HISTORY RISKS REPEATING ITSELF AS OBAMA TIPTOES AROUND ISIS THREAT
The Oakland Press
Feb 25 2015
In this Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2014, photo, released by the U.S. Air
Force, a pair of U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle flies over northern Iraq,
after conducting airstrikes in Syria. U.S.-led coalition warplanes
bombed oil installations and other facilities in territory controlled
by Islamic State militants in eastern Syria on Friday, Sept. 26, 2014,
taking aim for a second consecutive day at a key source of financing
that has swelled the extremist group’s coffers, activists said. (AP
Photo/U.S. Air Force, Matthew Bruch)
By Mitch Kehetian, Special to Digital First Media
When it comes to America’s foreign policy in the troubled Middle East,
presidents George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama sure messed it up,
and it’s getting to be a threat to western civilization through the
creation of a radical Islamic State.
The turmoil is for real. Obama must cease playing checker board policy
games that amount to appeasing the radical Islamic dream at forcibly
shrinking Christian Europe.
To begin with the ISIS movement, at carving out an Islamic State out
of Syria and Iraq, rests with the White House.
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It started with young Bush when he took us to war with Saddam’s Iraq
on the false claim the Iraq dictator had a stockpile of weapons of
mass destruction. When UN observers failed to find the so-called
weapons, they were told to get out before American warplanes attacked
the country.
We never found the weapons of mass destruction. But a greater threat
was looming when Obama moved into the White House with the vow to
fulfill a peace pledge to get us out of Iraq. He even sent out his
time table on our “boots on the ground” departure much to the to the
glee of the radical ISIS movement.
In essence, the president told ISIS to wait until we get out. But
Obama went further by getting us involved in the civil war in Syria
by supporting the moderate rebels to oust dictator Assad. Soon, all
of northern Syria was under ISIS control and linked to huge swaths
of land in neighboring Iraq.
Obama said Syria’s Assad must go. But his failed intelligence surfaced
again. Assad may have been a dictator, but he kept the Shite and
Sunni Muslims apart and protected the country’s large Orthodox
Christian community.
Meanwhile, the radical Islamic movement has taken over Libya with
chaos sweeping the country after we helped the rebels topple Ghaddafi’s
rule. Then just weeks ago, Obama praised the democratic process taking
place in Yemen. Shortly after his victory pledge, our former ally’s
regime collapsed to rebel forces. We evacuated our embassy as the
extremist Muslims seized control.
Meanwhile, Obama and his liberal loyalists look upon ISIS as a mere
organization we can subdue with air power. You don’t win wars with
just air power. History tells us so. We also recall Obama tagging
ISIS as just a mere “junior varsity” team.
When Germany swept through Europe at the height of World War II,
the government was under the rule of Hitler’s Nazi Party. The Nazis
murdered millions of people, while sending six million Jews to Nazi-run
concentration camps where they perished in what is remembered as
the Holocaust.
Then let’s look at the old Soviet Union. The turning point came when
the Bolsheviks seized power after killing the czar. It too was an
organization eventually absorbed by the expanding Communist Party to
match the Nazis in mass killings and slave labor in Siberia.
So let’s stop the false belief that ISIS is just an organization.
Remember how the Nazi and Communist movements took over. As for the
ISIS goal at creating a radical Islamic State, it comes from the
pages of ancient history. When the Ottoman Turkish sultans and their
armies sought to forcibly convert Christian Europe to Islam, they were
stopped at the gates of Vienna and at the Gibraltar straits to Spain.
But the Islamic movement did not give up in its plan to convert the
“infidels,” as witnessed in World War I when Ottoman Turkey joined
forces with the Austria-German Empire to regain lost lands. Again,
Europe was horrified when Turkey plotted the genocide of more than
one million Christian Armenians in its eastern provinces of historical
Armenia.
When Obama asked Congress for the authority to wage war against ISIS,
he again broadcasted “no ground troops.” Nor did he use the proper
term that we now face a radical Islamic State.
Our president might know his law, but he fails history.
I’m not surprised. In his remarks at the most recent national prayer
breakfast in Washington, Obama cautioned Christians should not get on
their high horses in criticizing Islam by the actions of the radical
element. He did by stressing that during the crusades Christians
committed sins by using the name of Christ in their defense.
Mr. President, that was more than a thousand years ago.
Enough said.
Mitch Kehetian is a retired editor of The Macomb Daily and former
board trustee at Central Michigan University.
http://www.theoaklandpress.com/opinion/20150224/history-risks-repeating-itself-as-obama-tiptoes-around-isis-threat