Posted on 02/11/2015 3:21:19 PM PST by Kaslin
It seems like only yesterday that President Obama was being criticized for having no strategy to counter the jihadi threat. In fact, it was about ten days ago. Peggy Noonan’s Feb. 1 Wall Street Journal column was headlined: “America’s Strategy Deficit.”
Since then, a different perception has been taking root: Mr. Obama does indeed have a strategy – a “secret strategy,” one that is alarmingly misguided.
According to this theory, he believes that fighting terrorism requires accommodating the regime long recognized by the U.S. government as the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism: the Islamic Republic of Iran.
He may also see the Islamic Republic not as a rival to the Islamic State but as a more moderate alternative -- despite the fact that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, has repeatedly declared hostility toward America the foundation of the Islamic revolution.
The president appears to believe that Sunni jihadis can be countered by Shia jihadis. Last week, the Islamic State demonstrated its barbarism by immolating a Jordanian pilot. That should not cause us to forget that Iran’s rulers supplied militias in Iraq with IEDs used to immolate American soldiers, are supporting Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad who has used chemical weapons to scorch the lungs of his opponents, and are continuing to illicitly develop nuclear weapons capable of immolating millions.
Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, has not just speculated about Mr. Obama’s “secret strategy.” He has painstakingly combed through the record and produced a 9,000-word report persuasively establishing that Mr. Obama, since early in his presidency, has been in pursuit of a “comprehensive agreement” that would allow Iran to become what the president has called “a very successful regional power.”
Understand what that means: Iran would be the hegemon of the Middle East. Some states would accept Tehran’s authority, striking deals and kowtowing in order to survive. Europeans would accommodate Iran, based on its control of the flow of Gulf oil. Israel and Saudi Arabia, nations that Iran’s rulers have threatened to wipe from the map, would be left to fend for themselves.
And some Sunnis would almost certainly turn to al Qaeda and the Islamic State to help defend them from Shia domination. Indeed, the Islamic State rose in response to the extension of Iranian power in Baghdad after America’s withdrawal from Iraq, coupled with President Obama’s decision not to support non-Islamist Syrians who had rebelled against the Assad dictatorship.
Dr. Doran cites evidence that in the first year of President Obama’s first term, there were more White House meetings on Iran than any other national security concern. Détente with Iran was seen as “an urgent priority,” but the president “consistently wrapped his approach to that priority in exceptional layers of secrecy” because he was convinced that neither Congress nor the American public would support him.
A year ago, Dr. Doran further reports, Benjamin Rhodes, a member of the president’s inner circle, told a group of Democratic activists (unaware that he was being recorded) that a deal with Iran would prove to be “probably the biggest thing President Obama will do in his second term on foreign policy.” He made clear that there would be no treaty requiring the Senate’s advice and consent.
The president believes that “the less we know about his Iran plans, the better,” Dr. Doran concludes. “Yet those plans, as Rhodes stressed, are not a minor or incidental component of his foreign policy. To the contrary, they are central to his administration’s strategic thinking about the role of the United States in the world, and especially in the Middle East.”
Those plans also explain why the president has refused to use tough sanctions, or even the threat of tough sanctions, to force Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to choose between his nuclear weapons program and economic collapse. Dr. Doran writes: “For Obama, to force a confrontation with Khamenei would destroy any chance of reaching an accommodation on the nuclear front and put paid to his grand vision of a new Middle East order.”
Dr. Doran’s piece was published in the online journal Mosaic on Feb. 2. Four days later President Obama released his 2015 National Security Strategy (NSS). It contained nothing about the “secret strategy.” In fact, it contained nothing that could be called a strategy.
That appraisal is widely shared. For example, David Rothkopf -- who served in the Clinton administration, “voted for Barack Obama twice” and now edits Foreign Policy magazine -- called the NSS “a brief filed by the president in defense of his record to date” and a “a mishmash leavened by good intentions but unintentionally spiced up by oversights, misrepresentations, and a bad track record.”
