Since Dan Friedman asked that question here on Big Peace, other commentators are further questioning why, on the one hand, the White House finally (after confidence-shattering vacillation) decided to come down hard on, and ostentatiously demanded basic reform from, our allies in Egypt and Bahrain. Yet, on the other hand, it decorously voiced “regret” over the massacre of protesters by our adversaries in Iran and Libya. In the latter case, the administration has both refused to take a decisive stand against an insane despot and relinquished leadership to the feckless United Nations.
Obama’s motivation? Undoubtedly, as Benny Avni writes, the West’s need for oil, wariness about a flood of refugees in Europe, and raw “fear of the revolutionary tiger” surely figure in.
Obama on Middle East: confident “Cock of the Walk” or Chicken?
Indeed, what the president fears, and has not the bravery to confront, are the most brutal of players, the Islamists standing in the wings and awaiting to take over power.
Digging more deeply, however, we should take into account Obama’s anti-Bush, anti-colonialist, and “we-should-not-meddle” mindset, so aptly characterized by Caroline Glick:
Blinded by their anti-Western dogma, [leftist, reflexively anti-Bush opponents] claimed that his bid for freedom was nothing more than a modern-day version of Christian missionary imperialism.
It is this anti-colonialist paradigm, with its foundational assumption that the US has no right to criticize non-Westerners, that has informed the Obama administration’s foreign policy. It was the anti-colonialist paradigm that caused Obama not to support the pro-Western protesters seeking the overthrow of the Iranian regime in the wake of the stolen 2009 presidential elections.
As Obama put it at the time, “It’s not productive, given the history of US-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling, the US president meddling in the Iranian elections.”
And it is this anti-colonialist paradigm that has guided Obama’s courtship of the Syrian, Turkish and Iranian regimes and his unwillingness to lift a hand to help the March 14 movement in Lebanon.
It was also this paradigm that led Obama, cynically, to betray our longest-faithful ally, Britain, snub Israel, ignoring Columbia while “reaching out” to Venezuela and Cuba, and pander to autocratic Russia while taking for granted Eastern Europe.
By way of final word, heed Ralph Peters:
President Obama does not like to make hard decisions or take stands until it’s entirely safe to do so. He likes to pose after the bill has passed or the crisis has eased. He’s further crippled by his lifelong lack of interest in foreign policy and his neglect of it as president–except when he can make dramatic, counter-productive speeches (such as his anti-Israel tirade in Cairo), or grandstand on a disastrous treaty, such as the new START deal with a much-delighted Moscow. Like LBJ and Jimmy Carter, his more-capable predecessors (scary, huh?), Obama came to office fixated on his domestic agenda–only to be consumed by foreign-policy catastrophes.
Is Obama a clear and present danger? Yes, for the leader of the West who merely imagines vital strategic problems “away is a greater threat to our security than the Muslim Brotherhood: Vanity and vacillation are no substitute for courage, vision and common sense.”
Obama’s weakness will resound throughout the Middle East for years to come, to the advantage of extremists. Scary indeed.
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