Saturday, January 4, 2014
Caroline Glick: The New York Times destroys Obama
Friday, January 3rd, 2014
The New York Times just delivered a mortal blow to the Obama administration and
its Middle East policy. Call it fratricide. It was clearly
unintentional. Indeed, is far from clear that the paper realizes what it has
done.
Last Saturday the Times published an 8,000-word account by David Kirkpatrick
detailing the terrorist strike against the US Consulate and the CIA annex in
Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012. In it, Kirkpatrick tore to shreds the
foundations of President Barack Obama’s counterterrorism strategy and his
overall policy in the Middle East.
Obama first enunciated those foundations in his June 4, 2009, speech to the
Muslim world at Cairo University. Ever since, they have been the rationale
behind US counterterror strategy and US Middle East policy.
Obama’s first assertion is that radical Islam is not inherently hostile to the
US. As a consequence, America can appease radical Islamists. Moreover, once
radical Muslims are appeased, they will become US allies, (replacing the allies
the US abandons to appease the radical Muslims).
Obama’s second strategic guidepost is his claim that the only Islamic group that
is a bona fide terrorist organization is the faction of al-Qaida directly
subordinate to Osama bin Laden’s successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Only this group
cannot be appeased and must be destroyed through force.
The administration has dubbed the Zawahiri faction of al-Qaida “core
al-Qaida.” And anyone who operates in the name of al-Qaida, or any other group
that does not have courtroom-certified operational links to Zawahiri, is not
really al-Qaida, and therefore, not really a terrorist group or a US enemy.
These foundations have led the US to negotiate with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
They are the rationale for the US’s embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood worldwide.
They are the basis for Obama’s allegiance to Turkey’s Islamist government, and
his early support for the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Syrian opposition.
They are the basis for the administration’s kneejerk support for the PLO against
Israel.
Obama’s insistent bid to appease Iran, and so enable the mullocracy to complete
its nuclear weapons program. is similarly a product of his strategic
assumptions. So, too, the US’s current diplomatic engagement of Hezbollah in
Lebanon owes to the administration’s conviction that any terror group not
directly connected to Zawahiri is a potential US ally.
From the outset of the 2011 revolt against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi in
Libya, it was clear that a significant part of the opposition was composed of
jihadists aligned if not affiliated with al-Qaida. Benghazi was specifically
identified by documents seized by US forces in Iraq as a hotbed of al-Qaida
recruitment.
Obama and his advisers dismissed and ignored the evidence. The core of al-Qaida,
they claimed, was not involved in the anti-Gaddafi revolt. And to the extent
jihadists were fighting Gaddafi, they were doing so as allies of the US.
In other words, the two core foundations of Obama’s understanding of terrorism
and of the Muslim world were central to US support for the overthrow of Muammar
Gaddafi.
With Kirkpatrick’s report, the Times exposed the utter falsity of both.
Kirkpatrick showed the mindset of the US-supported rebels and through it, the
ridiculousness of the administration’s belief that you can’t be a terrorist if
you aren’t directly subordinate to Zawahiri.
One US-supported Islamist militia commander recalled to him that at the outset
of the anti-Gaddafi rebellion, “Teenagers came running around… [asking] ‘Sheikh,
sheikh, did you know al-Qaida? Did you know Osama bin Laden? How do we fight?”
In the days and weeks following the September 11, 2012, attack on the US
installations in Benghazi in which US ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens
and three other Americans were killed, the administration claimed that the
attacks were not carried out by terrorists. Rather they were the unfortunate
consequence of a spontaneous protest by otherwise innocent Libyans.
According to the administration’s version of events, these guileless, otherwise
friendly demonstrators, who killed the US ambassador and three other Americans,
were simply angered by a YouTube video of a movie trailer which jihadist clerics
in Egypt had proclaimed was blasphemous.
In an attempt to appease the mob after the fact, Obama and then-secretary of
state Hillary Clinton shot commercials run on Pakistani television apologizing
for the video and siding with the mob against the movie-maker, who is the only
person the US has imprisoned following the attack. Then-ambassador to the UN and
current National Security Adviser Susan Rice gave multiple television interviews
placing the blame for the attacks on the video.
According to Kirkpatrick’s account of the assault against the US installations
in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, the administration’s description of the
assaults was a fabrication. Far from spontaneous political protests spurred by
rage at a YouTube video, the attack was premeditated.
US officials spotted Libyans conducting surveillance of the consulate nearly 15
hours before the attack began.
Libyan militia warned US officials “of rising threats against Americans from
extremists in Benghazi,” two days before the attack.
From his account, the initial attack – in which the consulate was first stormed
– was carried out not by a mob, but by a few dozen fighters. They were armed
with assault rifles. They acted in a coordinated, professional manner with
apparent awareness of US security procedures.
