The Ongoing Catastrophe in Syria

Everyone understands how the Obama/Clinton foreign policy team produced a calamity in Egypt. When it comes to Syria, the analysis becomes murkier. With bad guys fighting against bad guys, what could we have done?

As long as we have no idea what else could have been done, we tend to believe that Obama and Clinton need not be held accountable for the unfolding catastrophe. The catastrophe has now seen the use of chemical weapons.

Remember when President Obama said that the use of chemical weapons was a red line that Bashar Assad should not cross. We know now how much world leaders respect our president’s threats.

Today, Caroline Glick lays out the case against Obama/Clinton in her Jerusalem Post column. As always, she is crystal clear and utterly incisive:

America's powerlessness in Syria is largely Obama's fault. At the outset of the Syrian civil war two-and-a-half years ago, Obama outsourced the development of Syria's opposition forces to Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Erdogan. He had other options. A consortium of Syrian Kurds, moderate Sunnis, Christians and others came to Washington and begged for US assistance. But they were ignored.

Obama's decision to outsource the US's Syria policy owed to his twin goals of demonstrating that the US would no longer try to dictate international outcomes, and of allying the US with Islamic fundamentalists.

For Obama, all roads lead to Ankara. Obama administration policy has been based on Obama’s sympathy for Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan:

Obama embraced Erdogan, an Islamic fascist who has won elections, as his closest ally and most trusted adviser in the Muslim world.

And so, with the full support of the US government, Erdogan stacked Syria's opposition forces with radical Muslims like himself. Within months the Muslim Brotherhood comprised the majority in Syria's US-sponsored opposition.

The Muslim Brotherhood has no problem collaborating with al-Qaida, because the latter was formed by Muslim Brothers.

It shares the Brotherhood's basic ideology.

Since al-Qaida has the most experienced fighters, its rise to leadership and domination of the Syrian opposition was a natural progression.

In other words, Obama's decision to have Turkey form the Syrian opposition led inevitably to the current situation in which the Iranian- and Russian-backed Syrian regime is fighting an opposition dominated by al-Qaida.

While outlining how the Obama foreign policy should go forth from here, Glick also denounces the administration for its silence on the persecution of Christians in the Muslim world:

Then there are the Christians. The plight of the Christians in the Islamic world is one of the most depressing chapters in the recent history of the region. In country after country, previously large and relatively peaceful, if discriminated against, Christian minorities are being slaughtered and forced to flee.

The US has done next to nothing to defend them.

Strong, forthright statements of support for Christian communities and condemnations of persecution, including rape, forced conversions, massacre, extortion and destruction of church and private Christian-owned property from Egypt to Indonesia to Pakistan to the Palestinian Authority would make a difference in the lives of millions of people.

As though to prove her point, when the president’s spokesman was recently asked about the persecution of Christians in Egypt, he made a joke of it.

The Daily Caller reports the scene:

The White House’s deputy press secretary today downplayed Muslim attacks on Christians in Egypt, joking about the savagery  that has left at least six Christians dead.

Press secretary Josh Earnest was asked by Fox News’ correspondent, Ed Henry, if President Barack Obama has a “red line” beyond which he would act against Muslim attacks on Egyptian Christians.

“Well, I didn’t bring my red pen out with me today,” Earnest joked.

Earnest did go on to condemn all violence, both the military attacks on the demonstrators and the attacks on the Christian churches.

The only thing was, the Daily Caller noted, he never dared mention the group that had been perpetrating the attacks on the Christian Churches. He never called out the Muslim Brotherhood and never held them responsible for the pogroms.

How much more clearly can the administration demonstrate its bias in favor of radical Islamists?

For those who might not know who is behind the burnings of Christian churches and the murder of Christians in Egypt, Kirsten Powers has collected the evidence, both of the atrocities committed and the instructions presented on the Muslim Brotherhood Facebook page.

Powers writes:

The Muslim Brotherhood is showing the world its true colors.

The group that “renounced violence” in an effort to gain political power is engaged in a full-scale campaign of terror against Egypt’s Christian minority. Brotherhood leaders have incited their followers to attack Christian homes, shops, schools and churches throughout the country. Samuel Tadros, an Egyptian scholar with the Hudson Institute, told me these attacks are the worst violence against the Coptic Church since the 14th century.

The news coming out of Egypt is staggering. USA Today reports that “forty churches have been looted and torched, while 23 others have been attacked and heavily damaged” in one week. According to the Coptic Orthodox and Catholic churches in Egypt, 160 Christian-owned buildings have also been attacked.

In one town, Islamists paraded three nuns on the streets like prisoners of war after burning their Franciscan school. The attackers tore a cross off the gate of the school and replaced it with an Islamist flag. The New York Times described hundreds of Islamists in one attack, “lashing out so ferociously that marble altars were left in broken heaps on the floor.” 

Two security guards working on a tour boat owned by Christians were burned alive. An orphanage was burned down. The Catholic Bishop of Luxor told the Vatican news agency Tuesday that he has been trapped in his home for 20 days by Islamist mobs chanting “Death to the Christians!” “People who reside in the villages of the area that have nothing because food supplies are running out and people are afraid to leave the house,” he said.

To the Obama administration it’s a joke.