Posted on 08/18/2020 5:34:31 AM PDT by Kaslin
Editor's Note: This piece was coauthored by Bruce Abramson.
Its hard to miss the stakes for America in Novembers election. President Trump and the GOP base inhabit a starkly different world than do Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and progressive Democrats. That difference transcends mere policy debate; Americas political parties operate on different moral planes.
In no foreign context is that moral divergence clearer than the Middle East. Two recent events illuminate the gap: The Biden-led 2020 Democrat Platform, and the UAE/Israel pact that President Trump brokered. The election will determine whether the Middle East continues on the path towards stability and prosperity that President Trump has set or returns to the brutal carnage President Obama helped facilitate.
The Democrats platform reflects Joe Bidens central role in shaping Obama Administration foreign policy. In its section on the Middle East, the 2020 platform reiterates the Obama worldview, takes pride in Obamas achievements, and promises to build upon them.
Under this view, the 1948 establishment of a Jewish State on Arab land was a historic error whose reverberations have destabilized the region ever since. Nevertheless, as unjust as it may have been, it can no longer be undone. What can be undone, however, is Israels defensive victory in 1967 establishing Israeli control of, and permitting Jewish life and prayer in, territories east of the 1949 Armistice Green Line. Though perhaps understandable given the terrorism, brutality, antisemitism, and genocidal tendencies governing all Palestinian organizations, Israels resistance to an independent State of Palestine remains unconscionable. In its waning days, the Obama/Biden team enshrined these beliefs in UNSC Resolution 2334, adding fuel to the fire of resurgent antisemitism. The 2020 Platform reiterates them.
While running Americas most anti-Israel Administration, Obama and Biden were also the most anti-Arab American leaders since WWII. They replaced Libyas stable dictatorship with anarchy, abandoned a longstanding pro-American authoritarian to destabilize Egypt, ignored Syrian genocide before handing that country to Russia, sat idly while ISIS spawned its bloody Caliphate, and alienated the traditionally US-aligned Gulf States. The 2020 platform contains an explicit call to distance the U.S. from the Gulf Arabs once again.
These actions were all ideological. Progressives like Obama and Biden embrace the authenticity of supremacist, misogynistic, antisemitic, anti-Christian, genocidal Islamist movements. They disapprove only of those Islamists practicing indiscriminate terror and graphic brutality. They seek to partner with articulate, disciplined Islamistsnotably the (Sunni) Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and the (Shiite) Islamic Republic of Iran.
Obama and Biden thus cheered when the MBs Mohammad Morsi took control of Egypt, remained neutral between Hamas terrorists and Israeli civilians, and elevated the MB-aligned governments of Turkey and Qatar. They proudly subverted American interests to normalize Iran as a nuclear threshold stateignoring that regimes central role in international terrorism, the drug trade, genocide promotion, and destabilizing neighboring countries. Biden and the 2020 platform promise to revive that Iran deal.
Arrayed against these disasters, President Trump jettisoned the long-held views of Middle East experts who had failed previous AdministrationsRepublican and Democrat alike. Instead, he employed realism, common sense, American interests and values, and clear moral thinking. The results have been remarkable.
Trump visited Riyadh to rebuild Americas longstanding alliance with the Gulf. There, he called upon the collected Arab heads of state to embrace their own national interests and drive out the Islamists in their midst. He then acted to eliminate ISIS as a territorial power.
He showed Israel the warmth its earned as a steadfast ally and a bastion of American values. He recognized Jerusalem as Israels capital, Israeli annexation of the Golan, and the legality of Jewish life beyond the Green Line. He proposed new, compassionate solutions to refugee resettlement. He issued a plan, a timetable, and an unprecedented resource package to encourage Palestinian groups to transition from armed terror organizations to productive, constructive, peace-loving people worthy of self-governance. Most importantly, he announced that the U.S. would no longer allow genocidal authoritarians and terrorists to hold regional development hostage.
In short, President Trump built an entirely new diplomatic framework for the Middle East. Because he grounded it in reality, history, justice, morality, and human rights, it began to bear fruit almost immediately. Roughly seven months after unveiling its details, the UAE and Israel reached their historic agreement.
The Trump framework enabled the UAE to ask Israel to suspend its rightful claims to full sovereignty over Jewish villages in Judea and Samaria. Because the Trump plan contained a clear timetable, Israel could agree. The UAE thus bought the Palestinian Authority additionalnot infinitetime to embrace the Trump Plan and reform its behavior. Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi Arabia appear poised to follow the UAEs lead.
These positive developments, however, depend upon Novembers election. A Biden victory will empower Iran, the MB, anarchy, and terror. A Trump victory will strengthen the resolve of those eager to build a new Middle East of strong, sovereign, prosperous nations.
America will decidebut the Middle East is listening.
bkmk
Yeah. Sure. The Islamic world was all happy and peaceful until the Jews messed it all up in 1948. That's the ticket.
what morals do the dems have? They are not on any moral plane.
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This was a really great article, explains the differences of the two candidates vividly in middle east diplomacy. Trump the businessman is doing better, “creating peace in the middle east” than the last 4 Presidents have done combined!
He’s the first to see reality, both on the ground and in negotiating partners. Imagine, with Barak Obama in the White House palestinians refused to negotiate. Even when Netanyahu put a hold on construction in settlements.
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