At
last, a perfect description of the Obama Administration’s Middle East
policy which—unintentionally—shows why it is heading for disaster. Now
what place would be so simultaneously uncomprehending and over-confident
to give us that image? The New York Times, of course, in the person of Middle East correspondent and reliable apologist for revolutionary Islamist groups, Robert Worth.
First, let me repeat what I’ve been saying for almost four years: The
problem is that the Obama Administration and its numerous supporters in academia and the mass media keep saying the following:
--Only al-Qaida is a real threat because only al-Qaida wants to attack the United States directly right now.
--Al-Qaida has been defeated due to the great policies of the Obama Administration.
--The
remaining revolutionary Islamist groups are potential friends. After
all, [sarcasm warning] they only want to seize state power, overthrow
all existing relatively moderate regimes, create Sharia dictatorships,
suppress women’s rights, persecute Christians, wipe Israel off the map,
and drive U.S. influence out of the region.
War over; we won. Who needs security in Benghazi? Who's afraid of the big and not-so-bad Muslim Brotherhood?
Is
this an exaggeration? Could anyone believe this narrative? Of course,
yes. It is the
dominant world view in the White House, the mass media, the left-wing
think tanks, and those who speak publicly in academia. Other views are
censored out, ridiculed, or subtly subverted. Now here’s Worth in the New York Times. Referring to the last presidential debate he writes:
“The
candidates offered profoundly different answers during their final
debate last
week, with President Obama repeating his triumphant narrative of drone
attacks and dead terrorists, and Mitt Romney warning darkly about
Islamists on the march in an increasingly hostile Middle East.
“In
a sense, both are true. The organization that planned the Sept. 11
attacks, based in Afghanistan and Pakistan, is in shambles; dozens of
its top leaders have been killed since Mr. Obama assumed office, and
those who remain appear mostly inactive.”
Note
the wonderfully neat trick Worth pulls. First, he poses as even-handed
(“In a sense, both are true.”) but then he affirms President Barack
Obama’s view as correct and ridicules what Republican candidate
Mitt Romney said.
Let’s
pause here for a moment. What Worth did in this article could stand as
the poster article for a decade of mass media bias. The bias is often
transparent (for some of us) while others—and I constantly meet such
people—simply take the mass media’s coverage as their own belief without
any consideration or revision.
The
first part of the trick includes focusing on the “top leaders.” Yes,
the top leaders are in many cases dead but al-Qaida isn’t a strictly
hierarchical group. Local affiliates operate independently of those guys
in Afghanistan or Pakistan, as we can see in Libya, Yemen, Somalia, the
Gaza Strip, Iraq, Morocco, and other
places. By focusing on “top leaders,” Worth is profoundly distorting
the issue. It’s hard to believe that he doesn’t get this obvious point.
Next,
listen to Worth trash Romney’s argument despite the fact that this is
the most important point on the Middle East today and should be the
centerpiece of U.S. policy:
“But
there is an important distinction: most of the newer jihadist groups
have local agendas, and very few aspire to strike directly at the United
States as Osama bin Laden’s core network did. They may interfere with
American interests around the world — as in Syria, where the presence of
militant Islamists among the rebels fighting the government of
Bashar al-Assad has inhibited American efforts to support the uprising.
But that is a far cry from terrorist plots aimed at the United States
itself.”
Again,
Worth distorts the issue. Of course, terrorist plots aimed at the
United States itself are a serious matter. Yet those “local agendas”
include things very destructive to U.S. interests and may include—to
cite a potential case—assassinating a U.S. ambassador in Libya. One
might have said that Nazi Germany and the USSR were not intending to
make any direct attacks on the United States either. That “local
agenda” also may include taking over countries and fomenting war and
terrorism aimed at U.S. interests and local facilities as well as U.S.
allies.
Worth
also proves my point about the idea that al-Qaida is bad and out of
action while other revolutionary Islamists are no big problem. But he
goes even further:
“Jihadists
have also gained strength in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, just across the
border from Israel. At one point during the debate, Mr. Romney appeared
to link these varied threats with the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power
in Egypt. To some terrorism analysts, this kind of talk is
counterproductive, because it blurs crucial distinctions between
potential allies who profess to believe in democracy and civic rights,
like the Brotherhood, and more militant Islamists who view those
principles as heresy.”
Of
course the example Worth cites proves that his argument is ridiculous.
The appearance of these groups obviously is linked “with the Muslim
Brotherhood’s rise to power in Egypt.” They didn’t exist before because
the Mubarak government suppressed them. In contrast, the Brotherhood
government tolerates these radical forces and views them as allies,
unless they make the mistake of launching armed attacks on the regime.
Moreover,
Worth—in the guise of one “terrorism analyst” at a left-wing think tank
who I’ve never heard of and has no visible qualifications to claim such
a title—calls the Muslim Brotherhood (and presumably Hamas and
Hizballah?) “potential allies who profess to believe in democracy and
civic rights.”
Here
is the unspoken reality of Obama policy. He has been treating these
groups as “potential allies.” For more than two years, until it became
impossible to continue, he deemed Iran and Syria as “potential allies.”
And
how can a journalist get away with saying that people are “potential
allies” because they “profess” to believe in democracy and human rights.
Didn’t the Communists and most of the world’s worst dictatorships and
totalitarian forces “profess” such a belief? What matters is what they
really do and believe.
Finally, here is what I wrote recently that Worth shows to be accurate:
“Al-Qaeda,
however, is a relatively weak organization, capable of staging only
sporadic terror attacks, with the exception perhaps of remote Somalia,
Yemen, Afghanistan, and parts of Pakistan. It cannot take over whole
countries. The fact that Egypt, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Turkey, and
perhaps soon Syria are governed by Islamists is a far greater strategic
threat.
Then
why couldn’t the Obama administration have said that the consulate was
attacked by evil al-Qaeda for no reason other than its lust to murder
Americans, with the perfect symbolism of the attack having been staged
on September 11?
“There
was a dual problem. First, the group involved was one the U.S.
government had worked with during the Libyan civil war so it could not
admit they were close to al-Qaeda. Second, the official line was that
al-Qaeda had been defeated so it could not still be a threat. Therefore,
an alternative narrative and a cover-up were needed.”
Yet
the cover-up of the Benghazi killings
is only a small portion of a cover-up that incorporates the Obama
Administration’s entire Middle East policy and all the lands from
Morocco to the borders of India.
The
problem with all this is that respected institutions are spouting what
can easily be deciphered as pure nonsense just by analyzing their own
words. Such corruption of key American institutions is frightening and
must be reversed.
And
man who cannot or will not distinguish between his country’s worst
enemies—groups that hate America, wage a real war on women and
Christians, and are the world’s leading antisemites—and “potential
allies” should not be president.
Barry
Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs
(GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International
Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. Other recent books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center and of his blog, Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.
Professor Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center http://www.gloria-center.org
The Rubin Report blog http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/He is a featured columnist at PJM http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/.
Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal http://www.gloria-center.org
Editor Turkish Studies,http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=t713636933%22
No comments:
Post a Comment