So
you want to understand Obama foreign policy? Ok, here is is, an
explanation in clear, simple, and accurate form based on Obama's recent speech at Fort McNair about terrorism:
Obama Premise Number
One:
If one wanted to come up with a slogan for the Obama Administration regarding the "war on terrorism" it would be this:
To win the war on terrorism one must lose the war on revolutionary Islamism.
because
only by showing that America is the Islamists' friend will it take away
the incentive of Muslims, including radical Muslims, to join al-Qaida
and attack the United States.
This
is NOT the same thing precisely as showing that the United States is
the Muslims' friend. For, after all, the United States is taking sides
for some Muslims and against others. And the side it is taking is that
of the Islamist Muslims against the moderate, traditionalist, and
nationalist ones.
In
other words, the administration is largely assuming in practice that
the Islamists are the proper representative and leadership of the
Muslims. (That is also true, by the way, of domestic preferences.)
Thus,
if the Muslim Brotherhood governs Egypt, Tunisia, the Gaza Strip,
and Syria, they would have what they wanted and there would be no need
for them to attack America and would have every interest in suppressing
al-Qaida.
Ironically,
though, the Benghazi attack disproved this thesis, which was one of the
reasons why the information about it had to be suppressed. The United
States "proved" that it was the friend of Islamist rebels, helping them
win the war and get rid of the oppressive dictatorship, but they still
were ungrateful and attacked Americans. The same thing happened in Iraq
where the Sunni Islamists objected to U.S. policy.
It
is true that in Syria, Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist radical
Islamists are not
the same as al-Qaida and might oppose it. But they are not necessarily
hostile to its ideas. When the United States tried to isolate the Syrian
branch of al-Qaida (Jabhat al-Nusra) in December 2012 by designating
it as a terrorist group, even the Free Syrian Army, supposedly the
moderates, denounced the move as did more than 30 Syrian Salafist rebel
groups. How would these groups choose sides between the al-Qaida
affiliate and the United States? What would the policy of an Islamist
Syria be toward the United States and its interests? While there is no
reason to believe the Muslim Brothers or Salafists would attack the
World Trade Center, they can be expected to attack U.S. diplomats,
facilities, and citizens in Syria and to help Salafists stage
revolutions elsewhere that would do the same thing.
Actually,
there was a much better way for the Obama Administration to have
explained the Benghazi attack. It could have said that of course the
attack was from al-Qaida but that was because the United States was
doing a good thing-- helping put into power a non- Islamist, democratic,
moderate government. That is how other presidents--as with George W.
Bush in Iraq--would have managed this issue. Listen to Obama's words in
his Fort McNair speech:
"What's clear is that we quickly drove al Qaeda out of Afghanistan, but then shifted our focus and began a new war in Iraq. This carried
grave consequences for our fight against al-Qaida, our standing in the world, and–to this day–our interests in a vital region."
Suppose
one substituted the words "Libya" or "Syria" for the word Iraq? After
all, Bush's surge defeated al-Qaida, though of course not completely,
but in Syria al-Qaida is stronger than ever at this point, and in Libya
it also murdered Americans.
And
such a stance by Obama would also have required admitting that from the
Libyan (and potentially Syrian) Islamist viewpoint the help given them
wasn't enough, that it resulted in Libya in an American "puppet" regime.
And
that approach would have forced the Obama Administration to open itself
up to the same criticism it keeps making against Bush in Iraq: that
U.S. intervention strengthened terrorists.
Obama Premise Number Two:
Think about the Benghazi attack in this context.
Real
cause of attack: The
Americans helped Islamists gain power so they could operate freely in
Banghazi, a city where al-Qaida patrols the city and controls territory
today. Thus, the mistake was that the U.S. government was too pro-Islamist.
Phony cause of attack: The Americans weren't pro-Islam enough, i.e., they had this nasty video that offended Muslims.
In other words, the attack's cause was reversed, it was made to seem as if it was the exact opposite of the truth.
Real lesson: Don't arm radical Islamists. Fight them alongside Muslims who are also anti-Islamist.!
Phony lesson: Fight against Islamophobia.
Obama Premise Number Three:
Over and over again American presidents have said--as did Obama in the Fort McNair speech--that America is not at war with Islam.
But, Obama continued, the ideology America is fighting is based only on the mistaken belief that America is at war with Islam, which means the problem is not that Islamists
should have good reason to believe that the United States does oppose
their establishing anti-American, authoritarian dictatorships.
Lesson: Get Muslims--even better, radical Islamists--to suppress al-Qaida.
Fine. But what about this:
Revolutionary Islamism is at war with America.
No
matter how much the United States does to help revolutionary
Islamists--like putting them into power in Syria--they will still hate
and fight against America.
Obama Premise Number Four:
Most of those killed by Islamist terrorists are Muslims. Therefore, Muslims
aren't really responsible.
Response: Yes
but first, that's why many Muslims--the victims--want to fight against
Islamists taking over their societies. Muslim terrorists kill Muslims
because those Muslims don't support those Muslim terrorists.
In addition, the second largest group being killed by Islamist terrorists are non-Muslims. There's a war going on.
BUT From the Islamist standpoint:
The
killer if a British soldier in London quoted the Koran, yelled Allahu
Akhbar and said: The only reason we have killed this man today is
because Muslims are dying daily by British soldiers.
--If an Islamist kills a Muslim who opposes him or even a bystander Muslim that's ok.
--If
a British soldier in Afghanistan saves a Muslim from being killed by
Islamist Muslims that's bad and worthy of "Islamic" revenge.
In other words, ideological
Islamists will interpret anything but surrender to their violence as hostility to Islam.
Anti-Islamist Muslims interpret helping them against Islamist authoritarians as helping the proper version of Islam.
The
real situation is a war among Muslims--just as World War Two was a war
among European Christians and a war among Asians--in which the United
States knew what side it should be on.
Obama Premise Number
Five:
Never talk about the war on revolutionary Islamism or, more accurately, revolutionary Islamism's war on the West.
Well,
most of those killed by the Nazis up to late 1939 were German. Did this
mean we had to talk all the time about how we liked Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart, hamburgers, and other great achievements of German culture?
The problem is the political movements involved and the radical governments making such a big security threat for the United
States. Not just the safety of Americans in the homeland but U.S. national interests (remember them?)
Obama Premise Number Six:
Why
did Obama say that the heckler at his speech, leftist loony Medea
Benjamin, was "worth paying attention to?" Because she was shouting that
the existence of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp or the use of drones
made Americans less safe at home. That is what he considers regrettable,
even if he has to do things to the contrary sometimes, because he knows
that America's defending itself is partly counter-productive.
After all:
Fighting Islamist terrorism encourages more Islamist terrorism.
It
is better to let other Islamists suppress it because non-Islamists
backed by the United States would be called American puppets. By this
standard, having for example President Husni Mubarak in power in Egypt
endangers Americans and so does supporting moderate rebels in Syria or
being too close to Israel or complaining about Turkish policy by that
Islamist regime.
Supporting
Muslim relative
moderates makes Muslim terrorists angry and furnishes cause for
terrorist attacks. Obama wants to remove--as in so many other
things--what he believes to be the root cause of the grievance.
Consider this concept: America is not at war with Islam but
who might think otherwise and respond with violence? Radical Muslims.
So the problem is not, in Obama's eyes, to prove that America is not at
war with Islam but that it is not at war with radical Muslims. It is in fact not the enemy of radical Muslims but rather the friend of radical Muslims.
As
a result, radical
Muslims become more successful, gain power, rule over millions of
people and become more radical. Muslims might believe that their
successes show that radical Islam is the winning team or you might just
be afraid of them and want to get along. Either way, revolutionary
Islamism is getting more and more powerful in the region. Obama is the
biggest disaster of all for non-radical Muslims, whether genuine
liberals or conservative monarchies.
Obama Premise Number Seven:
If terrorism is merely local and spontaneous it doesn't count as
much. Actually, however, it should count more.
Why?
Because it shows that al-Qaida's influence is widening, even to places in the West.
Because
it is harder to counter through intelligence and other measures since
there are scores of smaller attacks and plots that are more invisible
because of smaller numbers and less organization.
Because
time after time we see that terrorism happens because openly radical
mosques and other groups plant the dynamite in the minds of young people
but since they are not actually engaged in direct terrorism nothing
is--can be?--done about it even when we know these mentors want
terrorist acts to result. Here's a case study of the London murder and the same was true in the Boston attack. Perhaps Obama might consider branding some places and people terrorism incubators.
Thus, within hours of Obama's speech:
--A
British soldier was ruthlessly murdered on a London street as a result
of an extremely radical mosque and preachers operating freely to
advocate violence along with an apparent conspiracy by a group of terrorists. Rather than be holed up in Afghan caves, al-Qaida terrorists stalk London streets.
And
British soldiers have been told not to wear uniforms openly. That means
the British army is afraid of al-Qaida in the streets of London.
In France, three soldiers and two Jews were murdered in Toulouse by those influenced by al-Qaida. Moreover, now another French soldier has been stabbed while on anti-terrorist patrol near Paris.
Within
the United States, a couple of young men with perhaps some terrorist
training and in touch with al-Qaida cadre murdered people in the streets
of Boston and terrorized the whole city. They committed murders and
apparently had a support network of friends willing to help them.
And
even as Obama called the Fort Hood massacre an act conducted under the
influence of international terrorism, his Defense Department found that this was an individual act, ignoring that the murders were recommended by an al-Qaida cleric in Yemen.
So
when al-Qaida, Obama says, is cowering in the caves of Afghanistan, it
is also recruiting on the computer screens of America, Britain, and
France, among many other places.
Here is how a Saudi writer analyzes the situation:
"Al-Qaida's
former attacks were high-quality and were carried out be elite squads
of fighters, [but these fighters] did not represent broad sectors of
Arab society. The wars currently being waged in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq,
on the other hand, are frightening because they rely on [entire] social
[sectors] that support [the fighters] and shelter them." That same
point applies equally to the West in that individuals or small
spontaneous groups are more dangerous than small groups of elite squads.
Who's actually winning the war on terror in the Middle East and the West?
And who's winning the struggle between revolutionary Islamism and the West?
For a discussion of what I think U.S. policy toward terrorism and Islamism should be, see here.
This article is published on PJMedia.
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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 next book, Nazis, Islamists and the Making
of the Modern Middle East, written with Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, will be
published by Yale University Press in January 2014. His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, also published by Yale. Thirteen of his books can be read and downloaded for free at the website of the GLORIA Center including The Arab States and the Palestine Conflict, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East and The Truth About Syria. His blog is 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
Forthcoming Book: Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Yale University Press)
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
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.tandfonline.com/loi/ftur20#.UZs4pLUwdqU
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