OPINION:
The “wise men” — Henry Kissinger and George Schultz, plus Madeleine Albright, who testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 29, lamented that the Obama administration has no coherent strategy to address the ongoing monumental world changes, particularly in the Middle East. Mr. Kissinger stated that multiple changes are occurring simultaneously between and within various states such as Iraq, Syria and Libya. The changes involve the traditional Sunni-Shia sectarian violence and atrocities that have gone on for hundreds of years, but the new phenomenon is the Islamic State and its declaration of a caliphate.
All of the former secretaries concurred on the obvious point that we have to identify our objective and then develop a strategy to achieve it. If the administration’s objective is to defeat the Islamic State and other Islamic radical movements, we do not have a strategy. However, it is wrong to imply that the Obama administration does not have a strategy or that its members are incompetent. Their strategy by now should be clear to all thinking Americans. It is embedded in the Barack Obama-Valerie Jarrett strategy to “transform America.” It is an anti-American and anti-Western, but a pro-Islam, pro-Iran and pro-Muslim Brotherhood strategy.
The Obama administration’s embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood took place long before January 2009. It is critical to remember that the Muslim Brotherhood’s creed is to destroy America from within by “our own hands,” and substitute the draconian Islamic Shariah for our Constitution. President Obama’s June 4, 2009 Cairo outreach speech to the Muslim world, where he invited the leaders of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood to attend and sat them prominently in the front row, should have been a wake-up call. Furthermore, when he declared that he considered it his responsibility as president of the United States to fight negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear — that actually said it all.
His September 2012 speech to the U.N. General Assembly, where he stated in reference to the Benghazi debacle that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,” showed where his sympathies lie. What most Americans don’t understand is that the Libyan war was unnecessary because Col. Moammar Gadhafi was willing to abdicate. New secret tapes from the Pentagon clearly undermine the claim of then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that there was an impending humanitarian crisis in Benghazi. After just a 45-minute meeting with Muslim Brotherhood spokesman, Mahmoud Jibril, in the Paris Westin Hotel, Mrs. Clinton was convinced of the need to go to war in Libya. She chose to ignore all the advice of our military and intelligence leaders that did not support her determination to go to war.
Gen. Carter Ham, the AFRICOM commander, was actually negotiating at the time with key Gadhafi confidants for a 72-hour truce. This has been verified by several credible sources, including then-Rep. Dennis Kucinich. As the tapes show, Mrs. Clinton wanted a war regardless of the fact that no U.S. interests were at stake, and regional stability could be threatened by our intervention. In fact, Mrs. Clinton is apparently the one who ordered the Pentagon to cease negotiations. With the incestuous relations between key administration officials and the major TV networks, this has not been reported or has been underplayed.
The net effect of Mrs. Clinton’s policy decision was that we switched sides on the global war on terrorism and provided arms and material support to al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood-controlled militias. Some of these were the same militias that later attacked our facilities in Benghazi, killing four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens. Fortunately, Rep. Trey Gowdy’s select committee investigating the Benghazi tragedy has indicated that it will review these new tapes before calling Mrs. Clinton to testify.
It was during the Libyan war that the Obama administration declared its new “leading from behind” strategy, which signaled our withdrawal from our world leadership role. The unilateral disarmament of our military forces in a world undergoing monumental change made no sense but certainly was welcomed by our enemies and the Islamic supremacists. Our precipitous withdrawal from Iraq certainly can be viewed as an “appeasement” signal to Iran in Mr. Obama’s senseless quest for any type of nuclear weapons agreement with the evil regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The concessions might already border on treason.
The latest move by the Obama administration — hosting a group of leaders aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood at the State Department, whose objective is to obtain support for the overthrow of Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi — was unconscionable. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt shortly thereafter announced a call for a “long, uncompromising jihad.” We should not forget that it is President el-Sissi who has called for the reformation of Islam. In fact, as a follow-on effort, leading Sunni clerics should establish a forum to revise interpretation of Islam’s 7th century violent Koranic verses. This would be a dramatic act since it has not been tried in more than 1,300 years.
The character of the Obama administration is very clear — never more so than with the continued release of hardened terrorists from Guantanamo Bay. The limited air strikes against the barbaric Islamic State should be seen as further evidence as to where White House sympathies lie. With the administration’s disastrous immigration policies and the resettlement of an unknown number of Muslims throughout the country, Congress must act now to preserve our Constitution and the American way of life. As a first order of business, both the House and the Senate should start censure proceedings against Mr. Obama for his unconstitutional acts.
• James A. Lyons, a U.S. Navy retired admiral, was commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and senior U.S. military representative to the United Nations.
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