OPINION:
President Obama will soon be leaving the White House, and not a day too soon. He will leave behind a mess in the Middle East beyond exaggeration. The five-year-old Syrian civil war continues unabated, pitting several armed groups, each with foreign sponsors, against each other, leaving the United States caught in a web of its own contradictions.
In one example, American special forces assisted a Turkish incursion into northern Syria even though the Turkish target was the Kurdish Syrian force most effective in Syria, and an American ally to boot.
Turkey fears that the Syrian Kurds are attempting to set up a mini-state, perhaps to link up with the Kurdish guerrillas, sometimes armed by the Russians, which the Turks have been fighting for three decades. The Turks fear America’s autonomous ally, the Syrian Kurds, and ultimately ethnic Kurds in Iran who may have a secessionist state of their own in mind.
Turkey accuses America of having been involved in the recent failed coup against an elected Turkish government, leaving Recep Tayyip Erdogan moving steadily toward an authoritarian Islamic regime. Mr. Erdogan blames Fethullah Gulen, the Muslim cleric and politician, for leading the coup and has asked for his extradition from the United States, where he found refuge.
Turkish airmen at the NATO-Turkish-U.S. base at Incirlik Air Base near the Syrian border, are accused by Mr. Erdogan of implication in the failed coup, and American operations against ISIS have been halted, at least temporarily. Not a comforting thought for Washington planners, with nuclear weapons deployed there.
Turkey’s leaky southern border has been crossed by hundreds of thousands of migrants — some refugees from violence, others from economic hard times — on their way to Europe. Mr. Erdogan has tried to pressure German Chancellor Angela Merkel for additional aid and free movement of Turks inside the European Union in exchange for blocking the migrants, but this attempt has collapsed. Germany is suffering from the million-plus “refugees” it admitted last year with Ms. Merkel’s welcome.
President Obama continues to court the mullahs in Tehran. He signed what is likely to turn out to be a non-enforceable pact to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The deal was concluded just before the mullahs boasted of successfully firing an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear weapon. The American president went through secret contortions to pay $400 million — originally part of earlier arms purchases by the government of Reza Shah Pahlavi which Washington helped unseat — to free four hostages. Billions more is apparently on the way.
The mystery is, of course, what Mr. Obama and his friends think they are buying. Iran is already the world’s leading sponsor of state terrorism and has lined up allies in Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. Both threaten Israel, America’s only reliable ally in the region. Israel and Turkey were once close allies, but Turkey now supports Hamas, a common enemy of both Egypt and the Israelis.
Mr. Obama didn’t create the bitter and explosive Middle East, but he has nurtured the worst of it. Russia remains a crippled relic of Soviet power, but it is building naval and air bases in Syria.
Whether Mr. Obama’s original threat to intervene in Syria, the first of his “red lines,” would have made the difference in controlling the chaos of the Islamic world, will never be known. But there’s no doubt that he made it worse, and now there’s tinder that if ignited would spread conflict beyond its current confines, and where it would stop none can tell.
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