It’s more and more difficult to write about the Islamist war
against Western civilization. Not because there is too little to
write, or because the fronts in that war are quiet. It’s tough to
do because fewer people seem to give a damn each week.
Maybe the stark ironies of the war could bestir people to think
about it. For those who still care, here are a few of those ironies
that would be fodder for late night comedians if they weren’t so
bloody serious.
As usual, there is Obamaworld and — on the other side of the
looking glass — there’s reality.
The “Arab Spring” broke out in March of last year. Since then,
dictators in Egypt and Libya have been replaced by Islamist
governments, both of which will prove to be as bad or worse than
the dictators they replaced. (NB: I use the term Islamist instead
of “radical Islamist” because the word “radical” is a redundancy.
There is no form of Islamism — as opposed to Islam — that isn’t
inherently radical, supportive of terrorism and Islamic global
hegemony.)
Meanwhile, back in Syria, the Arab Spring revolt is now over a
year old. Which brings us to the irony of the week.
Yesterday’s Washington Post had a long knuckle-rubbing
article about whether Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons
might fall into the hands of “militants,” WaPo’s latest
euphemism for jihadis. Trudging through a story that was meant to
assure us that our spec ops guys would seize the chemical weapons
before the “militants” grabbed them, I came across the
following:
While the stockpiles appear secure at the moment, they could be
plundered or simply abandoned if Syrian troops are beaten back by
increasingly well-armed rebels or by al-Qaeda militants who have
been streaming into the country from Iraq in recent weeks,
intelligence officials say.
Setting aside the term “al-Qaeda militants” for the moment, how
many al-Q’s does it take to make a weeks-long stream of them? Five?
Five hundred? And who believes that we’ll have good enough
intelligence in time for our spec ops guys to seize the chemical
weapons before al-Qaeda (or Hizballah) does?
We’ve been assured time and again that al Qaeda has been
defeated in Iraq and reduced to a token force in Afghanistan. On
May 1, Obama said that the defeat of al Qaeda is “within our reach”
and that we have broken the Taliban’s “momentum” in Afghanistan
(whatever that means). But why can’t the Taliban as rapidly regain
its momentum there as al Qaeda has in Iraq?
Taliban leader Mullah Omar is still very much alive (probably in
a comfy condo somewhere in Pakistan) and is probably mullahing over
the Taliban’s slogan: “Americans have the watches, but we have the
time.” Obama’s latest agreement with Afghan President Karzai
requires Afghan permission for spec ops raids on suspected Taliban,
ending the effectiveness of those raids and putting the lives of
our guys at risk due to the near-certainty of leaks to the Taliban
of any planned raids.
When he committed American forces to war in Libya, Obama’s
administration justified it by saying it was authorized by a UN
Security Council resolution. Not a constitutional congressional
authorization for war, which Obama apparently believes is
irrelevant. And the irony was that then-Defense Secretary Bob Gates
said that there were no U.S. interests at risk in Libya. Regardless
of the UN, our intervention in Libya was a bad idea but removing
Assad isn’t.
Syria, since 1979, has been a designated state sponsor of
terrorism. Damascus has been a virtual terrorist hiring hall, with
terror groups using it as an operational base as well as raising
and banking funds and gathering and stockpiling arms for their use.
Hizballah — the terrorist group that has more American blood on
its hands than any other except al Qaeda — is a Syrian proxy force
also supported by Iran. If ever a regime deserved to be toppled, it
is Syria’s.
The NATO summit that began yesterday in Chicago is intended to
provide political and financial cover for our withdrawal from
Afghanistan. The European governments attending the summit with
Obama and Hamid Karzai won’t be willing to contribute more funding
to help pay the $4 billion per year cost of the Afghanistan effort.
Given the mess in the Speurozone, they can’t afford to.
The greatest irony of the year is that Obama is touted as a
master of national security and foreign policy. Yes, an operation
he approved killed bin Laden. But the only other evidence of that
mastery is the Nobel Peace Prize he was awarded in 2009, apparently
in anticipation of his great deeds. His record is, simply,
appalling.
Remember Honduras? In 2009, after the Honduran supreme court
removed dictator wannabe Manuel Zelaya, who was constitutionally
precluded from succeeding himself, the Obama administration labeled
it a “coup d’état” and refused to stand behind the democratic
temporary government. (Zelaya’s successor was later chosen in a
national election.)
Israel — and the threat it faces from Iran — is Obama’s
greatest failure. Obama has been in office for nearly four years,
but he has yet to visit Israel. His enmity toward Prime Minister
Netanyahu has led to Israel’s isolation. The gap between the two
men means that when Israel decides to take military action against
Iran, as it must, we will probably not know anything about it until
the operation is underway. The distrust between the two leaders is
that great.
England, whose Prime Minister reportedly was tucked in bed on
Air Force One by Obama on the return flight from an NCAA basketball
game, may have thought that the “special relationship” forged by
FDR and Churchill was still alive. That thought evaporated after
Obama’s declaration that America was neutral in the face of
Argentina’s revival of the Falkland Islands dispute over which it
began a war with the UK thirty years ago.
Poland, which was promised a ground-based missile defense system
by President Bush, was stunned by Obama’s sudden reversal. He
promised, instead, a sea-based system that our Navy lacks the
numbers of ships to provide, and which has no plan or budget to
build them.
As badly as our allies have been treated, Obama has embraced our
enemies as much or more. Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Pakistan
openly support Islamist terrorism around the globe. Saudi Arabia,
hiding under cover of secretive Islamic banking transactions, is
still funding terrorist groups. Russian opposition to missile
defenses for Europe is likely the principal subject of Obama’s
sotto voce message for Putin that he’ll have “more
flexibility” once he’s re-elected.
Obama’s appeasement of Iran is manifest. Congress passed
increased sanctions against Iran last year. In March, Obama
exempted Japan and ten European nations from compliance with those
sanctions. Iran’s nuclear program continues without any effective
American action against it.
All told, Obama’s actions are succeeding in his one goal: to
push all the decisions Americans care about past Election Day. In
that, and only in that, is his mastery of foreign policy
evident.
