As Mideast Chaos Grows, Obama Seeks To Blame Others For Mess

July 3, 2014

As Mideast Chaos Grows, Obama Seeks To Blame Others For Mess
             
By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON


In his first term, Barack Obama all but declared victory in America's Middle East struggles.

As he pulled U.S. peacekeepers from Iraq, the president had his own "Mission Accomplished" moment, declaring the country "stable," "self-reliant" and an "extraordinary achievement."

That echoed Vice President Joe Biden's earlier boast that Iraq would be Obama's "greatest achievement."

After Osama bin Laden's death, and during Obama's re-election campaign, the president proclaimed al-Qaida was a spent force and "on the run."

But what exactly was Obama's new strategy that supposedly had all but won victory in the war on terror?

Fuzzy euphemisms replaced supposedly hurtful terms like "terrorism," "jihadist" and "Islamist." The administration gave well-meaning speeches exaggerating Islamic achievement while citing past U.S. culpability.

We tilted toward Turkey and the Palestinians while sternly lecturing Israel. Military victory was caricatured as obsolete. Leading from behind was a clever substitute.

Middle Easterners gathered that a bruised America would limp away and pivot its forces elsewhere, saving billions of dollars to be spent at home. The new soft-power rhetoric sought to win the hearts and minds of the Arab street, and thereby deny terrorists popular support.

To grade that policy, survey the current Middle East, or what is left of it: Egypt, the Gulf monarchies, Iraq, Iran, Israel and the Palestinians, Libya, Syria and Turkey. It's fair to say America has alienated friends, emboldened enemies and multiplied radical Islamic terrorists. So what happened?

In short, the administration put politics and ideology ahead of a disinterested, nonpartisan examination of the actual status of the 2009 Middle East.

The more Obama campaigned in 2008 on a failed war in Iraq, a neglected war in Afghanistan, an ill-considered war on terror and an alienated Middle East, the more those talking points were outdated and eclipsed by fast-moving events on the ground.

By Inauguration Day in January 2009, the hard-power surge had largely defeated al-Qaida in Iraq. It had won over many of the Sunnis and had led to a U.S.-enforced coalition government, monitored by American troops.

But there remained one caveat: What had been won on the ground could be just as easily lost if the U.S. did not leave behind peacekeepers in the manner that it had in all its past successful interventions — the Balkans, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea.

Likewise, the once-derided "war on terror" measures — Guantanamo, the Patriot Act, military tribunals, preventative detentions, renditions and drones — by 2009 had largely worked. Since 9/11, America had foiled dozens of terrorist plots against our homeland and neutralized terrorists abroad.

Obama for a while privately accepted that truth and continued many of the very protocols he once derided.

But Obama kept posturing to the world that he would close Guantanamo and substitute civilian trials for military tribunals. He continued to say that he did not enjoy using renditions or drones — even as he upped the latter's deadly missions tenfold.

The result: Contradictory messages that encouraged radical Islamists.

Radical Islamists concluded the U.S. administration had admitted its anti-terrorism protocols were either morally questionable or ineffective.

Blaming a video maker instead of immediately taking out the known jihadists who had murdered Americans in Benghazi only reinforced the mixed message. So did exchanging five terrorist kingpins in Guantanamo for an alleged U.S. deserter in Afghanistan.

A series of empty Middle East red lines, deadlines and withdrawal dates likewise reinforced the idea of American abdication.

We warned Syria of airstrikes and backed off. We surged in Afghanistan only to announce a troop withdrawal. We issued Iran deadlines to stop enriching uranium, only to forget them and end sanctions in hope of talks.

As with Russia, at first there were few consequences to reset diplomacy and promises of easy victory. Al-Qaida had been nearly wiped out in Anbar province in 2007-08 and was still regrouping. Iran had been crippled by sanctions and was wary of the U.S. Terrorists did not wish to end up at Guantanamo or in a military tribunal.

But newly emboldened terrorists gambled that the old deterrence was stale and now existed mostly as Obama's reset rhetoric. They gambled that it was a great time to go on the offensive. They may have been right.

Once more in the Middle East, Barack Obama is looking to blame others for a mess that has grown since 2009. But mostly he just wants out of the lose-lose region at any cost and wishes that someone would just make all the bad things go away.