With Syria slowly evaporating into a smoldering ruin, Egypt exploding on the brink of full scale civil war, Israel ratcheting up its Palestinian problem, Iraq deteriorating into a religious civil war and Iran continuing it expand its nuclear capabilities we are forced to look at the middle-East and wonder if the best policy there isn’t to step back and hope that it all goes up in a self-immolating cataclysm.
Unfortunately that’s neither practical nor humanely acceptable but it is a tempting thought. That said, the political attacks on Obama because of his supposed leading from behind posture are nothing more than that, political rhetoric.
What Obama has, or has not done, in search of Middle-East peace. has been almost wholly dictated by this country’s majority, that same majority that voted for him in the last election. And isn’t that as it should be? The right, led by POW McCain, still looking for redress for his war experiences, has continually pounded the table in favor of bigger and more expansive military action, but it was just that kind of military action, instituted by the Bush/ Cheney Council of Dumb that has left the Middle-East in exactly the unstable situation, in which it now finds itself.
Considering the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, there appears to be one rock solid, inviolate rule that must be applied all across the Middle-East; boots on the ground are forbidden. That still leaves Obama with numerous strategies, none of which need be publicly discussed in order for them to go into effect. The fact is that many of them have already gone into effect while much of what has been demanded by the right would have been disastrous if it had been attempted.
Obama sat back and let the Benghazi affair burn itself out. That’s what he should have done. It was a CIA affair, not as incorrectly announced by the camera seeking right, a State Department affair. His only mistake was to let UN Secretary Rice get involved at all. The CIA was running that mission, every knowledgeable, reputable source that has commented on it agrees on that point. The CIA should have protected the mission. They didn’t. End of story.
Obama has moved ahead in getting out of Iraq and getting near to getting out of Afghanistan. The idiot cabal that wanted us to stay in Iraq until it had established a stable government doesn’t understand that Iraq, in their entire history, only had a stable government under an oppressive dictator and that they probably, because of their religious differences, will never have one again. Staying there until they reached stability would have meant committing American kids to that hell-hole for a thousand years. Even as this is being written car bombs are going off all over Iraq. Thank God our kids aren’t there to be targets.
The same problems exist throughout the rest of the Middle-East. Trillions in oil revenues have not transformed most of the area from third world, tribal societies, ruled by religious fanatics, under laws that would not normally be acceptable to monkeys, into modern nation states.
Asking the President of an at least semi-civilized, (lately there is some doubt), nation to find solutions to the problems of such people is definitely a far stretch.
Obama has done about the best that can be expected in Syria. This is a false nation, made up of tribal loyalties, ruled by a minority, jammed into power by colonial imperialists, without regard for any of the societal existence that preceded it for centuries. Now it is exploding. Big surprise. Obama shoved the CIA into the breech but as anyone who has watched the past seventy years of CIA involvements knows, they have a serious knack for flubbing the dub.
The one thing that our intelligence services had to find out in Syria was who should we arm, who was equipped organizationally, militarily and politically to, beat Asaad, and then, not turn on us after they had won. We still have no definitive answer and until we do it is senseless to put our power on the line for anyone. Obama knows this but he is, as have been so many of his predecessors, the victim of intelligence incompetence. So he appears to be vacillating but what he’s really doing is treading water until our massive intelligence machine comes up with a couple of usable facts, the main one being who can we trust; who won’t turn around and join up with al Qaeda the minute Assad is vanquished. Until that fact is established, no functional action can be taken in Syria and no one in our intelligence establishment has been able to give that information to the President.
Maybe if our intelligence establishment worried a little less about the people who are leaking their incompetence and stupidity to the public and a lot more about finding out what is really going on in the world we would all be better off.
Egypt is even more complicated because these are a people who have some sense of political stability and have tried the democratic process and found it wanting. They got their democratic election without bothering to find out how the whole process worked and because it was so hurried they didn’t bother with a primary, the result of which omission was, the election of a minority candidate. In brief there were a number of non-religious parties who far outnumbered the Muslim Brotherhood but they split the vote among themselves so the Brotherhood won the election. Then, Morsi, the new president turned around and began trying to install himself as the next Nassar. This brought on riots, which gave the army an excuse to dump Morsi and install their own guy. Now the pro-Morsi people, the Muslim Brotherhood are rioting, saying they had a democratically elected guy in office and the army is out of line. To make matters worse the Army is now shooting at rioters and we have a lot of dead Muslim Brothers. This is how you define chaos.
Everybody is screaming that Obama isn’t doing anything about this mess. The first question I ask the people who want action is; what action do you want? This is a sovereign nation that is having an interior problem brought about by lack of knowledge of a political system they got from us and are now trying to implement without learning the rules. What the hell is Obama supposed to be doing about this that every other leader of the free world isn’t also being unsuccessful at?
He has already stopped delivery of some jets to the army to encourage them to holster arms and not shoot any more rioters but this is strictly Egyptian business and we have no more right to tell them what to do about their problem than say, Bolivia has to tell us how to treat Edward Snowden.
There are al lot of Obama’s policies with which I disagree, his whistleblower invasion of the press being the most egregious but there really doesn’t seem to be much that he can do in the Middle-East that he isn’t doing and that’s not much.
We have already spent decades sticking our noses into other countries business, usually with disastrous results. Much of what is currently wrong with the Middle-East is unquestionably the result of foreign conquerors messing with their interior politics and the rest has been strongly influenced by our brain dead, costly invasions.
Our current terrorist execution policy, which seems to do an unconscionable amount of collateral damage, only exacerbates the locals hate for us. You don’t make friends and influence people by killing their kids.
The Middle-East has been a political quagmire for a thousand years. Contrary to out hubristic beliefs we don’t know better, in fact we haven’t a clue as to how to solve their problems.
The Bush’s and Cheney got us into this latest mess but in fact every president since Teddy Roosevelt has lusted after Middle-East oil. Maybe someday we will have a president who understands that the answer to the world energy problems isn’t in the ground but in the sky, where contrary to the fossil fuel industry’s propaganda the costs will be less and we won’t have to suffocate our children or poison their drinking water to get it.