Perspective:Our Middle East Policy

The current Administration has done everything that they can to disrupt the Middle East. They encouraged the Egyptian Brotherhood to kick Hosni Mubarak out of office, then they led from behind to remove Moammar Gadhafy in Libya, while rebels upset the governments in Tunisia and Mali. Notwithstanding what the rebels did to us in Benghazi our State Department continued to demand that Bashal Al Assad of Syria, who is deeply immersed in a civil war, also be removed from office. Obama announced a military surge in Afghanistan at the same time he announced a pull-out date, and he prematurely left Iraq without securing any kind of agreement to help Iraq. Now, the President wants the United States to unilaterally attack Syria because he is convinced that Assad used chemical weapons against innocent children.

One wonders how long a string of collapsed regimes in the Middle East that Obama wants? Moreover, the Administration seems to pay little if any attention to the true allegiance of the Islamic rebels despite its being known that in every case the rebels throughout these failed regimes are imbedded with a goodly splash of Al Qaeda and their affiliates. If the Administration keeps up this unbelievable policy, it will only be a matter of time until there is an all out war between the Sunnis and the Shiites across the entire region. If this happens, the supply of oil from the Middle East will be severely disrupted, if not cut off altogether.

Watching our President, our elected representatives and their employed “experts’ trying to deal with Syria whom they claim used Sarin, a toxic nerve gas, to kill hundreds of their innocent children is disappointing to say the very least. This must be the most incompetent foreign policy team our Nation has ever produced. They can’t decide what the Syrian problem is, don’t seem to know what to do and can’t decide who should take responsibility for solving it. But if we had a leading from the front President instead of one who leads-from-behind, he would insist that the UN take responsibility for finding a way to stop the use of chemical weapons in Syria, and he would work tirelessly to persuade the rest of the world.

The chemical weapons use in Syria is clearly one for the UN to handle. After all, except for Syria and a handful of other countries, 189 nations signed an agreement in 1997 to ban the use of such weapons. It is interesting to note that in nearly every issue of this type, Obama and his supporting progressives want to delegate such problems to the United Nations. In fact the UN is already involved but has not completed their examination of what chemicals were used and by whom. So, why not let the UN handle the entire problem? Well, that is because Russia and China are blocking any such action, and none of our major allies sees fit to do anything.

Luckily our current Secretary of State, John Kerry in London the other day answered a reporter’s question as to why the UN should not deal with the problem. Instead of ignoring it, Kerry made the gaff that it might work but he stated that he doubted that it would work. Then, within an hour, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, called to say in effect, hey, that’s not a bad idea, and then Assad seconded the motion saying that all his chemical weapons could be turned over, and he would join the countries banning such weapons.

We can all thank Secretary Kerry for stumbling onto the correct plan. Assad says he did not use chemical weapons; he is willing to turn them over to an international entity and will join the rest of the nations banning chemical weapons. If all this happens, he will not have them to use again. So, regardless what we think of Assad, the Administration gets the limited goal it says it wants, namely, that Syria never uses chemical weapons again.

Before we leave this Syrian question, lets explore how we got here and what the Administration wanted to happen. Someone used chemical weapons to kill about 1400 innocent Syrian persons including 400 children. Obama is convinced that Assad did it, and that if not stopped, he will do it again. Now, stop for a minute and ask yourself what Assad had to gain by performing such a heinous act? He is already winning the civil war, and he must know that if he used such weapons the US and probably many other countries would go bananas. On the other hand we know that the rebels want the US support. What better way to gain that than to find some chemical weapons, kill some children and make it look like Assad did it.

Regardless of the truth of who did what to whom, the US was ready to take unilateral action, without allies, to bomb Assad assets. Such action in effect would have put the US on the side of the rebels, whether claimed or not. Do we really want to take down another regime in the Middle East and leave it in the hands of the Islamic rebels many of whom are Al Qaeda and their affiliates?