Chaos in the Middle East
This is an excerpt from the new book, The Impeachment of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for High Crimes in Syria and Libya, by Michael Ostrowski and James Ostrowski (2016).
The American interventions into Libya and Syria happened in a troubled part of the world with numerous and seemingly intractable problems that were in many ways the result of prior unwise American foreign policy. This is particularly true with Syria. The Iraq War launched by George Bush in 2003 destabilized the artificial state of Iraq. It is widely recognized that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who held Iraq together and under control by brute force. However, it is rarely acknowledged that, since Iraq is an artificial country created by the Western allies after World War I, it is difficult to conceive of Iraq being held together in any other way than brute force. As one of the co-authors pointed out in 2003, Iraq is made up of three discrete groups with historical and ideological, ethnic and religious differences. The suggestion of peace through partition made in that article was ignored.[1]
Additionally, the elimination of Saddam’s secular regime opened the door for various Islamic factions to vie for state power. ISIS emerged out of this power vacuum. Syria, a regime controlled by a Shiite, Bashar al-Assad, was a natural target of ISIS, once it had gained a foothold among its fellow Sunnis in Iraq. Say what you will about ISIS, but they had the savvy to realize what clueless (archist) foreign policy “experts” in the West did not, that the Sykes-Picott borders created by the Western powers were completely arbitrary and bore no relationship to reality in the 21st Century. They ignored them, indeed, explicitly promised to obliterate them.
It is worth noting that one of the reasons bin Laden gave for the 9/11 attacks was U. S. support for Egypt.[6]
Thus, decades of oppression from the U.S.-backed Mubarak regime led to an uprising in Egypt. But the U.S. backed Mubarak’s opponents as well. The New York Times reported in 2011 that: “a small core of American government-financed organizations were promoting democracy in authoritarian Arab states. . . . the United States’ democracy-building campaigns played a bigger role in fomenting protests than was previously known, with key leaders of the movements having been trained by the Americans in campaigning, organizing through new media tools and monitoring elections.”[7]
Thus, the Progressive State of America was supporting both sides in the Arab Spring uprising that eventually spread to Libya and set the stage for the disastrous American intervention there that is the subject of this book and which, along with the Syrian catastrophe, has the world flirting with disaster.
Jim Ostrowski is a trial and appellate lawyer in Buffalo, NY. He is CEO of LibertyMovement.org and author of several books including Progressivism: A Primer. Copyright by Cazenovia Books (2016).
[1] J. Ostrowski, “Will Iraq Have Democracy or Peace?,” lewrockwell.com, April 29, 2003.
[2] If that led to the cover up of an Israeli attack on the United States Navy ship U. S. S. Liberty in 1967, so be it.
[4] E. Loftis, “Mubarak’s Horrific Human Rights Legacy,” motherjones.com, 2/1/11.
[5] T. Meyer, “F.A.Q. on U.S. Aid to Egypt: Where Does the Money Go, And How Is It Spent?,” propublica.org., 10/9/13.
[6] “Full text: bin Laden’s ‘letter to America,’” supra.
[7] R. Nixon, “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings,” nytimes.com, April 14, 2011.
Reprinted with the author’s permission.
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