The so-called “leader of the free world”, US President Barack Obama, is either not fit for the purpose, is soft on terrorists or is adhering to a covert foreign policy agenda. We only have to think back to the viciousness with which his predecessor took on Al Qaida and its Taliban hosts and compare that to Obama’s weak-kneed approach to Daesh (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) to reach the above conclusion.
How else can America’s failure to eradicate a gang of bestial psychopaths bent on grabbing as much Iraqi and Syrian territory to create a medieval ‘state’ threatening its neighbours and beyond be explained? If he had heeded the pleas of Iraq’s former prime minister, Nouri Al Maliki, to intervene when Daesh fighters numbered no more than 10,000, the group, together with its sickening ideology, would have been reduced to a mere blip in history.
While just about every decent person on the planet is recoiling in utter horror at the video proudly released by Daesh of Jordanian pilot Muath Al Kaseasbeh being burnt alive in a metal cage, Obama tells us not to exaggerate the group’s strengths, adding “they are not an existential threat to the United States or the world order”.
Strange, especially considering that a bunch of cave dwellers in Afghanistan’s Tora Bora were formerly considered America’s most fearsome enemy. What is needed, he says, is a surgical, precise response to a very specific problem.
Where is that surgical response when almost every day we are bombarded with televised videos and photographs on social media, showing winding convoys of what appear to be brand new armoured vehicles transporting masked gunmen? Has America’s satellite surveillance technology broken down? Are all its drones in for repair?
Former US presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, recently railed at “the president’s dismissal of real global threats”, something he characterised as “naive at best and deceptive at worst”. “[Daesh] represents a new level of threat given its oil revenues, vast territory and ability to recruit even in the West. I don’t know how the president expects to defeat the [extremists] if he won’t even call them what they are,” Romney said. Another former presidential candidate, Senator John McCain, also criticised Obama’s poor leadership, contending that the president has contributed to the Daesh’s expansion and is neglecting US security.
Then, last Thursday, Obama had the affront to make excuses for Daesh’s savagery at the National Prayer Breakfast. “Unless we get on our high horse and think this [atrocities committed by Daesh] is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ,” he told guests.
Who can argue with that historical tidbit, but this is 2015, not the 12th or the 15th century. If witch-burning or lynch mobs were to re-emerge in the US, would he dismiss such antiquated examples of the lowest form of humanity just as easily, I wonder.
Predictably, prominent Christians, such as president of the Catholic League, Bill Donohue, and Right-wing radio host, Rush Limbaugh, found them deeply offensive; they were attempts to reflect guilt from madmen, said Donohue.
In the meantime, Daesh is working to build a functioning state on up to 90,000 square kilometres of Iraqi and Syrian territory, which has been divided into manageable provinces with the Syrian city of Raqqa as its capital. The group has appointed ministers, passed laws, instituted a central bank — and has even tasked inspectors to check that stores are not selling items past their sell-by date. And if it were not for courageous Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, who headed to the small Syrian town of Kobani via Turkey to join the fellows in their fight against Daesh, that town would be flying the terrorists’ trademark black flags, despite US-led air strikes.
While Obama’s anti-Daesh rhetoric is mealy-mouthed and absent of any shred of passion, Jordan’s King Abdullah, a former Cobra attack pilot, has become an internet sensation. Dressed in military fatigue — and dubbed ‘The Warrior King’ on social media — he has issued a series of warnings to the faux caliph, vowing an earth-shaking response to the murder of Al Kaseasbeh.
The king has vowed to destroy Daesh on the ground and for the first time, Jordan has launched air strikes over Iraq — and has pledged to avenge the killing by striking at the heart of the group’s operations — Raqqa. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, given Obama’s record, the US has denied the King’s appeal for Predator drones.
As John C. Wohistetter wrote in the American Spectator last week, Obama “has fundamentally transformed and diminished America’s place in the world ... diminishing America’s status abroad to its weakest international profile in more than a century”. When, oh when will the Arab world wake up to that incontestable reality and take control of its own backyard once and for all!
Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She can be contacted at lheard@gulfnews.com
