Libya, Mali, Turkey, weapons smuggling
Susan Rice owns shares in companies doing business in Iran
The Washington Post reports that Susan Rice, who is apparently going to be President Obama's nominee to be Secretary of State, has
'modest' holdings in companies that are doing business in Iran. I'm sure you're all shocked....
One of the biggest of the holdings, between $50,000 and $100,000, according to Rice’s disclosure statement for 2011,
is Royal Dutch Shell. The international oil giant stopped buying crude
oil from Iran early this year as sanctions were tightened to block oil
exports by Iran and to stop financial transactions with its central
bank.
A company spokesman said officials dealing with Iran could
not be reached, but a person familiar with the company, speaking on the
condition of anonymity because of a lack of authorization to discuss the
topic, said Royal Dutch Shell owes Iran about $1 billion.
Rice
and her husband also own between $15,000 and $50,000 of stock in ENI,
the Italian international oil company. ENI has said that it is no longer
doing business with Iran, but it has a waiver from sanctions to enable
it to collect oil as payment for about $1 billion Iran owes the company
from earlier business deals. The company had been purchasing crude oil
and developing natural gas fields.
On Thursday, Republicans on
Capitol Hill began circulating information about Rice’s investments
connected to Iran. Asked about the disclosure revelations, one senior
GOP official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he wasn’t
authorized to discuss the topic, said, “This news adds to the list of
questions about Susan Rice — not only her public statements, but now
there are broader concerns about her past record.” Democratic staffers
also said on condition of anonymity for the same reason that the
investments would prompt questions of her if she is nominated.
Several
ethics advisers interviewed Thursday said they did not see an immediate
problem with the Rice’s investments but suggested that people on such a
career track not hold stock in individual companies.
...
Rice is one of the richest members of the Obama Cabinet. She and her
husband, Ian Cameron, were worth between $23.5 million and $43.5 million
in 2009, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Cameron, a
former television producer, is, like Rice, a Stanford University
graduate. His father owned Victoria Plywood, a lumber company in British Columbia.
Rice,
a Rhodes scholar, worked for the management consulting firm McKinsey
& Co. before joining the Clinton administration, where she served on
the National Security Council and later as assistant secretary of state
for african affairs. Her late father was an economics professor, World
Bank director and a governor of the Federal Reserve. Her mother is an
education expert and guest scholar at the Brookings Institution.
The flap over Rice’s investments began Wednesday over much
larger stakes she and Cameron have in TransCanada, owner of the
Keystone XL pipeline, and companies active in the development of
Canadian oil sands. Early next year, the State Department is
expected to rule on whether to allow the construction of the
controversial pipeline, which is opposed by environmental groups.
The post gave a hat tip for the report to the
Washington Free Beacon.
By the way, aside from Iran, ENI also has
a huge stake in Libya.
Hmmm.
Labels: Iran sanctions regime, Libya, Susan Rice, US State Department
Egypt seizes rockets and ammunition
The Egyptians made quite a big deal out of this. Apparently they are trying to
convince us of fool us into believing something. On Wednesday - what a coincidence - the Egyptians just happened to find
108 Grad (Katyusha) rockets and nearly 20,000 rounds of ammunition (yes, of course they gave a precise number) that were making their way from Libya to Gaza via the Mediterranean port of Marsa Matruh (pictured).
Security sources said
a gang had smuggled the consignment – consisting of 108 Grad rocket warheads and
19,646 rounds of ammunition – into the seaport of Marsa Matruh, according to
Egyptian daily Al-Masry al-Youm.
The consignment was most likely destined
for Gaza but could also have been en route to buyers in Egypt’s increasingly
lawless Sinai.
From which Israel was also attacked in the round of fighting just concluded... in case you'd forgotten.
Al-Masry al-Youm cited unnamed security sources as saying
a gang of three Egyptian suspects fled into the desert around Marsa Matruh,
leaving behind the weapons consignment after security services ambushed
them.
How convenient....
It
did not speculate as to the source of the weapons. However, Marsa Matruh is on
the main highway from the Nile Delta to Libya, a country Egyptian security
officials have named as the source of many of the weapons being sold on Egypt’s
black market and smuggled into Gaza.
Over the past year, Egypt has seized
several weapons consignments that originated in Libya, including in Marsa
Matruh.
According to a report in The Washington Post last year, large
caches of weapons have flooded into Egypt from Libya, including surface-to-air
missiles, rockets and anti-aircraft guns. The missiles are smuggled into Sinai
and then into Gaza via networks of tunnels.
In addition to Libya, weapons
are also being smuggled into Gaza and Sinai from Sudan and from Lebanon, via
Iranian proxy Hezbollah.
And now that we have agreed to a 'cease fire' that does nothing to stop it, we can expect weapons smuggling to resume while the Egyptians turn a blind eye when they're not abetting it.
What could go wrong?
Labels: Egypt, Gaza, Hamas, Libya, weapons smuggling
Obama's problem from hell
Jackson Diehl discusses how President Obama's 'leading from behind,' which Diehl overly generously refers to as a '
light footprint,' is likely to plague the President in the second term.
A new report
by the Rand Corporation concludes that “this lighter-footprint approach
has made Libya a test case for a new post-Iraq and Afghanistan model of
nation-building.” But the result is that, a year after the death of
dictator Moammar Gaddafi, Libya is policed by what amounts to a mess of
militias. Its newly elected government has little authority over most of
the country’s armed men — much less the capacity to take on the
jidhadist forces gathering in and around Benghazi.
The Rand study
concludes that stabilizing Libya will require disarming and demobilizing
the militias and rebuilding the security forces “from the bottom up.”
This, it says, probably can’t happen without help from “those countries
that participated in the military intervention” — i.e. the United
States, Britain and France. Can the Obama administration duplicate the
security-force-building done in Iraq and Afghanistan in Libya while
sticking to the light footprint? It’s hard to see how.
Obama’s
team may be betting that it can control the jihadist threat in North
Africa the way it has countered al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula — with
drone strikes and training for local special forces. But the drone leg of Obama’s strategy is looking shaky, as well. Opposition to drone strikes is growing steadily domestically and among U.S. allies — not to mention in the countries where the attacks take place.
A paper
by Robert Chesney of the University of Texas points out that if strikes
begin to target countries in North Africa and groups not directly
connected to the original al-Qaeda leadership, problems with their legal
justification under U.S. and international law “will become
increasingly apparent and problematic.” And that doesn’t account for the
political fallout: Libyan leaders say U.S. drone strikes would destroy
the goodwill America earned by helping the revolution.
At best,
Libya will be a steady, low-grade headache for Obama in his second term.
But the worst blowback from his policies will come in Syria. What began
as a peaceful mass rebellion against another Arab dictator has turned,
in the absence of U.S. leadership, into a brutal maelstrom of sectarian
war in which al-Qaeda and allied jihadists
are playing a growing role. Obama’s light footprint strategy did much
to produce this mess; without a change of U.S. policy, it will become,
like Bosnia for Bill Clinton or Iraq for George W. Bush, the second
term’s “problem from hell.”
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, leading from behind, Libya, Syrian uprising
