In the October 27th airing of This Week With George Stephanopoulos, former Vice President Dick Cheney said the U.S. withdrawal from the Middle East has left us in a position where “our friends no longer trust us and our adversaries don’t fear us.”
Cheney said our very presence in the Middle East was “the cornerstone” and “basis of U.S. ability to influence.”
President Obama pulled troops out of Iraq in 2011 and began a withdraw from Afghanistan that will be completed in 2014. In the interim, Obama did not enforce his chemical weapons red line on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad nor deal aggressively with the Iranians.
Said Cheney:
I think the U.S. presence [in the Middle East] was enormously important for decades–that presence went back…certainly before Desert Storm. I think that presence and that capability and that influence has been significantly diminished as we’ve withdrawn from the region…[and] cut the number of forces we have in the region.
The former VP believes the Saudis, the Egyptians, and many others no longer have confidence in the United States.
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