John Rossomando
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There’s no doubt that Barack Obama will be trying to get everyone to focus on the terrorist scalps he has collected since coming into office. Namely those of Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Alwaki and the Mad Dog of the Middle East himself Muammar Gaddafi.
But save for Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum, the rest of the GOP field is woefully unprepared for confronting Obama on the international stage.
Obama remains particularly vulnerable on the Middle East where his policies have encouraged the Muslim Brotherhood to foment revolution against our allies in the region such as Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak.
Now as my former colleague David Bedein writes in his blog Israel Behind the News regarding Egypt:
“Islamists will continue to attack Christians, whom the government and army won’t protect. The Brotherhood will complain that if only it was in charge and could implement a policy of hope and change everything would be great. Islamists and liberals will join together to bash the junta as anti-democratic and intending to keep power for itself.
The junta’s decision to create dual power-a military executive alongside an elected legislature-is understandable since it is horrified at the rise of Islamism and violence. But this is likely to be a turbulent situation.
Then there’s Naguib Sawiris, a billionaire, Christian, and the founder of the Free Egyptians’ Party, the only group that’s likely to fight Islamism. He has just given a fascinating interview to Bloomberg Business News.
The problem is that while the party has many Muslims in the leadership and membership (two-thirds, it claims) most of its votes will probably come from Christians, the only large sector of the population willing to battle for secularism.”
Then there’s Libya where al-Qaida battle flags flutter in the breeze above the Libyan national flag just as conservatives feared prior to Gaddafi’s fall.
Even liberals are starting to concede the naïve dream of democracy in the Middle East was a pipe dream. Mshari al-Zaydi writes in a posting on al-Arabiya:
“I recall how many Arab writers at the beginning of this year - the year of the Arab Spring - prophesied that what we were witnessing were uprisings staged by non-political civilians and youth, and claimed that not a single radical or ideological slogan was chanted in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, or any other Arab public square.
They said that this proves that the Arab regimes were lying to the world – and to the political elites who champion the idea of the civil state – when they said that should their regimes be toppled, this would result in Islamists and religious fundamentalists coming to power. Those who supported the Arab Spring always countered that this was nothing more than a lie fabricated by these regimes to remain in power, and that the Arab Spring youth had proved their mettle and their belief in civil values.
Now, these same well-intentioned writers – or at least many of them – have returned to warn against the Arab Spring being hijacked and despoiled. They have expressed their confusion about the presence and popularity of these radical Islamists who are overwhelming the political scene, and are asking: where did the Facebook youth go?”
Then there’s Iran, which has continued its push for nuclear weapons despite Barack Obama’s decision to play nice guy instead of continuing the evil Bush administration’s policies.
Hezbollah’s chief cleric Hassan Nasrallah warns that an Israeli attack against Iran will lead to a regional war, which means his terror group will serve as Iran’s main arm for a counterstrike against Israel.
The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz quotes Nasrallah as saying:
“Nasrallah said that the "suicide attacks initiated by members of the resistance are those which created the force of both the resistance and Hezbollah in Lebanon."
"Israel will think twice before it attacks Lebanon since it knows well the kind of power the resistance and Hezbollah have in the country," the Hezbollah leader added during his speech at an event commemorating members of the militant group.”
Now will we stand with Israel or follow Barack Obama in insulting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the moment of Israel’s greatest peril?
We need to hear more in this presidential race about foreign policy than we have been hearing. It is make or break.
As Amb. John Bolton told ConservativeHome back in September:
I think we need a president who can address not just the damage of four years of Obama, but we need to be brutally honest here – the last couple of years of the Bush administration did do us internationally and work to correct them.
We need somebody who’s prepared to think in grand strategy terms of how you deal with a rising China.
This might be a peaceful rise of China as some have said, but we need to be prepared for the opposite. And we’re not. Right now we’re not doing either one very effectively."
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