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Loose Canons
Obama’s Unstable Middle East
Subordinating American military power to the whims and caprices of the UN crowd.
(Page 2 of 2)
Iraq’s increasing instability probably foreshadows the next violent rebellion in the Middle East. Iran, the historic enemy of Iraq, is eagerly awaiting our final withdrawal this summer. Maliki’s government is not likely to survive the year.
And Lebanon’s Hizballah may wait another year or two to begin yet another war with Israel. Hizballah has been re-armed massively since the last conflict in 2006. Tens of thousands of missiles aimed at Israel ensure against an Israeli attack against Iran. Israel — under continuous pressure over settlements and suffering brutal murders by Palestinian terrorists — sits on a razor’s edge. It can only avoid devastating attacks by Hizballah if it continues to acquiesce in Iran’s nuclear progress.
Weakness is provocative, as former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld is fond of saying. Obama’s doctrine of multilateralism — subordinating American power and interests to the will of other nations — is a profession of weakness to all the terror-sponsoring nations.
Across the Middle East, Obama’s doctrine is provoking our enemies to action. What is happening in Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Iraq and Tunisia is only beginning to show its effect.
Gaddafi has promised a long war and he may be able to make good on the promise. But what will we do? Are we prepared for another long war, straining our already-stretched military resources further to no apparent purpose?
Obama’s decision to use military force in Libya was wrong, and it compounds his — and his predecessor’s — mistakes in the war the terror-sponsors wage against us. We have entered a fight at the UN’s behest. Will Obama await UN approval to withdraw our forces? Will he commit our forces to an endless UN “peacekeeping” operation there? We — and the terror sponsors in Tehran, Damascus, and elsewhere — eagerly await his answer.
About the Author
Jed Babbin served as a Deputy Undersecretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush. He is the author of several bestselling books including Inside the Asylum and In the Words of Our Enemies. You can follow him on Twitter @jedbabbin.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (37) | Leave a comment
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Melvin| 3.21.11 @ 7:53AM
Well little Barry seems to have a quite a large problem on his hands doesn't he? So little time in public office, but so much damage political, and physical will take succeeding Presidents years upon years to straighten out, until another idealistic buffoon stumbles into Pennsylvania Ave. and we have to start all over again.
That is if we are still around to start all over again.
Timothy L. Pennell| 3.21.11 @ 9:44AM
"And I saw the BEAST rise from the Sea. And he was given a MOUTH, to speak Haughty and Blasphemous words. And he was allowed to exercise authority for forty two Months." Revelation 13-5.
So, you see, he doesn't have any problems. Everything is going according to plan, perfectly.
He has WEAKENED the ONE COUNTRY, capable of standing up to EVIL. And he is CONSOLIDATING the Enemies of ISRAEL.
He runs around Playing Golf, Throwing Lavish Parties, Dining on KOBE BEEF and IRANIAN CAVIAR, having his Personal PIZZA GUY and her personal TRAINER flown in to D.C. every week, and going on FABULOUS VACATIONS, while we stand in SOUP LINES and the WORLD BURNS, because HE DOESN'T CARE.
The Son of a Muslim/Marxist and an Atheist/Communist. Raised in Muslim Kenya and Muslim Indonesia? A man who surrounds himself with EVIL, all his life?
A guy who surrounds himself with Communists/Marxists/Maoists/Terrorists/White Haters/Jew Haters/ Christian Haters/AMERICA HATERS, all his life, is the President of the United States? And he refuses to stop BANKRUTING us, and WEAKENING our ability to FIGHT OUR ENEMIS, and EMBOLDENING OUR ENEMIES, and lashing out, ONLY, at GOD'S Chosen People: ISRAEL.
You can't make it up.
He knew what he was saying, when he said: "We are the ones we've been waiting for."
So HAUGHTY. So BLASPHEMOUS. Don't you agree?
The thing is, he wasn't talking to US.
Alan Brooks| 3.21.11 @ 12:49PM
"He runs around Playing Golf, Throwing Lavish Parties, Dining on KOBE BEEF and IRANIAN CAVIAR, having his Personal PIZZA GUY and her personal TRAINER flown in to D.C. every week, and going on FABULOUS VACATIONS"
You want the president of the US to eat bologna sandwiches off paper plates?? so you think only whites can live the good life?
Tim the Enchanter| 3.21.11 @ 2:09PM
You're a jerk. Plain English.
