Consider the Middle East at the moment:
- Saudi Arabia continues to bomb Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen despite hints of a ceasefire.
- Egypt is patrolling the waters around Yemen to interdict Iranian arms. So too are the USS Theodore Roosevelt and USS Normandy. Maybe. And as the arms ships have arrived, maybe not…
- Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula thrives in Yemen’s disarray and expands the territory it holds.
- Lebanese Hezbollah is attacking Gulf and US-backed Syrian rebels to protect Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad.
- Bashar himself has repeatedly used chemical weapons.
- Iranian military leaders and proxies fight the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) inside Iraq with US air support.
- More than three million Syrians have fled their country as refugees, and more than twice as many are displaced within Syria.
- Hamas rebuilds its tunnels from Gaza into Israel
- And, let’s not forget that US ally and NATO member Turkey now hosts Hamas leadership, never mind its terror designation.
- Libya has fallen apart and has become a center for terrorism, criminality, and an engine for illegal migration.
- And, against unprecedented death, destruction, and chaos across the region, President Barack Obama seeks a deal which will relieve strictures on Iran’s nuclear program and flood Iran, still the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, with cash.
Obama insists that the root of the current chaos rests in the Iraq War. That’s both intellectually dishonest and ahistorical. Far from too much American involvement, the problem has been too little. American retreat has consequences. Consider how an alternate reality might look:
- Iraq: Saddam is ousted. US surge stabilizes Iraq. US leaves a residual force of perhaps 15,000 troops. Able to use the US presence to balance out his own relations with Iran, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki doesn’t dare acquiesce to Iran’s sectarian demands. Iranian interference continues, but with a far lighter, more containable footprint.
- Syria: The Syrian people, fed up with the Iranian-backed Assad dictatorship, rise up. The White House steps in to warn Assad and Iran against using force. When Assad reacts (and this is immutable), Washington responds by training Syrian rebels, bombing airfields to preempt Russian and Iranian resupply, setting up a no-fly zone to end Assad’s air dominance and isolating the Iranian and Syrian governments.
- Libya: The Libyan people rise up to end Muammar Qadhafi’s four decade reign of terror. The US and NATO step in to help, and then move in aggressively to stabilize post-Qadhafi Libya. Arms aplenty and Islamists/Qatar work hard to derail the democratic process, but the Libyan people stick with the democratic choices they have made.
- Egypt: Hosni Mubarak signals that he plans to replace himself with his son. Washington objects, and suggests the relationship will change if there is a Mubarak dynasty. Mubarak announces he will not stand in presidential elections, and they move forward. Egypt is not a much better place, but it moves to a post-Mubarak era without a detour into the world of the Muslim Brotherhood.
- Iran: Iran works through proxies to murder American soldiers in Iraq. The US informs Iran that any further efforts in this direction will result in a strike against the IRGC leaders orchestrating those attacks. The United States supports the 2009 uprising in Iran, which doesn’t oust the government but changes the calculus about internal reform. Iran arms and supports Assad. The United States arms and supports the opposition and informs all those supporting ISIS and its ilk (i.e., Qatar, Turkey, and others) that they can no longer play both sides of the field. Iran meanwhile arms Houthi rebels and the US interdicts Iranian shipments.
- Lebanon, Bahrain, Iraq, Yemen: Shiite groups express legitimate grievances. The US uses its economic and diplomatic clout to aid those groups, crowding out Iranian support.
You can pick a hole in each one of the above scenarios, and there’s plenty more nuance there, of course. But you can’t pick a hole in the claim that the Middle East is falling apart, that the implications for US security and US allies are dire, and that the perception across the world is that Obama’s America is in retreat.
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