During the initial assault, the attackers shot down the lights around the
compound, stormed the gates, and swarmed around the security personnel who ran
to get their weapons, making it impossible for them to defend the ambassador and
other personnel trapped inside.
According to Kirkpatrick, after the initial attack, the organizers spurred
popular rage and incited a mob assault on the consulate by spreading the rumor
that the Americans had killed a local. Others members of the secondary mob,
Kirkpatrick claimed, were motivated by reports of the video.
This mob assault, which followed the initial attack and apparent takeover of the
consulate, was part of the predetermined plan. The organizers wanted to produce
chaos.
As Kirkpatrick explained, “The attackers had posted sentries at Venezia Road,
adjacent to the [consulate] compound, to guard their rear flank, but they let
pass anyone trying to join the mayhem.”
According to Kirkpatrick, the attack was perpetrated by local terrorist groups
that were part of the US-backed anti-Gaddafi coalition. The people who were
conducting the surveillance of the consulate 15 hours before the attack were
uniformed security forces who escaped in an official car. Members of the militia
tasked with defending the compound participated in the attack.
Ambassador Stevens, who had served as the administration’s emissary to the
rebels during the insurrection against Gaddafi, knew personally many of the
terrorists who orchestrated the attack. And until the very end, he was taken in
by the administration’s core belief that it was possible to appease
al-Qaida-sympathizing Islamic jihadists who were not directly affiliated with
Zawahiri.
As Kirkpatrick noted, Stevens “helped shape the Obama administration’s
conviction that it could work with the rebels, even those previously hostile to
the West, to build a friendly, democratic government.”
The entire US view that local militias, regardless of their anti-American,
jihadist ideologies, could become US allies was predicated not merely on the
belief that they could be appeased, but that they weren’t terrorists because
they weren’t al-Qaida proper.
As Kirkpatrick notes, “American intelligence efforts in Libya concentrated on
the agendas of the biggest militia leaders and the handful of Libyans with
suspected ties to al-Qaida. The fixation on al-Qaida might have distracted
experts from more imminent threats.”
But again, the only reason that the intelligence failed to notice the threats
emanating from local US-supported terrorists is because the US counterterrorist
strategy, like its overall Middle East strategy, is to seek to appease all US
enemies other than the parts of al-Qaida directly commanded by Ayman
al-Zawahiri.
Distressingly, most of the discussion spurred by Kirkpatrick’s article has
ignored the devastating blow he visited on the intellectual foundations of
Obama’s foreign policy. Instead, the discussion has focused on his claim that
there is “no evidence that al-Qaida or other international terrorist group had
any role in the assault,” and on his assertion that the YouTube video did spur
to action some of the participants in the assault.
Kirkpatrick’s claim that al-Qaida played no role in the attack was refuted by
the Times’ own reporting six weeks after the attack. It has also been refuted by
congressional and State Department investigations, by the UN and by a raft of
other reporting.
His claim that the YouTube video did spur some of the attackers to action was
categorically rejected last spring in sworn congressional testimony by
then-deputy chief of the US mission to Libya Gregory Hicks.
Last May Hicks stated, “The YouTube video was a non-event in Libya. The video
was not instigative of anything that was going on in Libya. We saw no
demonstrators related to the video anywhere in Libya.”
Kirkpatrick’s larger message – that the reasoning behind Obama’s entire
counterterrorist strategy and his overall Middle East policy is totally wrong,
and deeply destructive – has been missed because his article was written and
published to whitewash the administration’s deliberate mischaracterization of
the events in Benghazi, not to discredit the rationale behind its Middle East
policy and counterterrorism strategy. This is why he claimed that al-Qaida
wasn’t involved in the attack. And this is why he claimed that the YouTube video
was a cause for the attack.
This much was made clear in a blog post by editorial page editor Andrew
Rosenthal, who alleged that the entire discourse on Benghazi is promoted by the
Republicans to harm the Democrats, and Kirkpatrick’s story served to weaken the
Republican arguments. In Rosenthal’s words, “The Republicans hope to tarnish
Democratic candidates by making it seem as though Mr. Obama doesn’t take
al-Qaida seriously.”
So pathetically, in a bid to defend Obama and Clinton and the rest of the
Democrats, the Times published a report that showed that Obama’s laser-like
focus on the Zawahiri-controlled faction of al-Qaida has endangered the US.
By failing to view as enemies any other terror groups – even if they have
participated in attacks against the US – and indeed, in perceiving them as
potential allies, Obama has failed to defend against them. Indeed, by wooing
them as future allies, Obama has empowered forces as committed as al-Qaida to
defeating the US.
Again, it is not at all apparent that the Times realized what it was doing. But
from Israel to Egypt, to Iran to Libya to Lebanon, it is absolutely clear that
Obama and his colleagues continue to implement the same dangerous, destructive
agenda that defeated the US in Benghazi and will continue to cause US defeat
after US defeat
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment