Barry Rubin , PJ Media, May 19, 2012
When a delegation of Syrian Kurdish rebels recently visited Washington, D.C., the State Department met them to ask for a favor. What was it? The Obama administration urged them to join the Syrian National Council (SNC), the organization created by the U.S. government through Turkey to lead the opposition movement and receive Western aid for all Syrian opposition groups.
But the Turkish Islamist regime, which Obama put in charge of forming the SNC, put the Muslim Brotherhood in control, a fact I pointed out within hours of the announcement of the SNC leadership’s names.
Now that several SNC leaders have resigned complaining about Brotherhood domination, followed by some Arab journalists pointing out the obvious Brotherhood domination at the SNC’s last meeting, that reality is clear. But the implications of such an incredibly foolish policy—America putting an anti-American, antisemitic group into the “official” leadership of Syria’s rebels — have never been properly examined as a case study for Obama’s disastrous Middle East policy.
The Kurds had walked out of the talks that formed the SNC last year when they saw how Islamists would be in control. Not only do they oppose Islamism itself but they also see the Brotherhood as an Arabizing and centralizing group that would impose a regime oppressing the non-Arab Kurds.
The new U.S. effort so backfired that, with the Obama administration ignoring their concerns, the enraged Kurds in the delegation spoke for the first time of breaking up Syria altogether!
To sum up, Obama policy has strengthened the Islamist forces in the opposition and fragmented the rebels, thus helping preserve a radical anti-American Syrian regime that is an ally of Iran or helping make any revolution more likely to produce a radical anti-American Syrian Islamist regime that will be an ally of an Islamist Egypt.
Now comes a very peculiar story in the Washington Post with the headline, “Syrian rebels get influx of arms with Gulf Neighbors’ Money, U.S. coordination.” Let’s break this down logically:
–The Saudis and Qataris have been providing arms already.
–They know how to buy weapons, how to get them to the Syrian border, and how to give them to Syrian rebels.
What do they need American “coordination” for? What does the word “coordination” mean? I presume it means that the Obama administration, absolutely clueless about what to do regarding Syria, simply wants to take credit for others’ actions. It is part of the pre-election spin about what a great job Obama is doing.
Barry Rubin is presently a professor at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel, the Director of the Global Research and International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, and a Senior Fellow at the International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism.
Laura,
Exactly so! He knows very well what he is doing.
No, I don’t think he’s a “secret Moslem”. My take on him, having gone to school with many like him, is that he is a garden-variety far left liberal academia twit, with a healthy dollop of “f*** you whitey” thrown in for spice. He is very likely an agnostic leaning towards atheist. His kind has no time for what he sees as the “fairy tales for peasants”, which is how he sees religion.
But, like most academia liberals, he’s a coward to the core. He believes in nothing except for his own narcissism. He is impressed and intimidated, however, with those who believe in something with the fanaticism of the jihadists. This, combined with his contempt for the traditional American narrative, means that by default, he’ll support/appease them. America, the West, what it has traditionally represented, so far as he is concerned, is nothing but a bunch of hypocritical bunk, and anyone sho supports the same is either a naive Boy Scout or a neanderthal, or is a disingenuous corporate puppetmaster.
Since we are not worth fighting for, the only position he can take with respect to our opponents is a pose of apology and appeasement. We deserve to be attacked for our past “imperialistic/racist sins”, but perhaps he can mitigate the righteous wrath of the offended peoples by supporting their agenda, in the hopes that in doing so, he can deflect their rage against us, and spare America from further harm.
He’ll never change. He’s a committed ideologue, surrounded by like-minded people. He’ll double down on every dumb thing he does. His ill-founded moral self-righteousness, combined with his less than stellar intellect and basic insecurity, prevents him from behaving any other way. He is incapable of admitting he is wrong; his powers of rationalizing his folly and projecting the blame for his failures onto others is infinite.
In a way, he is “clueless”, in that he is wedded to an ideological agenda to a degree that utterly blinds him from reality. But you are right, Laura, in that he is acting with a very clear and consistent purpose.
What is even worse is that our first line of defense against such a destructive leader ought to be a media that reports with some timeliness and accuracy on these matters. Our media has never been perfect, but the American media of thirty years ago never would have allowed the likes of Obama to be nominated, let alone elected.
The media is utterly corrupt. How can the American people wake up when nobody sounds the alarm? Yes, Americans have a responsibility to dig deeper and not depend on the media, but most are not used to even having to do this. That is what the bad guys are counting on, and it has worked up to now. I was at a Tea Party-related conference yesterday, and I can say that Americans are slowly waking up, and I believe that enough will to at least unseat Obama this November. But it never should have happened in the first place, and the damage he will have done by the time he is out will be enormous.
Obama is only a symptom of a much wider and deeper problem.
Linda Rivera, the “traitor” to whom you refer with your quote is not simply Obama. He’s the tip of a very large iceberg. He is supported by an infrastructure of traitors; the media, the national bureaucracy, and the academe is lousy with them. Getting Obama out of office is only a vital first step in addressing this problem, but it is only a first step nonetheless.
Why always assume the Obama administration’s actions are the result of incompetence and cluelessness? At every opportunity, the Obama administration has chosen to help the jihadists. At some point one must conclude that this is done with clear intent rather than it being the result of making the same mistake over and over again.
Eight months to go.
He’s not getting re-elected. He probably still thinks he is.
When his sycophants and ego get out of the way, and he realizes for himself that he’s not getting another term, that’s when he’ll be most dangerous.
His entire presidency revolves around screwing Israel, it seems. It is the most predictive model for his behavior on foreign policy: makes things tougher for Israel, DO IT. relieves pressure on Israel, DON’T DO IT.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. If Israel still has the genuine capacity to deal with Iran’s nuke program, if the related posturing up to now reflects actual capability and is not a bluff, the time to act is NOW.
The Muslim Brotherhood, whose stated goal is the DESTRUCTION of civilization and global Islamic conquest, are U.S. leaders’ TOP FAVORITES.
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through…all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.
For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero
“Obama Administration Scandal” is an oxymoron. What does Rubin think Obama is? A Republican?