Last Friday, National Security Advisor Susan Rice reassured an audience at the Brookings Institution that “the dangers we face … are not of the existential nature we confronted during World War II or the Cold War.” But if Iran becomes nuclear-armed, other despotic regimes will follow, greatly increasing the likelihood that terrorists will get their hands on nukes and, sooner or later, use them.
Remember that American leaders of both parties similarly minimized the threat posed by al Qaeda prior to Sept. 11, 2001. Is the lesson of that day, as Dr. Rice implies, that we should worry only about existential threats – confident that we can absorb lesser doses of death and destruction? Or should we have learned instead to do all we can to prevent our enemies from inflicting such punishment now and in the future?
This is a debate worth having. But it will be inhibited so long as the president insists on hiding his views, leaving it to a few exceptional scholars to read between the lines.
Isn’t Climate Change at the root of Terrorism?
I would say so
Obama hearts Terrorists
It is what the puppet-master wants.
It is what the puppet-master wants.
The Rasputin in the White House is Valerie Jarrett. She is, and always has been, in the Iranian camp. She is certainly running the nation’s foreign policy and probably a great deal more. There are only so many hours in the day and ESPN frequently updates their Sports Center reports, requiring constant vigilance by the Commander in Chief. So, much is left to Jarrett and since Obama likes her approach, that’s what we get.
BUT... Some like Bill O’Reilly bring up the word “Nazi” in connection with terrorists like ISIS because of their barbarity, and people like Sean Hannity speak about all the good we did in toppling Saddam and how this ended the brutality he inflicted upon his citizens.
So, if we are going to allow a bait-and-switch to moral reasons, then we must go after ISIS AND Boko haram and also put boots on the ground in Africa, too, as Boko haram beheads people, rapes women, enslaves children, massacres thousands, wants a caliphate and has publicly aligned itself with UISIS, and ISIS has returned the favor.
If we go by O’Reilly and Hannity, we must put boots on the ground to deal with ISIS and Boko haram, too.
And that is factual
I brought up what I did in post #8 because this thread talks about “the jihadi threat” at the beginning of the article.
And why not? Isn’t Boko Haram as much a terrorist organization as are Al Qaeda and ISIL?
OIC, I replied to your post in #8 because I saw it before your last post
What if there is and has been a "strategy" all along; for Iran, the M.E. and North Africa?
...despite the fact that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, has repeatedly declared hostility toward America the foundation of the Islamic revolution.
Not only Khamenei, who is relatively a noobi "Supreme Leader". How about Khomeini? It started with him.
Khomeini & his current successor Khamenei are 2 different persons (Supreme Leaders) since 1979.
36 years have gone by since Khomeini's thugs took over in Iran in 1979. Khamenei is only a continuation.
No strategy to overthrow the Khomeinist Regime in Iran in 36 years? Mind boggling!
It will be nice when we get Americans running our foreign policy again instead of Islamic imports or New World Order freaks - if we make it that far alive.
What every body doesn’t realize is that he HAS a plan. And those planes do not include Israel or any thing of that sort. Hell, if any body still doesn’t understand this MUSLIM we have in the WH, and what his plans are concerning this country and the Middle East, is either blind or on his side.
Jeeezze people Jarret has been pulling and tugging this POS Obama like a fat a$$ lab dog all along.
That is why he and his ghetto trash family should have been removed 4 years ago from OUR house.
AKA the state-established, Fallible and Uninspired, religious sheeple herding threat.Same Ol'
"...who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time;...that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them. ""I HAVE SWORN UPON THE ALTAR OF GOD ETERNAL HOSTILITY TO EVERY FORM OF TYRANNY OVER THE MIND OF MAN"--The Virginia Act For Establishing Religious Freedom
--Thomas Jefferson, 1786
“Death to the Great Satan”.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