Sam Levi| 3.21.11 @ 2:29PM
What's wrong with Bologna sandwhiches off of a paper plate? I have to do it routinely, why shouldn't the alleged President?
Rip Phillips| 3.21.11 @ 2:42PM
Why the liberal racist hate?
LiveFreeOrDie| 3.21.11 @ 3:04PM
Such a ridiculous statement doesn't rate a rebuttal, just wanted to point out it's always the lib who inserts race into any conversation.
WhiteBikerTrash| 3.21.11 @ 3:14PM
Alan, can we agree on something? Obama is half white! raised for the most part in an upper middle class white suburb, by his upper middle class grandmother and grandfather! So why is it that you and others like you push his "Blackness"? He has as much connection with the Black poor as he does with the American Indian poor on the reservation!
Louis Jenkins| 3.21.11 @ 8:15AM
Let's wake up America. Do we really care about the mis-mash of Arab countries doing this and that? Do we really care who is in control of a patch of sand? All we really want is what is brought out of the ground-oil. How did we get this way? Hillary and the United Nations? Obama and the EU? The current administration isn't going to drill locally, and they've so much as said so last week. The USA is going to continue to trade off souls for oil when we have plenty here at home. A waste of manpower and resources. When are those dumb heads going to awake?
Michael L. Hauschild| 3.21.11 @ 8:58AM
Spot on, Mr. Babbin. The UN is a committee, committees do not win Wars. Obama is not acting as President of the United States (and as such Commander in Chief of the American Forces). He has deferred our “Super Power” status and become a vassal to the League of Nations. Our Military has taken the brunt of a series of milquetoast leaders who suffer under the delusion that their mission, is not to win wars but to participate in conflicts. We never get to attend the surrender ceremony, no one even knows what “reparations” are, and the rebuilding process consists mostly of providing arms so that losers can protect themselves from the next “no-fly zone” domino.
Mimi| 3.21.11 @ 9:06AM
I'm a GO for a few days... to prevent any massacre. The now " Old Views of The 20th Century" ....genocide, holicost are over! This better be a short venture! We need "OIL" today, tomorrow and maybe 50 - 100 years...To starve us of our ability to get it for ourselves is blatent folly for this administration...60's flower children..time to grow -up. We have a large, huge country sea to sea..many roads..cars get us to work !....we are NOT Europe! GET REAL, GET DRILLING.!!!
Thomas| 3.21.11 @ 10:08AM
Let me ask a question of my own here. Under what tenet of international law is the United States invading the sovereign territory of Libya? Muammar Gaddafhi is the internationally recognized leader of the internationally recognized government of Libya. He, and his government, are engaged in defending them selves from the armed attack of insurrectionist rebels. This civil war has not threatened any neighboring country, it is a purely internal matter. There is no legal justification for the actions taken by France, Great Britain and the United States.
Now, Muammar is a very bad guy. And our sympathies may lie with the rebels. Material assistance, communication assistance and even intelligence assistance, to the rebels, may be justifiable. But, we have gone far beyond that. The U.S has physically attacked the legitimate government of a sovereign nation. We are waging war against Libya, illegally. Whether we have "interests" in a country, or not, does not effect the legal aspects of invasion. If we are justified in invading Libya under these circumstances, then China would be justified in invading the U.S. if widespread civil unrest occurs here.
This ignores the broader question of just exactly who are we supporting in this conflict. Who are the rebels and what do they want, beyond the removal of Muammar Gaddafhi? Exactly how righteous is our cause, here?
These " wag the dog" situations never turn out well.
Alan Brooks| 3.21.11 @ 12:51PM
"Under what tenet of international law is the United States invading the sovereign territory of Libya"
We are BOMBING, not invading.
LiveFreeOrDie| 3.21.11 @ 3:18PM
/sarc
Oh right, good point...
/sarc off
russ in nc| 3.21.11 @ 10:16AM
I think the attack on Libya is legal because the United Nations is saying it's okay. As for what the US Congress has to say...no one cares.
Thomas| 3.21.11 @ 11:19AM
So, if the UN says it's alright to attack the U.S, for any reason, this would make it legal? How about if the UN says decides to tax your income, or regulate emissions in the U.S. or any of a hundred other internal matters in the U.S.? Would that be legal?
Think about it.
Alan Brooks| 3.21.11 @ 12:53PM
russ is being sarcastic, Thomas! you can't see so right off?
