Six years ago, Obama had a vision of a 'new beginning' for Islam and the West. But he retreated when hard realities shattered his Middle East fantasy.
John DavidsonThe Federalist
Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces captured the city of Palmyra over the weekend thanks to heavy air support from Russian warplanes, dealing a blow to ISIS and strengthening Assad’s hold on power. Regime forces, with Russian support, are reported to be continuing the offensive to nearby ISIS-controlled cities. Meanwhile, Syrian opposition forces backed by the CIA and the Pentagon are fighting each other, and the number of U.S. troops deployed to Iraq has increased to about 5,000.
This is what President Obama’s Middle East foreign policy looks like today.
It’s a far cry from the peaceful vision Obama laid out in his 2009 Cairo speech. He spoke then of a “new beginning” for the Muslim world and the West, and the need to “act boldly in the years ahead” to face “shared challenges” in a globalized world. “When violent extremists operate in one stretch of mountains, people are endangered across an ocean. When innocents in Bosnia and Darfur are slaughtered, that is a stain on our collective conscience,” Obama said to thunderous applause. “That is what it means to share this world in the twenty-first century.”
One wonders whether Obama thinks the death toll in Syria, now estimated to be at least 470,000, counts as a stain on our collective conscience.
