Very Bad Outcomes

The Obama White House was very, very quick to publicly condemn Israel when it approved (but did not yet build) an apartment complex in East Jerusalem, a suburb of the country's capital city. The foreign policy amateurs at the White House made a naive effort to appear even-handed, when in fact, they dissed our only ally in the Middle East. SOP for a President who now makes the fatuous claims (in an election year) that he has been the most pro-Israel executive ever.

Today, the The Times of Israel reports:

Gaza-based terrorists fired 25 rockets into southern Israel on Saturday, causing damage to a school and factory. The latest attacks bring the total number of rockets and other projectiles fired from the Strip to approximately 150 over the past six days.

And the President's response? Crickets ... not a word of condemnation for Hamas.

At the same time, those on the left who waxed poetic about the Twitter-organized, Facebook-driven change that was Egypt's "liberal, secular revolution," now face the harsh reality that those of us who were a bit more cynical about the "Arab Spring" predicted. Aljeezera reports:

The Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi has officially won Egypt's presidential election and will be the country's next president, the electoral commission has announced.

Morsi picked up 13.2 million votes out of just over 26 million, giving him about 51 per cent of the vote. His competitor, Ahmed Shafiq, the final prime minister under Hosni Mubarak, received 12.3 million. More than 800,000 ballots were invalidated.

Morsi has already begun his violent anti-Israel rhetoric, suggesting that the 30 year peace treaty bettween Egypt and Israel is in tatters.

Presdient Obama was quick to suggest that Hozni Mubarrak, Egypt's pro-American dictator, should go, but he never seemed to consider the consequences. Typical for the foreign policy amateurs at the White House.

Caroline Glick provides background:

The Brotherhood kept a very low profile in the mass demonstrations in Tahrir Square in January and February 2011 that led to the overthrow of then-president Hosni Mubarak. The Brotherhood's absence from Tahrir Square at that time is what enabled Westerners to fall in love with the Egyptian revolution.

Those demonstrations led to the impression, widespread in the US, that Mubarak's successors would be secular Facebook democrats. The role that Google's young Egyptian executive Wael Gonim played in organizing the demonstrations was reported expansively. His participation in the anti-regime protests - as well as his brief incarceration - was seen as proof that the next Egyptian regime would be indistinguishable from Generation X and Y Americans and Europeans.

The President's naive support of the revolution never seemed to consider a bad outcome. That is what has come to pass. A very, bad outcome.
But then again, the President's incompetent foreign policy in the Middle East seems to be designed to lead to very bad outcomes. Sad, and dangerous.