Sam Levi| 3.21.11 @ 2:32PM
Why not? They are already trying to nullify our Second Amendment rights.
tv22| 3.21.11 @ 10:29AM
Sort of funny that liberals seem to miss that there is only one reason to try to "stabilize" Libya while far worse atrocities have happened and continue to happen in other places - oil. Imagine the howling that would be going on had this happened three years ago!
Unfortunately, the President has no goal and therefore no exit strategy other than a time based metric, which he seems to favor in fluid situations such as military action. Such metrics of course require the cooperation of the people you are trying to kill. So if a Libyan civil war continues to rage, are we just going to walk away and let things really go to hell?
Who Knows?| 3.21.11 @ 12:04PM
The fish rots from the head down.
To kill the snake, you must cut off the head.
Statement one refers to the USA, as led by Obama, who was chosen by the American people. What’s that stinky odor in D.C.?
Why, it came from---all across America!
Picture it---a majority of rotten, verily fat and fat headed sick citizens, from places like liberal Portland, Oregon, smugly positive in their “disease”, actively sending their offal to Washington, D.C., and other political environs, via FREE VOTES.
And, D.C., itself, a sucking cesspool of longstanding, eagerly attracting such nihilistic emanations from afar.
What a PUSH-PULL!
Outside America, myriad “countries” are controlled by snakes like Gaddafi, who’ve managed to bite their way to close to absolute power. (Of course, there are the enemies within America, as well, as dumbed down citizens have taken their shots and come up snake eyes, by and nihilistically LARGE.)
So, the rotting fish, America, with head Obama, in the battle du jour, takes on the snake of Libya.
Who could, logically, expect the rotten fish head to even TRY to cut off the snake head?
Opportunity is knocking, and we hear you, but you can’t come in!
Just as I long ago understood the scam that is global warming, and all “green” revolutions cum socialistic endeavors, likewise it is getting SO OLD to have to wallow in ongoing stupidity about the snake Islam!
Someday, if maybe America survives, the majority of its citizens will then be in agreement about SNAKES circa 2011, just as we are now about Chamberlain and Hitler in Munich.
The clearest way, perhaps, to NOW be in such truth, is to recognize that we are living through a series of “\Munich” events. How else can we see Obama’s “treaty” with Iran, following the 2009 uprising there against their stolen “elections”?
Yes---one TRULY need not give any more attention to the “Earth is flat” global warming scam---
AND, all you need to know about the Islamic SNAKE is that unless the HEAD of Iran is attacked, and eventually severed, Libya et al are just distracting details. Of course, Saudi Arabia must, in its turn, with its Wahabbi “schools”, be cut off, as well.
All the rest are minor details, in the big picture.
As Jesus, and all God Realized humans might say---
Come slowly, or come quickly, but SURELY come to Me.
PS---consider the following quote from “The Politics of Experience”, by R.D. Laing, a British psychiatrist, written in 1967:
“Man, most fundamentally, is not engaged in the discovery of what is there, nor in production, nor even in communication, nor in invention. He is enabling being to emerge from nonbeing.
…..
There are men who feel called upon to generate even themselves out of nothing, since their underlying feeling is that they have not been adequately created or have been created only for destruction.” Pages 42-43
That last sentence seems to me to perfectly encapsulate the essence of the top MEN of Islam----they are most definitely NOT adequately created, and ARE destruction, animated: Shiva = the Destroyer.
jillosophy| 3.21.11 @ 12:09PM
How does that saying go? "People get the government they deserve"? Let the ME burn. If they are all eventually governed by islamist theocracies, so be it. If they then continue to attack us from inside & outside our borders with their different versions of jihad - end them once and for all. Simple. Until then, live and let die. Tragic, but that is the reality.
diviz| 3.21.11 @ 12:19PM
How is attack and proable invasion of Libiya distinguished from the invasion of Iraq?
GavInTucson| 3.21.11 @ 1:26PM
Well, one thing that distinguishes one from the other is that Bush got authorization from the Congress to do so.
Øbama has not.
Doctor Right| 3.21.11 @ 12:24PM
"Obama's doctrine is destabilizing the Middle Eastern nations that are at best unreliably aligned with us while our principal enemies -- the terror-sponsoring nations such as Iran and Syria -- are unaffected by his ministrations."
That's pretty much sums up the situation, doesn't it?
The question now becomes a matter of motive.
loulou| 3.21.11 @ 12:46PM
When Arabs are killing Arabs we best stay out of the way.
Leo| 3.21.11 @ 1:50PM
Agreed 100%,
When your enemies are destroying each other, stay out of their way. Unfortunately current occupant in WH is pushing this country into
uncharted waters. As palin said only death fish goes with the flow so is BHO.
