In The Mideast, Trump Just<br> Pushed A Real 'Reset Button'

Investor's Business Daily ^ | 5/22/2017 | Staff

[IBD editorial writer]

Mideast: President Trump's Mideast trip was derided by the media and opposition Democrats as simply a chance for him to skip town to avoid the ongoing "scandals" of his administration. As usual, they grossly underestimate this president, and completely misunderstand the importance of his historic trip.

Trump's trip to Saudi Arabia and Israel has put the region on notice: The U.S. intends once again to pursue its interests and those of its allies in the region. The U.S. is ready to reward friends and punish enemies, and we will name names.

This is a radical reversal of President Obama's policy of "leading from behind," doing little or nothing about problems until they metastasize into something awful, as the threat from the Islamic State did. This policy was first enunciated in Obama's now-famous Cairo speech, "A New Beginning," in which he apologized profusely for the West's "colonialism," and laughingly pretended that Islam had almost nothing to do with the scourge of global terrorism, calling it "a model of tolerance and equality."

His appeasement was greeted with almost universal contempt in the region as a sign of weakness.

[NonValueAdded]

#winning

[livius]

The other thing that Trump is doing is actually going back to a policy that protected our interests (and put them first) during the post WWII period: reinforcing states and dealing with states. Bush himself actually started this way, which is why he focused on Iraq rather than on the non-state actors (terrorist groups, in this case, AQ) that actually carried out 9/11. However, he lost it when he tried to reshape Iraq in the American image and, by so doing, let lose the warring Islamic factions (the pro-Iranian Shiites and the fundamentalist Sunnis) that Saddam had more or less held in check through repression.

Also, Iraq and Saddam were certainly not pro-American in their own right, but we had been able to contain them; however, once the radicals within them were “freed” from repression, they metastasized, spread out into all the surrounding territories and overran them, and freely began attacking Europe and the US. There was no state actor to pay the consequences, and hence nobody to keep them in check; and furthermore, as we have found, all the weapons in the world are unable to contain these little wolf-packs who roam with no predictable pattern, and savage the local sheep and hide among them.

And of course, Obama was actually all about encouraging these extremists and significantly weakened the ME states in the process. It’s going to take a long time to undo the damage that Barry did.

So Trump is going back to an earlier policy: deal with states, fortify states as long as they are willing to work in a way that protects our interests, don’t engage in direct attempts to change them but be patient and know that as they become more stable and more Western friendly, these things will happen by themselves. Women will be freer and more equal, some of the more brutal aspects of Islamic law will cease to be applied, capitalism and commerce will bring prosperity. Remember how Iran was before the radicals took over after Jimmy Carter abandoned the Shah? In fact, remember how different were Jordan, Egypt and a host of other states prior to the rise of the Islamists and their promotion by our very own government?

[zzwhale]

TRUMP
recognized the vulnerability of the HOUSE OF SAUD
and is using it to promote an agenda that enables the USA to fight jihad...
with the price of oil down and iran having a nuke or two already
the SAUDS realize the seriousness of the situtaion
they want to buy a few of their own but can get coverage with the USA
ITS A MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL SITUATION
the Sauds pay off the terrorists to play outside the sand box
if they play ball with us we can kill them rather than pay them off
remember the house of saud sponsors global terrorism just like the iranians
they know who the players are
their wahabi madrassas teach hate america and have been forever
so part of the solution is to stop this
Al SISI wants to fight riadical islam because it is a direct threat to him.
Israel ditto...Now time to get the Pope to lead the religious leaders to support this plan... have a papal summit with alll religious leaders condeming terrorism...
ITS NOT A GOOD TIME TO BE A RADICAL JIHADI.... YOUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED