Many of us tried to warn Barack Obama that using militants from al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations to overthrow governments in the Middle East would not end well. The Obama administration has been so determined to get rid of some of these dictators in the Middle East that they have not even really stopped to think about who would be replacing them. Our leaders assured us that those opposed to Mubarak and Gaddafi were “freedom fighters” that just wanted “liberty” and “democracy” in those countries. Well, of course it turns out that the folks that took control of both Egypt and Libya bear no resemblance to George Washington whatsoever. They have simply replaced one form of tyranny with an even worse form of tyranny. Sadly, the last couple of days have been a huge wake up call for all of us. Radical Islamic militants stormed the U.S. embassy in Cairo, Egypt and replaced the American flag with the al-Qaeda flag. In Benghazi, Libya the U.S. consulate was attacked by a crowd equipped with guns, homemade bombs and rocket-propelled grenades. They torched the consulate, looted it, and killed the U.S. ambassador and three other U.S. officials. Apparently they are not as grateful for our help in “liberating” their homelands as the Obama administration thought they would be. Unfortunately, our politicians fundamentally misunderstand what is going on in the Middle East, and this is going to continue to lead to more policy errors. (Read More...)
Democracy
Isn’t It About Time That The United States Got The Heck Out Of The Middle East?
In Afghanistan right now, a one-legged Afghan Red Cross worker named Said Musa is sitting in a prison cell awaiting his sentence. Musa, a father of six children, was arrested by the Afghan government as he attempted to seek asylum at the German embassy last year. He was sentenced to death by an Afghan court that was established by the new Afghan government that the United States worked so hard to set up. He has been horribly mistreated for months. An Afghan judge has told him that he will be killed within a matter of days. So what was his crime? He was a Muslim that has become a Christian. Under Sharia law, that is punishable by death. Is this is the “freedom” that we have sacrificed so many American lives to bring to Afghanistan? This Christian father of six will be hung by the Afghan “democracy” that the United States has been “nurturing” and that U.S. soldiers have been working so hard to defend. (Read More...)