A Gift for the Obvious -Cal Thomas
If there were an award for stating the obvious when it comes to the Middle East it would go to The New York Times. On its front page last Friday, the newspaper ran a story headlined, "Muslim Group is Rising Force in New Egypt."
What group would that be? Why, the Muslim Brotherhood, of course. We have been repeatedly assured by members of the Obama administration that the Brotherhood are a small minority with no major influence in Egypt and that those Cairo protesters clamoring for "democracy" would be the ones to chart the country's future. Each time another myth is busted, the deniers of what is happening throughout the region simply create a new myth, one they desperately cling to against all evidence to the contrary.
In last Saturday's Wall Street Journal, John Kerry (D-MA) wrote that what is taking place in the Middle East "could be the most important geostrategic shift since the fall of the Berlin Wall." That's the wrong analogy. When the Berlin Wall fell, people were liberated. What is happening in the Middle East could be the most important geostrategic shift since communists came to power in Russia and China, oppressing and killing millions.
This is just the beginning. Saudi Arabia is next and already the fault lines in that creaking monarchy are visible. The hand of Iran is behind much of this turmoil and behind Iran is al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden's vision for the toppling of every regime in the region, each to be replaced by the most religiously fundamentalist and politically repressive of leaders.
While President Obama fiddles, the Middle East burns.
[Jewish World Review]
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The Syrian spring -Caroline B. Glick
Just a month after they demanded Mubarak's ouster, an acute case of buyer's remorse is now plaguing his Western detractors. As the Brotherhood's stature rises higher by the day, Western media outlets as diverse as The New York Times and Commentary Magazine are belatedly admitting that Mubarak was better than the available alternatives.
Likewise in Libya, there is a growing recognition that the NATO-supported rebels are not exactly the French Resistance. Last Friday's Daily Telegraph report confirming that al-Qaeda-affiliated veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are now counted among the rebels the US is supporting against Gaddafi, struck a deep blow to public support for the war.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates's admission that Gaddafi posed no threat to the US and that its military intervention against Gaddafi does not serve any vital interest similarly served to sour the American public on the war effort.
[T]he political upheavals ensnaring the Arab world did not begin in December when Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Tunisia. Arguably, the fire was lit in April 2003 when jubilant Iraqis brought down a statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.
[Jewish World Review]
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George W. Obama -Daniel Pipes, PhD
Two years later, what is striking is how much Obama's policies have come to reflect Bush's – in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in the "war on terror," in the Arab-Israeli conflict, in the responses to turmoil in Tunisia and Egypt – and now in Libya, as the 3,400-word speech he gave last night exemplifies. Certain flourishes (such as the jibe at the costs of the Iraq effort), to be sure, reminded the audience who was speaking, but the overall theme of a noble United States working with allies to help an Arabic-speaking people in danger to win the freedom "to express themselves and choose their leaders" could have been spoken by his predecessor.
Obama's rapid shedding of his own ideas and his adoption of Bush's policies suggests that, however great their philosophical differences, Americans have reached a working consensus on Middle East policy.
[National Review Online]*
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