[From article]
In the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration struggled to define the enemy and to decide how to defeat it. Even though 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis and the Saudis were involved in the planning and financing of the attack, President Bush allowed the Saudis to fly out of the country in the next 24 hours when all other air traffic had been shut down.
No doubt that Bush had decided to maintain good relations with the Arabs, and Saudi Arabia particularly, just as the US had done for half a century. This policy led Bush to say on Sept 17, 2011 to the Islamic world, “The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don't represent peace. They represent evil and war,” in a speech as sycophantic as any President Obama has ever delivered.
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And so began the bifurcation of Islam into the peaceful Muslims on the one hand and the radicals who hijacked the religion on the other.
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By December 2011 Obama fulfilled another campaign promise to withdraw the remaining US troops from Iraq. The vacuum created undid the achievements of the surge and allowed for the rise and dominance of ISIS.
Obama also turned to Rumsfeld’s plan of regime change, which Bush declined to endorse. What Rumsfeld had in mind was to support the opposition in each country and help them depose the dictators. What Obama decided to do was to replace the dictators who were secular with the Muslim Brotherhood or other Islamists.
Remember that Rumsfeld proposed his plan before the victory in Iraq turned sour. What was learned was that there is no unified opposition and no desire for democracy. Obama ignored this lesson and believed that the Muslim Brotherhood could impose itself on all the opposition thereby creating stability.
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Gaddafi also abandoned terrorism. As a result relations with the U.S. and the EU improved considerably. He managed to rule his country well and provide for his people.
Nevertheless Obama, together with Britain, France and Qatar, decided he had to be deposed. A trumped up charge of an impending massacre was sufficient to justify military action to remove his regime and ultimately bringing about his death. Libya has not returned to stability, as the various tribes keep fighting for turf.
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Mohammed Morsi, representing the Muslim Brotherhood, was elected president in June 30/12. He lasted a year in office until the military, headed by Gen El Sisi, the man he put in charge, took over and arrested him and once again banned the party. This did not go down well with Obama, who was counting on the Muslim Brotherhood to rule the country. Obama is working to reinstate them somehow and is not supporting El Sisi, just as he didn’t support Mubarak. El Sisi then turned to Russia and Israel, further distancing America.
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Russia is now in charge and running the show in Syria. Obama has become a bit player. He is still mouthing platitudes in support of a peace process and a unified Syria. There is no way that Iran or Russia will agree to elections because the Alawites, who are the backbone of the Syrian regime, are only about 20% of the population. But they would agree to severing Alawite Syria from the rest. Russia wants to retain her naval base on the Mediterranean and her airfield nearby. Iran wants to keep Alawite Syria as an ally because the Alawites are Shiites and because it gives them a land connection to Hezb’allah who are also Shiites.
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Bush promised to get rid of all terrorists and regimes that harbor them. Obama decided to take down Gadhafi, Mubarak and Assad to stop dictator-supported terrorism. But rather than support the opposition to replace them as Rumsfeld had proposed, he backed the Muslim Brotherhood, identified by Britain and others as an Islamic terrorist group. He ended up with chaos in Libya, the Egyptian army in control of Egypt, Russia now in charge of Assad, all of whom are threatened by ISIS and other Islamist groups who are fostering much more terrorism that the dictators ever did. He has put Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Sinai in the crosshairs of both Iran and ISIS. The Dictators didn’t plan to conquer the West. The Islamists do.
So far everything the Bush and Obama administrations have done has made it worse for the West. The US has not figured out who the enemy is nor how to deal with the threats.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/12/america_has_jumped_from_the_middle_east_frying_pan_into_the_fire.html
December 27, 2015
America has jumped from the Middle East frying pan into the fire
By Ted Belman
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