The problem with Obama’s Middle East policy is that there is no policy, and that’s why we have heard nothing consistent or comprehensive from the administration that would try to explain our glee at Mubarak and Ali leaving but outreach to the far worse Assad, the monster Ahmadinejad’s enjoying exemption from “meddling” but Qaddafi’s being merely “unacceptable,” talk of going into Libya as good but no talk of Saudi Arabia going into Bahrain as good or bad, reset diplomacy as not judging other regimes but human rights declared universal, no idea whether plebiscites without constitutional guarantees will bring governments worse than the pro-American autocracies that fall, and loud declarations of Bush’s policies as bad but also reset diplomacy’s quietly embracing most of them in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the not-to-be-named war on terror.
All this is in line with simultaneously establishing withdrawal dates and surging into Afghanistan, virtually closing Guantanamo, and regretting Iraq while claiming it as a possible “greatest achievement.” All that can be said for it is that the chaos keeps our friends and enemies guessing — and that confused inaction is, I suppose, preferable to confused intervention.
What then is or was at the heart of U.S. bewilderment in the region?
Continue reading Victor Davis Hanson at National Review Online…
(photo credit: Official White House photo by Pete Souza)
