Shades
of President Carter Revisited.
On
June 18, 2012, the Huffington Post ran a news story about the recent unfortunate
turn of events in Egypt's latest change of government. The news story outlines
how the fundamentalist Islamists are now taking on the military to establish
Islamist rule. And it describes how in both Tunisia and Libya, the Arab Spring
is bringing forth a new bevy of fundamentalist states:
"At their
campaign headquarters, the Brotherhood officials and supporters were ebullient
over the turn of fate: The fundamentalist group that was banned for decades and
repeatedly subjected to crackdowns under Mubarak's rule now held the chair that
their nemesis was ousted from by last year's 18 days of mass protests. The
uprising was launched by secular, leftist young activists, joined only later by
the Brotherhood's leadership as millions took to the street, seeking an end to
the authoritarian, corrupt regime.
"Now some in
Brotherhood were ready to challenge the generals. "Down with military rule," the
supporters chanted.
"The Arab
Spring uprisings have brought greater power to Islamists in the countries where
longtime authoritarian leaders were toppled – but Eygpt is the only one to have
an Islamist president. The Islamist Ennahda party won elections in Tunisia for a
national assembly and it leads a coalition government, but the president is a
leftist. Libya's leadership remains in confusion and there is no president,
though Islamists play a strong role, and an Islamist party is part of the
coalition government in Yemen."
This
scenario has to remind us of the late 1970's, when under President Jimmy
Carter's "enlightened" foreign policy almost a dozen nations fell under
Communist dominion. That record number of lost nations, attained in a mere three
years, dwarfed all the conquests the Soviets had made during the preceding 25
years of Cold War conflicts and Soviet backed
insurrections.
Now,
in just three years, President Obama has, by a series of ill-conceived gaffes in
foreign policy, turned the tide in North Africa over to the Islamic
fundamentalists. Hillary Clinton probably should share the blame in this turn of
events which has placed Israel at ever greater risk. Now, with radical Islam on
her Western flank, our strongest ally is truly surrounded.
And
to attain this failure, the Obama administration had to join in the aerial
bombardment of Libya, which posed no threat to America. That expensive conflict
represented the worst type of aggression under international law, and signaled
to the world that American presidential policy had added assassination of
foreign leaders to its allowed tools of trade. By doing so, we gave good reason
to the Muslims for hating America while opening the door to a new radical
government in Africa.
