March 29, 2024

Obama’s Mideast ‘Legacy’ Crumbling Before Our Eyes

Obama's Mideast 'Legacy' Crumbling Before Our Eyes

Maybe the teleprompter is busted, or maybe Valerie Jarrett’s on vacation.

Or maybe Barack Obama just really doesn’t have a clue what to do in Egypt.

As a major instigator of the “Arab Spring” series of rebellions and government overthrows in Muslim countries, Obama shares a large part of the blame for the current situation in the Mideast.

When Egyptians threw out the former president-for-life, Hosni Mubarak, and held elections, there was a lot of attendant blather from the White House and media about the wonders of democracy that Egypt would soon be enjoying.

When the election spat Mohammed Morsi into the presidency, many former Arab Spring cheerleaders were taken aback, but our president abandoned any pretense of serving American principles and went right ahead and embraced the Muslim Brotherhood strongman.

Obama even doled out military aid to the Muslim Brotherhood government, including new F-16 jet fighters.

Predictably, the Egyptians quickly grew tired of Morsi’s and the Brotherhood’s abuses, engaging the military to throw him out of office.

Now as the Brotherhood seeks to regain its brief hold on power and the military seeks to install any sort of government that is not Brotherhood-related, Obama is simply confusing matters even further with a weak, unfocused and flaccid foreign policy that is sending the world mixed signals.

While Obama condemns the Egyptian military’s actions against civilian protesters and cancels wargames, he also is following through with his promises of military aid and refuses to designate the ousting of Morsi a “coup.”

Because of Obama’s clear Muslim sympathies, he has trusted people like those in the Muslim Brotherhood as if they were just the good people next door.

But because of this ideological, moral blindspot, Obama’s policy has left us with an Iraq that is returning to warring tribalism, Afghanistan with a resurgent Taliban, Libya run by Islamist mercenary factions, Egypt in the beginnings of a genuine civil war, and Syria on the brink of total collapse as radical Muslim groups fight for control.

Obama’s feebleminded adventurism has brought a large section of the world to the brink of all-out war, and he cannot articulate a clear policy on the current events he helped bring about or even why he did it.

Obama’s foreign policy has been all about him — his “achievements,” his goals, his legacy. Along the way, he has thrown out any progress made by the previous administration (the one whose “mess” he’s perpetually cleaning up) and lost all our country’s credibility (something else that wasn’t broken that he had promised to “fix”).

As hundreds of people are injured or killed in Egypt, and as Syria bleeds, Obama can now look upon his legacy, which more and more becomes deserving of a memorial like that of Shelley’s king Ozymandias:

“And on the pedestal these words appear:

`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

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