by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review on “The Corner”<\/p>\n
President Obama had lots of choices in Middle East. Unfortunately he made all the wrong ones, guided by pop ideology rather than unwelcome facts on the ground. The result is chaos at best and millions dead or displaced at worst. It didn\u2019t have to be this way. Here are 15 turning points since 2009. There is one common theme: bombastic self-serving declarations coupled with weak or nonexistent concrete follow-ups \u2014 all in a weird landscape of punishing friends and empowering enemies.<\/p>\n
Had Obama only:<\/p>\n
1. Cut out all the trash-talking of Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu, which ranged from off-the-record slights (\u201ccoward,\u201d \u201cchickens**t\u201d) to public snubs to hot-mic ridicule, to constant ankle-biting of Israeli policy in pursuit of \u201cdaylight\u201d between democratic Israel and the U.S.<\/p>\n
2. Quit the 2012 politicking and just left the 10,000 or so U.S. peacekeepers in a calm Iraq after 2011 to ensure what Vice President Joe Biden had strangely called the administration\u2019s \u201cgreatest achievement,\u201d and Obama had acclaimed as \u201ca sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq.\u201d<\/p>\n
3. Taken ISIS seriously early on and not written it off as a \u201cjayvee\u201d terrorist group.<\/p>\n
4. Not bombed the reforming monster Qaddafi and his brood out of power without any plan of replacement.<\/p>\n
5. Beefed up embassy and consulate security in Libya and sent in reinforcement troops at the first sign of trouble.<\/p>\n
6. Never supported the efforts of the Muslim Brotherhood and the firebrand ex-CSU Northridge professor Mohamed Morsi to stage a one-vote, one-time Islamist takeover in Egypt.<\/p>\n
7. Avoided the empty and melodramatic braggadocio that \u201cAssad must go!\u201d<\/p>\n
8. Kept the sanctions on a lying, terrorist-subsidizing \u2014 and teetering \u2014 Iran, and dropped illusions of an \u201cIran deal.\u201d<\/p>\n
9. Shown support for the Green Revolution and Iranian reformers in 2009.<\/p>\n
10. Passed on the idiotic \u201cspecial relationship\u201d with the Ottomanist Recep Erdogan of Turkey.<\/p>\n
11. Never have issued fake \u201credlines\u201d in Syria or rhetorical serial \u201cdeadlines\u201d for cessation of Iranian nuclear proliferation.<\/p>\n
12. Never have invited Russia into the Middle East after a hiatus of over 40 years.<\/p>\n
13. Skipped all the Middle East purple-passage myth-making, from the fatuous Cairo speech to the various apology tours about purported U.S. sins.<\/p>\n
14. Treated \u201cradical Islamic terrorism\u201d as a real existential threat and forgone the ridiculous euphemisms such as \u201cman-caused disasters\u201d and \u201cworkplace violence,\u201d along with the embarrassing assertions of our top intelligence leaders that the Muslim Brotherhood was largely secular, that jihad was a non-violent personal growth journey and one of the new chief aims of NASA was Muslim outreach.<\/p>\n
15. Dropped the \u201clead from behind\u201d cuteness, and loud talk of a pivot away from the Middle East.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review on “The Corner” President Obama had lots of choices in Middle East. Unfortunately he made all the wrong ones, guided by pop ideology rather than unwelcome facts on the ground. The result is chaos at best and millions dead or displaced at worst. It didn\u2019t have to be this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[28,59,846,285,46,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2wu","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":448,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-on-the-middle-east\/","url_meta":{"origin":9702,"position":0},"title":"Obama on the Middle East","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 21, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The last three and a half years, Barack Obama has gone out of his way to bow, apologize, contextualize, and scapegoat in order to win Middle Eastern affection. Yet, his reset, \u201cBush did it\u201d policy is now in shambles, and he apparently has\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Middle East"","block_context":{"text":"The Middle East","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9704,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-resilience-of-israel\/","url_meta":{"origin":9702,"position":1},"title":"The Resilience of Israel","author":"Megan Ring","date":"January 5, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review Despite the mess around it, Israel is in its best geostrategic position in decades. 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