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TOM BURGUM
Contributing Columnist
burgum@lbknews.com
As our Syrian charade continues, Assad is now the anointed and agreed to ruler of Syria. It is with he whom we now negotiate while he continues to threaten to kill thousands more by blowing them up or shooting them on an individual and more personal basis.
His protector, Vladimir Putin, is director of Mideast events. He sets the agenda for talks or U.N. action even as he accelerates shipments of arms to Iran and Syria. Nations in the region hostile to Iran look nervously at a landscape seemingly abandoned by their American friends.
The Obama administration talks of our threat of force bringing Assad to the table. But, we are not told what Assad is supposed to do exactly, or when he is supposed to do it. We talk of the threat of force but the U.N. will not mention the use of force. We continue to send medical kits and assault rifles while the rebels beg for heavy weapons.
Don’t be surprised when there is another WMD attack as Mr. Assad tests the President’s red line one more time. We will have three or four melodramatic confrontations at the U.N. before we again threaten to launch unbelievably small attacks while reassuring the world’s peaceniks that whatever we do to stop Assad from killing another 1 percent of the next 100,000 to die, will just be pinpricks. Nothing to worry about.
America’s currency in the Mideast is debased and the deterioration of our standing began long before Mr. Obama’s recent gyrations.
Harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend is how Bernard Lewis of Princeton, America’s leading expert on the Middle East, described America after James Baker and Brent Scowcroft urged the Iraqi rebels to resist Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War and then betrayed them to Saddam’s justice. The late Christopher Hitchens noted that, “For millions of Iraqis, the betrayal of their uprising against Saddam in 1991 is something that they can never forget. They tend to bring it up, too, and to fear a repetition of it. This apprehension about another sellout is especially strong among the Shiite and Kurdish elements that together make up a majority of the population.”
Some may feel Lewis’ portrayal of America is harsh but what other conclusion can be drawn from events of the past 20 years? In 2006, the Iraq Study group (ISG) was appointed by Congress and charged with assessing the situation in Iraq and making policy recommendations. The ISG, with a pomposity and arrogance that is breathtaking, announces that the only way to peace is for Israel to withdraw behind its pre 1967 borders. The report specifically calls for the return the Golan Heights to Syria. It then adds that this would come “with a US security guarantee for Israel that could include an international force on the border, including US troops if requested by both parties.” That part of the report would be funny if repeated on Saturday Night Live. The report doesn’t speculate on the probability of the Syrians requesting American troops be stationed on its border. In short, what this august committee did was recommend we turn our back on Israel, hoping that a betrayal of our friend would impress our enemies.
But, our problems were much deeper than even those caused by the ISG report. Mark Steyn put it well, “If you were a run-of-the mill third World basket case, what would you conclude watching the (U.S. and the) ‘international community’ warn North Korea that there will be stern consequences if it conducts a nuclear test and, okay, even sterner super-duper-mega consequences if it conducts a second nuclear test?” What would you conclude from the recent offers made to Iran if they only agree to use their developing nuclear technology for peaceful purposes? When Iran offers nuclear technology to, let’s say, the Sudan and Cuba, what will we do then, send more strongly worded telegrams or maybe just go back to the Security Council thus giving Russia one more opportunity to “stick it to America.”
There are those in the world who, according to public opinion polls, believe America is the greatest danger in the world. This is laughable. No government in the world really fears us at this point. It is not that we don’t have the power to influence events; it is we are increasingly reluctant as a people to exercise that power.
Now that Mr. Obama has continued America’s retreat in the Mideast, Israel has to be looking to its security. The Israelis would have to know that it is a bit chancy to depend on America for any protracted conflict. They have heard the discordant voices of the reflexively passive American left who could not even countenance American armed response to Saddam‘s invasion of Kuwait in 1991. They, like the rest of the world, have watched in wonder as the American left stood in opposition to every domestic intelligence program proposed since 9/11. They have heard Jimmy Carter blame Israel for the current conflict in Palestine even to the point of accusing them of apartheid. The Israelis can not be blamed if they are re-computing the value of American guarantees in the light of these events and the world can not be blamed for wondering if we even have the will to defend ourselves anymore.
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