There are several interpretations of President Obama’s indecisiveness regarding the primary threats to peace in both the Middle East and the Ukraine, as well as other domestically important decisions, such as the Keystone pipeline and immigration reform.
His odd behavior has sparked the wildest conspiracy theories, which allege all sorts of accusations, including his secret desire to reduce the hated America to an also-ran nation, or that he is secretly a Muslim himself, or that he is enacting a grand scheme to punish America for all its perceived wrongdoings on the international stage. Others believe he just doesn’t care, or that he feels the burdens of leadership are just beyond him, now that he has no more elections to win.
There is another possibility. His indecision seems more likely to stem from Barack Obama the idealist who believed in his soul that if you are nice to everybody, everybody will be nice to you, and that wars are an abomination, an insult to man’s higher nature. It is this belief that has formed the basis of his foreign policy, which then starts with a tactical American withdrawal from the center stage in world affairs. He once famously summarized this philosophy as “leading from behind.”
What is happening now is the crushing impact of stark reality on Mr. Obama’s world view. He is an intelligent man, and he sees that when you are nice to everybody, everybody thinks you are weak; that when they cease to fear you, the bad guys just go and do whatever they want. This realization is in direct conflict with his wish for world peace through mutual draw-down of military force on all sides. His hesitation then is a result of his unsolved moral dilemma of force versus good will. To become a war president is against everything he ever wished for and hoped to achieve. Yet, how can you reconcile that belief with what is happening all over the world, the world that used to be presided over by the Americans but is no longer?
You can’t wish away, bribe or appease people like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Unless you stop them, they are going to behead you and all your family and countrymen. It is said, “All that is required for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing.” So what choices do you have? Start another war in the Middle East? There must be another way. So you look and think and delay and delay. Much like Shakespeare’s Hamlet facing the command to murder his uncle.
Much as we might have sympathy for a man watching his ideals being shattered, a whole nation, indeed a whole world, is concerned about the dire consequences of defeat by the likes of ISIS. Sen. John McCain has a simple answer to ISIS. Asked what should be done about ISIS, his answer was, “Kill ’em.” People look back at the Nazis and what happened to the appeasers, like Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who negotiated with Adolf Hitler. Something like Mr. Obama’s appeasement of Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, Chamberlain tried to give Hitler what he wanted in an attempt to dissuade him from attacking Britain. The result was that Hitler stopped worrying about Britain’s deterrence and took over Europe, and bombed the British into a nightmare.
Unfortunately, we cannot wait for Mr. Obama’s struggle with his conscience. We either fight the terrorists over there or we will fight them over here. The longer we wait, the stronger ISIS gets. With an order from the top of our government, the Pentagon seems to believe that this military defeat of ISIS need not take “at least three years. Maybe more.” Rear Adm. John Kirby, Defense Department spokesman, has said that they believe the military defeat of ISIS could be accomplished rather quickly. Retired Gen. Jack Keane, among many others, has broadcast a military strategy aimed at the degradation and defeat of ISIS. It does not appear that there is any lack of contenders for a military strategy. Mr. Obama’s idea that this war could take years appears to be an attempt to sway public opinion against another war in the Middle East.
However, there are two wars going on here. If the military war could be won relatively quickly, the ideological war could and probably will take years to prevail. It took us 40 years to win that ideological war with the Soviet Union. But that battle for the minds and hearts of the vast majority of Muslims will never be won if it is never started. The long-term challenge of this war is to so discredit and ostracize the merciless radicals among the Islamists that they cease to exist as a group.
This is a much harder mission. The typical radical recruit is usually a product of poverty, as in the Middle East, or the lack of opportunity or social justice, as in the Western countries. Typically not only is he alienated but also feels he has nothing to lose. ISIS recruits from Minneapolis seem to be grabbing onto this movement as a way of improving their self-esteem – becoming tough guys with guns, taking what they want, including women (who may not have been impressed with them at home), striking fear in the faces of all who oppose them — instead of being ignored as losers at home — all beneath an umbrella of moral superiority.
Only when other members of their faith take up arms against them and treat them as outlaws and losers will the seeds of success in the war of ideals be sown. This underscores the necessity of the other countries of the Middle East taking a leading role in the military and subsequent contests with the radicals.
The current coalition of Western countries — including Australia, Canada, Germany, Turkey, Italy, Poland and Denmark — is certainly more than capable of defeating 10,000 men in the desert. But they cannot do it without ground troops, nor can they exert the moral authority which is the only real weapon that will defeat the radicals. The ground forces must be predominantly Muslim, so that the soldiers, their families, their governments and their children permeate the Muslim world with a horror and a disgust for the radicals. This war is a cultural test as well as, and really more than, a military war.
The Kurds have already shown themselves to be worthy opponents of the ISIS branch. But the Iraqis, the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Jordanians and the Pakistanis must also be brought onto the field of battle. What about the Iranians and the Syrians? Good question. Seems like it is hard to turn down willing enemies of our enemies.
One group that must not be allowed to stand in the way of this action is the Iraqis. They were thought to have the best trained and equipped army in the region until the Shia expelled the Sunnis from participation in the army and in Iraqi life in general. This is a serious problem, but it cannot be allowed to interfere with what is now quite widely believed to be a matter of national security to the American homeland. The current inclination of the Obama administration to rely for American security from a bunch of bigots in charge of the land we gave so much so save turns the stomach. We should take what we can get from them, but don’t let their inability to govern themselves affect our battle against the real bad guys.
Our President Hamlet has a fine mind; now he must turn it to protecting the future of America instead of how to par the next hole.
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