Think Twice

After two decades of bad U.S. foreign policy decisions in the Middle East, it is remarkable to see current events in that region as they begin to unfold. David Goldman (a.k.a. "Spengler") is one of the most astute observers of the Middle East. He writes:

President Trump's Middle East policy is simple: Back our friends and scare the hell out of our enemies, and negotiate where possible with our competitors like Russia and China. By and large it's working, unlike the catastrophically failed polices of the previous two administrations. Trump did what he said he would do and succeeded. You wouldn't know that from the #fakenews media.

First, the only true liberal democracy in the Middle East, Israel, now has a friend in the White House. More importantly, perhaps, it actually appears that Saudi Arabia has finally recognized the danger of Islamists in its midst and is acting (albeit, somewhat tentatively) to eradicate them. The Saudis are also leaning forward in their stance against Iran, the largest and most potent danger in the region. Even more astonishing, there appears to be clandestine cooperation between the Saudis and Israelis in addressing the Iran problem—a problem exacerbated and enabled by Barack Obama and his foreign policy Team of 2s.

As this happens, social justice warriors (SJWs) increasingly rail against Israel as an "oppressor" of an "enlightened" palestinian people. This, coupled the their support of the despicable BDS movement warms the hearts of many progressives and their trained hamsters in the media.

Goldman tries to introduce a little reality to the SJW view of the Middle East:

The Muslim strategy to destroy Israel hasn't envisioned war--not at least since 1973--because Israel in all cases would win. Instead, the objective is to ring Israel with missiles and force Israel to retaliate against missile attacks in such a way that the "international community" would respond by imposing a "settlement" on Israel that would leave Israel vulnerable to further missiles attacks, and so forth. This is stated explicitly by Palestinian strategists cited by by Haviv Rettig Gur in The Times of Israel ...

Obama sandbagged Israel during the 2014 Gaza rocket attacks, suspending delivery of Hellfire missiles to the Jewish State. Israel is the only country in the world that embeds human rights lawyers in every infantry company to make sure that its soldiers keep collateral damage to a minimum.

Hezbollah, Iran's Lebanese militia, has 150,000 rockets aimed at Israel, and many of them can hit any target in the country. In the case of a major rocket attack from Hezbollah against Israel, military logic dictates the preemptive neutralization of rocket launchers embedded in civilian populations--what an Israeli strategist close to the PM described to me as "Dresden." There would be tens of thousands of civilian casualties. Trump will not tie Israel's hands in the case of attack, and will not interfere with Israel's ability to defend herself. That makes Israel's deterrent against Iran credible.

Hillary Clinton insisted that the "technology of war," in particular the rockets ringing Israel, would force Israel to accept a phony peace agreement whose main effect would be to bring the rocket launchers closer to Israel ...

Thankfully, we now have an administration that has Israel's back. That doesn't mean that a peace agreement is likely (it isn't) or that the Saudis are our friends (they aren't). But it does mean that for the first time in nine years, there is a possibility, at least, that the bad actors of the region (there are many, and they include the palestinians) will think twice before acting.