Into the Abyss

by Melanie Phillips


To an astonishing silence by the media on both sides of the pond, the US along with the UK and a number of European governments is leading the west into an abyss. I have repeatedly noted here that the US, UK and France helped bring to power in Egypt Islamic extremists hostile to the free world, and were threatening to do something very similar in Syria. Now they have indeed done so by recognising the Syrian National Council as the legitimate leader of the Syrian opposition.

The thinking behind this is to designate the al-Qaeda linked Jabhat al-Nusra as a terrorist group, while supporting the Muslim Brotherhood – which dominates the Syrian National Council -- as a reasonable alternative. But this is the same catastrophic mistake the US et al have made in Egypt. For the Brotherhood are not a reasonable alternative to Islamic extremists hostile to the west. They are themselves Islamic extremists hostile to the west.

The disastrous implications of this fundamental strategic mistake were spelled out in a forensic piece by Jonathan Spyer in the Jerusalem Post. As Spyer observed:
     ‘The difference between the Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood affiliated groups is one of degree, not of kind.
     ‘... The focus on Jabhat al Nusra should not obscure the fact that the better-organized, non-Salafi, home grown, Muslim Brotherhood elements that the US is        backing are no less anti-western and no less anti-Jewish.
    ‘Could things have been different? As with Egypt, perhaps, if the west had perceived the risks and opportunities clearly at the start. This might have triggered a vigorous policy of support for non-Islamist opposition and fighting elements, which were there.
    ‘The result is that the force now facing the retreating Assad regime is split between differing brands of Sunni Arab Islamism, some aligned with the west, some directly opposing it, but all holding fast to fundamentally anti-western ideologies.’

Barry Rubin spells out even more starkly the looming disaster for the west from its idiocy over Syria:
    ‘American intelligence agents in southern Turkey supervise the handover of weapons to the rebels. They make no attempt to stop arms from going to the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists while they make no attempt to funnel the guns to moderates. The only restriction is that they not go to al-Qaeda-affiliated Salafists.
    ‘One day, those guns will be used to commit unspeakable atrocities against Christians and other minority groups just as they will be used to install an Islamist regime and to kill or intimidate its opponents.’

The mistake being made by the US and the rest is as deep-seated as it is egregious. The campaign in the west to promote the Muslim Brotherhood (to its motto: ‘Islam is the solution’ one obviously has to ask, ‘But what is the problem?’) as helpful allies against those who want to bring the west down has been making relentless and dismaying progress into the establishment for years – an establishment that refuses to see the Brothers for what they are, in essence because it refuses to acknowledge that what the west is now up against is a religious war. From that most profound and seminal error, all follows.

But when you look at Barack Obama, you see another factor at work which is not simply the strategic stupidity that results from an appeasement mentality, nor a myopic view of the national interest, nor the unsurpassed arrogance and ignorance of cultural hubris, all of which drive western foreign policy.

Just look at Obama’s favoured candidates for the two US administration positions central to the defence of the west. They are both people whose attitudes would in fact deeply endanger it still further. John Kerry, tipped to become Secretary of State, is an anti-war activist and left-wing fantasist who, despite serving as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, is such a man-made global warming fanatic that he believes climate change is
    ‘as dangerous as any of the sort of real crises that we talk about’

ie, as dangerous as say, Syrian chemical weapons or a nuclear Iran.

The record of Chuck Hagel, Obama’s favoured candidate for Defence Secretary, is more troubling still, as outlined here. He has consistently downplayed Iran’s terrorist record and the danger it poses to the free world. He consistently voted against sanctions on Iran to stop its pursuit of nuclear weapons capability; he voted against naming Iran’s Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization; and he refused to sign a letter calling on the European Union similarly to name Hezbollah – which has the blood of countless Americans on its hands -- as a terrorist organisation. Instead, he advocates ‘engaging’ with Iran – ie, appeasement, which he prefers to parse as
    ‘ “... a bridge-building process, an opportunity to better understand” others on the basis of “mutual self respect.”’

This is all of a piece with his attitudes towards Israel and the Jews. Not only is he associated with gross anti-Israel canards which reverse truth and lies, but he also said that
    ‘the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here...’

‘up here’ meaning Washington.

Whether or not these men are actually appointed is not the issue. The key point is that Obama wants to appoint them, from which we may infer that he believes they will enact his own vision of foreign and defence policy.

What therefore is the factor that Obama brings to the west’s dismal foreign policy table as illustrated by these truly appalling choices? Malice. Against the west, and also against the ancient civilisation that lies at the heart of its moral codes. Factor that into the truly stupendous myopia and worse of Britain and Europe, and you are looking at the emergence of a new world order: the eclipse of the west, brought about by the unholy alliance between the Obama administration and death-wish Britain and Europe – and leaving Israel, once the forward salient of the west in the Middle East, emerging instead as the lonely and isolated defender of liberty in the face of the gathering Islamic storm.

Melanie Phillips

Source:http://melaniephillips.com/into-the-abyss

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