Perspective: What Middle East Policy?

If the United States has a Middle East Policy one would not know it unless the policy is to destroy the Middle East. Take a look at this brief history of how the area was structured over the past century or so, and then see what our President has done in the past four years to upset it.

After World War I the territory known as the Ottoman Empire was divided into separate countries by the European Allies. These countries include Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the Persian Gulf States. France controlled Syria and Lebanon, and the United Kingdom controlled Iraq, Palestine and Jordan. They are mostly Sunni Muslim, and they were governed by kings or dictators, and they remained more or less stable right up to the present century. Even Persia, now called Iran, whose Muslim religion is Shiite, has been stable. Consequently, when oil was discovered in the early 1900’s it could be successfully developed by the Western Nations, principally the United States.

Then beginning in 2011, aided and abetted by the President of the United States, key Sunni dictatorships were removed leaving governmental vacuums. Consider these events that occurred that year:
•January, President Obama supported the removal of President Mubarak of Egypt
•October, President Obama helped kill Mudmmar Gaddafi of Libya
•December, President Obama, against all military and diplomatic advice, pulled all US troops out of Iraq, before Iraq was able to defend itself.

The US President subsequently encouraged Islamic radicals in their attempt to remove Bashar al-Assad from Syria. Of the several radical groups the strongest Islamic radical group is named ISIS, which is an outgrowth of al Queda. ISIS took over vast areas of Syria from which they then invaded Iraq. Within days they promptly overran the Iraq army capturing all the major cities to within miles of Baghdad. ISIS calls this land a Caliphate, and is now adding Libya, Tunisia, Yemen and other Middle Eastern lands to this Caliphate .

As though this were not bad enough, on November 2013, President entered into the first negotiations with Iran in 36 years to stop them from building an atomic bomb. Iran has been the avowed enemy of the Sunni nations, Israel and the United States and the major supporter of terrorists Hamas and Hezbollah. Of course, everyone expects Iran to renege on whatever deal is made, so Iran will get the bomb! This will cause the Sunni nations to want to and they will be able to buy the bomb. There is no telling what Israel will do. Therefore, it is not difficult to predict that the Middle East could be aflame in a decade or two thus jeopardizing its huge oil reserves and oil production facilities.

While the Middle East is in a complete state of anxiety and fear of the Islamic terrorists, the United States has done nothing of consequence to aid such vulnerable allies as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the other Gulf States who are pleading for US leadership. Worse we snubbed newly elected President Sisi of Egypt, who saved Egypt from radical Islamists and who just gave a talk totally supporting the US position against Islamic Jihadism. At the very time that anti-Semitism is sweeping Europe and Jews are planning to move to Israel to escape to safety, we are treating our ally Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, as though it were our enemy.

Further, the President’s unwillingness to lead is costing us the support of the very Muslims we need most as allies against Islamic Extremism. Muslims in the Middle East, indeed in the world, have been terrorized into inaction by the brutal Islamic Jihadists who live among them. Imagine yourself in their place when you see Christians and Jews being beheaded for their being infidels, and you know that if you, a Muslim, were to disagree with the Islamic Extremists, you too would be called an infidel and treated the same way! What would you do?

What is so sad is that our Middle East allies will have to endure two more years without America’s leadership. This will virtually assure that more Christians, Jews and good Muslims will be brutally slaughtered by ISIS, and it will attract radicalized Muslims from over the world to go to the new Caliphate making the Middle East even more unstable.

Despite the fact that three of our Secretaries of Defense have resigned over this, and two have written books expressing their fear of the rise of ISIS, our politicians nevertheless still lack the political will to challenge this President’s reckless lack of leadership.