It’s increasingly difficult to navigate the web of transitory enemies and allies in the region.
Try figuring out the maze of enemies, allies, and neutrals in the Middle East.
In 2012, the Obama administration was on the verge of bombing the forces of Syrian president Bashar Assad. For a few weeks, he was public enemy No. 1 because he had used chemical weapons on his own people and because he was responsible for many of the deaths in the Syrian civil war, with a casualty count that is now close to 200,000.
After Obama’s red lines turned pink, we forgot about Syria. Then the Islamic State showed up with beheadings, crucifixions, rapes, and mass murders through a huge swath of Iraq and Syria.
Now the United States is bombing the Islamic State. Sometimes Obama says that he is still seeking a strategy against the jihadist group. Sometimes he wants to reduce it to a manageable problem. And sometimes he says that he wants to degrade or even destroy it.
The Islamic State is still trying to overthrow Assad. If the Obama administration is now bombing the Islamic State, is it then helping Assad? Or when America did not bomb Assad, did it help the Islamic State? Which of the two should Obama bomb — or both, or neither?
Iran is steadily on the way to acquiring a nuclear bomb. Yet for now it is arming the Kurds, dependable U.S. allies in the region who are fighting for their lives against the Islamic State and need American help. As Iran aids the Kurds, Syrians, and Iraqis in the battle against the evil Islamic State, is Teheran becoming a friend, enemy, or neither? Will Iran’s temporary help mean that it will delay or hasten its efforts to get a bomb? Just as Iran sent help to the Kurds, it missed yet another U.N. deadline to come clean on nuclear enrichment.
Hamas just lost a war in Gaza against Israel. Then it began executing and maiming a number of its own people, some of them affiliated with Fatah, the ruling clique of the Palestinian Authority. During the war, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian state, stayed neutral and called for calm. Did he wish Israel to destroy his rival, Hamas? Or did he wish Hamas to hurt his archenemy, Israel? Both? Neither?
What about the Gulf sheikdoms? In the old days, America was enraged that some of the Saudis slyly funneled cash to al-Qaeda and yet relieved that the Saudi government was deemed moderate and pro-Western. But as Iran gets closer to its nuclear holy grail, the Gulf kingdoms now seem to be in a de facto alliance with their hated adversary, Israel. Both Sunni monarchies and the Jewish state in near lockstep oppose the radical Iran/Syria/Hezbollah/Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas axis.
But don’t look for understandable Shiite–Sunni Muslim fault lines. In this anti-Saudi alliance, the Iranians and Hezbollah are Shiites. Yet their allies, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, are Sunnis. The Syrian government is neither, being Alawite.
They all say they are against the Sunni-extremist Islamic State. So if they are enemies of the Sunni monarchies and enemies of the Islamic State, is the Islamic State then a friend to these Gulf shiekdoms?
Then there is Qatar, a Sunni Gulf monarchy at odds with all the other neighboring Sunni monarchies. It is sort of friendly with the Iranians, Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah and Hamas — all adversaries of the U.S. Why, then, is Qatar the host of CENTCOM, the biggest American military base in the entire Middle East?
Is Egypt any simpler? During the Arab Spring, the Obama administration helped to ease former president and kleptocrat Hosni Mubarak out of power. Then it supported both the democratic elections and the radical Muslim Brotherhood that won them. Later, the administration said little when a military junta displaced the radical Muslim Brotherhood, which was subverting the new constitution. America was against military strongmen before it was for them, and for Islamists before it was against them.
President Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan were said to have a special friendship. But based on what? Erdogan is strangling democracy in Turkey. He is a big supporter of Hamas and at times a fan of Iran. A NATO ally, Turkey recently refused to let U.S. rescue teams use its territory to stage a rescue mission of American hostages — two of them eventually beheaded — in Syria.
Ostensibly, America supports moderate pro-Western consensual governments that protect human rights and hold elections, or at least do not oppress their own. But there are almost no such nations in the Middle East except Israel. Yet the Obama administration has grown ever more distant from the Jewish state over the last six years.
What is the U.S. to do? Leave the Middle East alone, allowing terrorists to build a petrol-fueled staging base for another 9/11?
About the best choice is to support without qualification the only two pro-American and constitutional groups in the Middle East, the Israelis and Kurds.
Otherwise, in such a tribal quagmire, apparently there are only transitory interests that come and go.
© 2014 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
The Middle seems confusing – but in the end most of the muslim world is waiting for and will wellcome a real islamic state. So, if we the west are supporting one of them in the end we are supporting the islam. Better not to support one of them – or both sides. That would be real Realpolitik. May be Clinton could do that job. But not Obama. And Nixon is gone.
“It’s increasingly difficult to navigate the web of transitory enemies and allies in the region”. If that is the case and if you’re going to go to war in the Middle East. If you want to win, be prepared for scorched earth policy. That means killing every man woman and child until the job is finished with the other side crying enough. War is killing as many people as you can in the shortest amount of time, that’s how you win. Otherwise stay home and appease.
Thomas, your assessment is brutal. But unfortunately that is the only way to deal with a culture that uses civilians as shields, women and children as suicide bombers, and actively trains boys as young as 8 and 9 in explosives and to use AK 47s as warriors.
When you can’t distinguish any longer between evil, really bad, and bad, it’s time to call in the exterminators. We need a military man right now that can take a cold, hard look at the Middle East and apply force and hardware where it is needed. We need Curtis Lemay squared at this moment. His scorched earth policy ended the war in Japan. The “bomb” was just an exclamation point.
It really does sound terrible doesn’t it? And I believe it is what is needed. Obama foreign policy, such as it is now mandates it.
Just like in this country, with Democrats, Republicans, Blacks, Mexicans, Illegal immigrants, LGBTs, It isn’t about freedom,democracy, and fairness. It is all about MONEY. American “interest” has it foundation in money, investment, draining the resources from the people of the Middle East, and paying off the leaders with our tax money, to get what they want in fortunes. The NEOCons are to make money in the US by going to war, boost the economy, right, just like the prelude to WWI and WWII.
The fighting based on religious beliefs, in the Middle East is just a rallying call, for their leaders, just like in the American Civil War, it is and was about economics and MONEY, BUT the North had to make it “about slavery” to make it a moral cause to justify the terrible loss of life on both sides, and hide the real motivation behind it all.
If everyone is so base as Thomas implies than the U.S. doesn’t have a chance of survival. Foreign policy is never simple because leaders wish to keep the peace and keep the citizens happy. Do I believe that we are engaged in the Middle East for the economy and neo-cons? NO. Read some of VDH’s blogs on the Middle East. I am a little intrigues with Michael Vlahos of Center for Naval Strategy and his thought that we should let the Middle East sort itself out. IN other words let them kill each other. Time for the Saudis to send the guys into the field. It is such a convoluted mess! Cut off Turkey, Iran and arm the Kurds and Israelis?
There is only one thing in that part of the world that is respected and that’s the bullet that comes out of the barrel of a gun. I agree with Thomas and I think “Country Joe” MacDonald said it best, “..the only way that peace can be won, is when you’ve blown ’em all to kingdom come!” Life has always been cheap in the Middle East and all the “good feelings” in the world won’t change it.
How does supporting Israel and the Kurds stop the terrorists from attacking us? Can the Israelis stop the Iranian bomb development?
I say break all the Isis hardware and leave the Muslims to kill each other. That is the one thing at which they excel. Take our chances using intelligence and a sealed border. And support Israel and the Kurds. But get out of the ME as much as possible.