“[W]hat we’ve got to do is make sure that we are organizing the Arab world, the Middle East, the Muslim world, along with the international community to isolate this cancer.”
–Barack Obama on ISIS
Not surprising, merely revelatory. First there’s the organizing part, as if our foreign policy should mirror that of ACORN registering illusory voters, or follow the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton model of shaking down a business over some imaginary racial transgression.
In a crisis, Obama relies on his experience.
There is a case to be made that our foreign policy – the president’s apology for America in his Egyptian speech, abandoning the Iranian protestors, bombing Libya, releasing five top line terrorists in exchange for one soldier without informing Congress, lying about the causes of Benghazi, vilifying Israel, sabotaging a Status of Forces agreement with Iraq, setting dates certain for withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, deposing Mubarak in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood, drawing imaginary red lines for Bashar al-Assad, arming ISIS’ precursors in Syria, etc. – has been intended to disorganize, indeed to induce chaos in, the Middle East. So, organizing the Middle East would be a 180.
Just a few days ago, the president declared, “[W]e don’t have a strategy yet.” Now we do. Apparently, it’s the opposite of the strategy we’ve been following for the last five+ years. That’s why we haven’t already “organized” the Middle East. Unmentioned is the idea that had we even attempted it, ISIS likely wouldn’t have come into existence.
The fractious “community” that is the Middle East has now been set up to take the blame for Obama’s failures. It won’t be his fault if they refuse to get organized.
Finally, the choice of the word “isolate” is quite scary. Is that what you want to hear from your doctor if you have cancer? Sounds like, “We can give you a few more months, but the tumor is inoperable, and anyway, it metastasized.”
The word you want to hear is “eradicate.” It’s the president who is isolated.