Seek| 3.21.11 @ 12:57PM
Why is it that the most butt-ugly of the Arabs are the ones who are most attracted to Islamic fundamentalism? Come to think of it, has anyone here ever met a handsome fundamentalist of any religion? Bad looks and bad thinking seem to go hand in hand.
Will| 3.21.11 @ 1:02PM
So, it begs the question, where is Mo-mah? North Korea?, Zimbabwe? Farrakhan's house? Why on earth would you bomb the joint but let the beast live to fight another day? Oh yeah, I keep forgetting, you play for the other team.
LK| 3.21.11 @ 1:03PM
Aren't these "rebels" in Libya, you know the ones we always see on tv acting out on the "arab street" the same ones who were dancing and celebrating when 3000 Americans were killed in the twin towers?
Jeb you are right on as usual.
LiveFreeOrDie| 3.21.11 @ 3:22PM
Yes. Why else would Obama protect them?
OLDRAY| 3.21.11 @ 1:35PM
Good article by Mr Babbin. Excellent post by Mr Pennell. Obama has given the initiative to Iran and associated terrorists. It will cost us dearly in lives and treasure. In like fashion (but for far different reasons) Netanyahu has allowed Hamas and Hizbollah to build up steadily and permitted Obama policy to block him from attacking the source of evil in Iran. This hesitant policy can prove deadly to Israel and threaten Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.
Richard Baker| 3.21.11 @ 1:45PM
The Kenyan needs to have his head examined. Subordinating the US to the Star Wars bar set which occupies most of the UN is absolutely NUTS. This clown is not calculating or smart. He's in WAY over his head and the country is, of course, more beloved internationally since he became President, sure. He gives mediocrity a bad name.
Sam Levi| 3.21.11 @ 2:26PM
I personally feel that if Iran wants nuclear weapons so badly that we and the Israelis should by all means send them a few.
"Dear Iran,
You wanted nuclear weapons? You should have them in about 8 minutes. Hope you have lots of SPF. Catch!
Regards,
Infidel"
martin j smith| 3.21.11 @ 3:48PM
Obama does nothing with concern for himself and his personal aggrandisement and of course his political standing and power. So wither his notion of Libya: Well don't blame me if it fails--I was pushed into this by France,Great Britain,Clinton,Bush, Bush and more Bush. Unless,Obama has told his "allies"that he will be in this only if it succeeds in his terms or else-adios amigos. Lets see if the Socialist Left gets into anti-war street protests and lets see if the US Left gets into anti-war protests. Then lets see how Obama handles this. If Obama defies his base --I would say that he needs psychiatric help at least on a reality base level. But beyond that lets see how the MSM anti-war crowd plays this out. But beyond that i would now and have asked the question if the Europeans are so concerned about how the people of Libya are treated--what about Iran ? After having see the Socialist Left in the US and Europe and other places in action the only conclusion I have is this: Its about the political benefit and economic benefit of the US and Europe to the extent that OIL is king and that is the one area of agreement.
Nite| 3.21.11 @ 7:24PM
Obama and the Lefties have a plan and it will not be for the good of the US and Israel. He has pretty much eliminated our friends and is promoting our enemies. Hummm, he also seems pretty friendly with the Muslim Brotherhood, who has been behind a lot of these uprisings.
Dee See| 3.21.11 @ 11:47PM
---AS Fukishima and those radiation particles
now coming down in California, on top of the
usual Barium. Cadmium CHEM-trails
---AS our RED China Free Traitors remain just
that
---AS the VERY REAL likelihood of regime change
in Beijing in the face of 'genocide consciousness'
is never, ever mentioned ANYWHERE
---AS there's still not a word about defaulting on
the absurd Globalist FAKE currency debt-creation
---AS Britain and France continue to be flooded by the Third World, and as America's borders
dissolve in the wake of Janet Napolitano's secret
agreement with Mexico to issue 80 MILLION
'trusted traveller' (i.e. GREEN) cards
---AS our entire Rockefeller 'Council of Churches'
ARMINIAN Heresy dispensing religious establishment, when not promoting sodomy,
remains utterly silent while preaching compliance
and 'submission'
---AS third generation EUGENISTS a la Bill Gates dictate
agendas, finance, direct and design our 5 decades reigning 'suicide culture'
AS WE AWAIT
------------------------HUAC meets NUREMBERG
Creative Recreation | 8.10.11 @ 11:42PM
is good