by Richard Baehr
If there is one factor above all others that probably led to the victory for the "Leave" side, it had to be the refugee and immigration disorder that has resulted from the war in Syria.
The catastrophe that
has hit Syria -- hundreds of thousands dead, millions dislocated, and a
multi-year stream of refugees headed to Europe that now numbers in the
millions -- is a political and human disaster with multiple godfathers.
After several years of war, there is still no evidence that the fighting
will soon end, or that a political solution is at hand.
One of the biggest
reasons for this calamity has been the near complete abdication of
responsibility for or interest in addressing the conflict by the Obama
administration, a neglect that history will not regard as benign. When
over 50 State Department officials expressed their dismay at American
policy towards Syria in a written statement, and their disgust was made
public, it was, unfortunately, only a one-day story for the national
networks and leading papers.
This is, after all, a
press corps that was never eager to embarrass the administration, which
they have so ably served for more than seven years. This history of
journalistic obeisance was what enabled White House adviser Ben Rhodes to gloat over how easy it was to deceive the reporters on what was really in the Iran nuclear deal. Rhodes classified most of the
reporters as young know-nothings. Of course, there were also those who
were knowingly in the bag for the deal for other reasons (such as former
Ambassador Thomas Pickering, who was bought and paid for by Boeing
while he was lobbying Congress for the Iran deal, never disclosing his financial arrangement with the plane manufacturer).
It is obvious in one
regard why the Obama administration shied away from any serious military
involvement in Syria, including the time when the president reversed
course on responding to Syria's use of chemical weapons, the supposed
red line that he set up that was crossed and presumably demanded
military action. The president saw his role as being the un-Bush, the
leader who would take America out of conflicts into which his
predecessor had led it. These conflicts included the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. The president put little effort into achieving a separation
agreement with the Iraqi government that would have enabled a modest
American force to remain in the country. The rise of Islamic State in
Iraq and Syria was hastened by the American withdrawal and the
perception in Iraq among the minority Sunni population that the Shiite
government in power, now linked up with Iran, would make life miserable
for the country's Sunnis. The American "surge" effort in the final years
of the Bush administration enabled President Barack Obama to begin his
term with the country in far better shape than had been the case a few
years earlier in terms of both military status and political
arrangements. Today Iraq and Syria are in a state that makes the worst
days of the conflict during the Bush years seem like a stroll in the
park.
Were the Obama policy
of disengagement merely that, it might at least be one consistent with
someone whose views toward the military and war were in tune with the
likes of folk singer Pete Seeger: time to lay down our sword and shield.
But there has been a second, if not overarching, foreign policy mission
in the Obama years, during both his terms in office, despite the lies
repeatedly told to reporters and members of Congress suggesting the Iran
initiative only began when a more moderate government came to power in
[T]ehran in his second term. The Obama team was on a mission from the start
to achieve a nuclear deal with Iran, really any deal with Iran, that
would serve as the president's signal foreign policy achievement. This
"achievement" turned out to be on a par with Obama's major domestic
policy achievement: the creation of Obamacare, the health insurance
program which to date has run up far higher costs to serve far fewer of
the previously uninsured than advertised.
The administration,
particularly Secretary of State John Kerry, has been scrambling to make
sure Iran is happy and receives everything he promised them in the
negotiations, the promises he has always meant to keep as opposed to those he made to members of Congress, which were largely fictions.
Iran is the U.S.'s new
regional ally -- a regime favored with more positive attention than any
nation in Europe, or Israel, or its former Sunni Arab allies in the
Middle East. Some Treasury Department officials are outraged with
Kerry's efforts to override their efforts over the years to set up
various sanctions regimes related to banking and the use of the American
dollar in transactions, which Obama is eager to ignore to make the
mullahs' economy grow faster. The propaganda is that faster economic
growth will make Iran more moderate.
The Obama
administration's Iran swoon is a major reason for its hands-off policy
on Syria. The Assad regime is tightly linked to the Iranian regime, one
of its closest allies. Iran regularly arms its terror army Hezbollah by
first shipping weapons to Syria, which are then transferred across the
border to Lebanon to threaten Israel. Both the Iranian military and
Hezbollah have been fighting in Syria on behalf of the Assad regime.
Iranian forces have worked with the government forces in Iraq to battle
Islamic State, a threat to the Iran-friendly Shiite regime now in place
in Baghdad.
The Obama team has
talked about elevating Iran's regional position as a counterweight to
Sunni regimes. This new balance of power would somehow play out
peacefully among the contending parties once the U.S. is out of the way
and Iran is restored to its rightful place among the community of
nations. It is at times hard to believe that the people who run foreign
policy for the United States could say these things without laughing at
each other.
Britain's exit from the
European Union is not a laughing matter for the United Kingdom or for
what remains of the EU. If there is one factor above all others that
probably led to the victory for the "Leave" side, it had to be the
refugee and immigration disorder that has resulted from the war in
Syria. If you cannot control who comes into your country, you are no
longer a country. Britain's annual immigration levels recently (350,000 a
year) are, on a per capita basis, nearly double the legal immigration
levels in the United States.
The chaos in the Middle
East -- from Libya (another disastrous Obama initiative) to Iraq and
Syria, and the resulting mass flight from these countries -- are reasons
for many to fear that Great Britain and much of Europe will be
overwhelmed by the tide. German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the
floodgates with a warm welcome to the refugees. A majority of the people
of Britain and some other EU countries were not on board with the
welcome mat. Maybe the next Brexit like vote will be Finish, or
Czeckout, or Italeave, or Deportugal. In any case, when America
withdraws, from Europe or the Middle East, there is likely trouble
ahead.
Richard Baehr
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=16511
Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
No comments:
Post a Comment