n six short years, Barak Obama has squandered 60 years of assiduous diplomacy and expanding American influence in the Middle East. For nearly a century, successive presidents, Republican and Democrat alike, carefully navigated the esoteric alleyways of shifting Middle Eastern politics to American advantage. American primacy was solidified by the decline and collapse of the Soviet Union, leaving a uni-polar sphere of influence. If there is one principle underlying Middle Eastern political culture, it is an acute sense of the importance and consequences of power and alliances. Until now, the sole exception in Americas policy continuum was Jimmy Carter, whose ideal driven incompetence was responsible, in large measure, for the rise of Islamic radicalism and the loss of one of our most reliable allies in the region. &; Anwar Sadat initiated Egypts gradual gravitation toward the United States and by the mid-1970s, Americas reliable allies in the Middle East included all of the largest and richest nations in the region. Carters craven abandonment of the Shah, though, revived regional instability and consigned Iran not only to the ranks of American enemies but the Iranian people to oppression far worse than any ever imposed by the Shah. It also provided a home for Islamic radicalism, the intellectual and cultural foundations for fundamentalist Islamic revival and the subsequent rise of the organized Jihadis with whom the world has had to struggle ever since. Self-righteousness is a particular conceit among American leftists who consistently undermine regimes allied with the United States if those regimes do not live up to their fastidious Enlightenment ideal. That, truly, was the Carter Doctrine; one he stubbornly defends to this day despite its having been thoroughly discredited by history. Given its massive failure and its dangerous implications for American international influence, it was largely thought to have been abandoned by subsequent administrations as a matter of American foreign policy. Read more: Family Security Matters familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/failure-and-opportunity?f=must_reads#ixzz3BntOMU00 Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
Posted on: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 18:28:01 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015