There has been little comment about Obama’s withdrawal plans from Iraq probably because most people understandably want to forget that muddled affair. However we will be throwing away the fruits of our victory and it is disturbing to see Iraq slowly but gradually fall under the influence of Iran. As Miss Glick writes, a “war on terror” is merely a war on a tactic which the enemy employs – and that enemy is radical Islam. While rightfully criticizing the haphazard Obama administration, she lays a lot of blame on the previous administration for not clearly defining the enemy. I am glad that Miss Glick referred to Gaddafi as an impotent adversary which is what he was.
by Caroline Glick
Next month, America’s long campaign in Iraq will come to an end with the departure of the last US forces from the country.
Amazingly, the approaching withdrawal date has fomented little discussion in the US. Few have weighed in on the likely consequences of President Barack Obama’s decision to withdraw on the US’s hard won gains in that country.
After some six thousand Americans gave their lives in the struggle for Iraq and hundreds of billions of dollars were spent on the war, it is quite amazing that its conclusion is being met with disinterested yawns.
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For its part, the Bush administration spent little time explaining to the US public who the forces fighting in Iraq were and why the US was fighting them.
US military officials frequently admitted that the insurgents were trained, armed and funded by Iran and Syria. But policy-makers never took any action against either country for waging war against the US. Above the tactical level, the US was unwilling to take any effective action to diminish either regime’s support for the insurgency or to make them pay a diplomatic or military price for their actions.
As for Obama, as the Kagans and Sullivan show, the administration abjectly refused to intervene when Maliki stole the elections or to defend US allies in the Iraqi military from Maliki’s pro- Iranian purge of the general officer corps. And by refusing to side with US allies, the Obama administration has effectively sided with America’s foes, enabling Iranian-allied forces to take over the USbuilt, -trained and -armed security apparatuses in Iraq.
ALL OF these actions are in line with the US’s current policy towards Egypt. There, without considering the consequences of its actions, in January and February the Obama administration played a key role in ousting the US’s most dependable ally in the Arab world, president Hosni Mubarak.
Since Mubarak was thrown from office, Egypt has been ruled by a military junta dubbed the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. Because SCAF is comprised of the men who served as Mubarak’s underlings throughout his 30-year rule, it shares many of the institutional interests that guided Mubarak and rendered him a dependable US ally. Specifically, SCAF is ill-disposed toward chaos and Islamic radicalism.
However, unlike Mubarak, SCAF is only in power because the mobs of protesters in Tahrir Square demanded that Mubarak stand down to enable civilian, majority rule in Egypt. Consequently, the military junta is much less able to keep Egypt’s populist forces at bay.
Throughout Mubarak’s long reign, the most popular force in Egypt was the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood. The populism unleashed by Mubarak’s ouster necessarily rendered the Brotherhood the most powerful political force in Egypt. If free elections are held in Egypt next week as planned and if their results are honored, within a year Egypt will be ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the outcome Obama all but guaranteed when he cut the cord on Mubarak.
Recognizing the danger a Brotherhood government would pose to the army’s institutional interests, in recent weeks the generals began taking steps to delay elections, limit the power of the parliament and postpone presidential elections.
Their moves provoked massive opposition from Egypt’s now fully legitimated and empowered populist forces. And so they launched what they are dubbing “the second Egyptian revolution.”
And the US doesn’t know what to do.
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The Left refused to acknowledge that the US was under attack from the forces of radical Islam enabled by Islamic supremacist regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Iran because the Left didn’t want the US to fight. Moreover, because the Left believes that US policies are to blame for the Islamic world’s hostility to America, leftists favor foreign policies predicated on US appeasement of its enemies.
For its part, the Right refused to acknowledge the identity and nature of the US’s enemy because it feared the Left.
And so, rather than fight radical Islamists, under Bush the US went to war against a tactic – terrorism. And lo and behold, it was unable to defeat a tactic because a tactic isn’t an enemy.
It’s just a tactic. And as its war aim was unachievable, the declared ends of the war became spectacular.
Rather than fight to defend the US, the US went to war to transform the Arab world from one imbued with unmentionable religious extremism to one increasingly ruled by democratically elected unmentionable religious extremism.
The lion’s share of responsibility for this dismal state of affairs lies with former president Bush and his administration. While the Left didn’t want to fight or defeat the forces of radical Islam after September 11, the majority of Americans did. And by catering to the Left and refusing to identify the enemy, Bush adopted war-fighting tactics that discredited the war effort and demoralized and divided the American public, thus paving the way for Obama to be elected while running on a radical anti-war platform of retreat and appeasement.
Since Obama came into office, he has followed the Left’s ideological guidelines of ending the fight against and seeking to appease America’s worst enemies. This is why he has supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. This is why he turned a blind eye to the Islamists who dominated the opposition to Gaddafi. This is why he has sought to appease Iran and Syria. This is why he supports the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Syrian opposition. This is why he supports Turkey’s Islamist government. And this is why he is hostile to Israel.
And this is why come December 31, the US will withdraw in defeat from Iraq, and pro- American forces in the region and the US itself will reap the whirlwind of Washington’s irresponsibility.
There is a price to be paid for calling an enemy an enemy. But there is an even greater price to be paid for failing to do so.
Read the rest: Calling things by their names
Tags: Caroline Glick
