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Fitzgerald: Obama’s foreign policy challenge

Nov 5, 2008 5:58 pm By Hugh Fitzgerald

One wonders if the Obama entourage will really invite immediate dismay and fury by appointing to head the State Department and the Pentagon those who have displayed palpable want of sympathy for the plight of Israel, as demonstrated in some cases by Senate voting records that astonish for the consistency of the anti-Israel theme. Such people are also, unsurprisingly, and possibly as a result of that coldness or indifference toward Israel, those least prepared, temperamentally and intellectually, to begin to comprehend the meaning and menace of Islam and Jihad.

It is important that people be chosen to refashion the war of self-defense against Jihad who will not, for other reasons, be disinclined to properly analyze the threat. And those least inclined to do so, I’m afraid, are those who are most inclined to find fault with, and wish to diminish support for, Israel. It may not, in all cases, rise to the level of antisemitism, but it is certainly a telling sign of a likely inability to be able to analyze the meaning and recognize the menace of the Jihad.
I’d worry most about that: who is going to be appointed to those positions. They can do a lot of good or a lot of harm, as the American government can either end the Iraq folly for the right reasons — to conduct the war of self-defense against Jihad far less expensively and much more effectively — or for the wrong reasons. And for the wrong reasons means to choose the path of continued indifference to what is happening all over the world, as in Western Europe, by means of the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da’wa, and demographic conquest, or in southern Thailand or southern Philippines, or in Kashmir or India proper, by Muslims hell-bent on waging Jihad by whatever means they have at hand, and that for the moment are likely to get the best results.

A poster at Jihad Watch recently claimed that “Obama’s Iraqi policy readily dovetails with Hugh’s…”

No, Obama’s policy in Iraq, while not entirely clear, hardly “dovetails” with what I have suggested in the past. Nor does his attempt to couple the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, in a period far too drawn-out for my taste (and would he leave the Iraqis with any American weaponry?), with moving more troops into Afghanistan. Afghanistan, of course, is Obama’s candidate for that “central front” everyone keeps looking for in that misnamed “war on terror.” This has nothing to do with what I have been suggesting.

It is true, however, that the removal of American forces from Iraq is now made far easier by the perfectly predictable behavior of the Shi’a government. It has used the Americans, used them until power could be solidified, and to dampen the power of the Sunnis. And now it is time for those Americans to go, unless they agree to terms that are absurd. For what would it mean if Americans remained in Iraq, passing out money, “reconstructing,” but not allowed to use their mere handful of temporary bases in any way useful to the Americans — that is, to use them in possible attacks on Iran or Syria or groups, not only those that threaten Israel and the West directly, but also such things as oil shipping in the Gulf, or Lebanon’s stability.

If the bases are never to be used against any force outside Iraq, then what good are they? Are the Americans to remain dutifully around for another year or two or three, and spend another two hundred or three hundred billion dollars, only in order to possibly intervene, to act as “peacemakers” among people, the Muslims of Iraq, who have been raised up in Total Belief-System that encourages mendacity in dealings with, and permanent hostility toward, all non-Muslims, and that inculcates the notion that compromise with one’s enemies is wrong (though occasional, feigned compromise in order to buy time, or gain an advantage, is permitted), and that there are only two possible outcomes for the party in any quarrel: that of Victor or that of Vanquished?

The only way to justify withdrawal from Iraq is to rightly paint the Iraqis as ungrateful (Churchill’s “ungrateful volcano”), and to explain, in feigned sorrow, that “we’ve done everything that it is humanly possible to do and now the Iraqis really must make the necessary compromises, and with their bursting surpluses, pay their own way, for the war in Iraq has already cost us two trillion dollars in sunk and committed future costs.”

And if a larger commitment of troops is to avoided, or once committed, then later withdrawn, form Afghanistan, it will require that President Obama justify this not through a policy of declared appeasement (“finding common cause” with Muslims, “addressing their grievances” loading them up with American aid instead of demanding that any such aid come from the fabulously rich Arab oil states, and so on. In the next four years, the sentimental messianism (“freedom” to “ordinary moms and dads” etc.) of the Bush Administration must, necessarily, end. In Western Europe, encouragement must be given to all those in those countries who have understood the threat of Islam to the political and legal institutions and social arrangements of non-Muslim states and societies, despite the control of so much of the press and government by appeasers or apologists. Much more attention should be given to Western Europe, rather than to Iraq, Afghanistan, or the Lesser Jihad against Israel (whether conducted by the Slow Jihadists of Fatah or the Fast Jihadists of Hamas, who differ only on tactics and timing, not on the final goal). Encouragement must be given to those who are willing to take measures to halt Muslim immigration and to diminish the large-scale Muslim presence that, wherever it is to be found, has created a situation for both the indigenous Infidels and for other, non-Muslim immigrants, that is far more unpleasant, expensive, and dangerous than would be the case without such a large-scale Muslim presence.

President Obama surely will, if he has the courage and vision to do so, at long last do what no President before has done, which is to read Saudi Arabia the riot act. He should threaten all kinds of retaliation unless it stops deploying huge sums, the Money Weapon, to fund efforts everywhere to strengthen Islam and the Muslim presence in the Western world, and to conduct propaganda designed to weaken Western resolve, and delay the day of recognition of what Islam inculcates, and what, as the behavior of Muslims today, and over the past 1350 years demonstrates, is so easily taken to heart. This retaliation could take the form of denial of access to Western education and medical care, taxes on gasoline and oil even larger than may be planned for economic reasons, a propaganda campaign conducted against Saudi Arabia, in which the contents of its textbooks become the subject of political speeches and the nightly news, and much more.

Anything less than this from Obama should raise holy hell, not least from many of those who voted for him but can turn on a dime, or at least a quarter, if all the worries about him and his naive (or worse) worldview turn out to be true.

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