POLITICS-After years of battling President George W. Bush, the memory of President George W. Bush, the policies of President George W. Bush, and the party of President George W. Bush, President Barack Obama must now face his greatest opponent ever: the lessons learned by President George W. Bush.
Perhaps it's not remembered how former President George W. Bush, and once presidential candidate George W. Bush, despised the idea of foreign nation building. After all, nation building is an expensive effort and one that goes against so many traditional American principles that's it's hard to ever justify.
Unfortunately, President George W. Bush--unlike candidate George W. Bush--had a serious decision to make after the events of 9/11. Yes, the Cold War was over, and both financially and emotionally the nation wanted to focus on events at home. Right here. In the good ol' US of A.
But the nation awoke to the awful reality on 9/11 that this world is becoming a much smaller place than it was in 1776 and 1783 and 1812. The Monroe Doctrine that was so obvious in the early nineteenth century--the U.S. would stay out of the Eastern Hemisphere if the European powers stayed out of the Western Hemisphere--isn't so simple in the early twenty-first century.
Asia appears to be the New Europe, and among the European powers we don't see Spain and Portugal and France at the forefront of any worldwide military force. Eastern European powers are reinventing themselves, and the entire planet is coming to grips with the details and "best practices" of democracy within each individual nation, including the Arab/Muslim world.
And therein lies the dilemma that both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama had to and must again confront. With very rare exception, whenever Arab nations elected their own leaders, the results of "majority rule" were less than stellar and usually led to either a non-democratic result or downright chaos.
Iraq chose al-Maliki, who shredded the Kurd/Sunni/Shiite cooperation that the U.S. and the world fought and bled so hard to create. Egypt chose Morsi, a man who chose the Muslim Brotherhood over the other religious and secular portions of his nation. The Palestinians in Gaza chose Hamas and descended into chaos.
Both Libya and Iraq descended into chaos after their strongmen, Khadafi and Hussein were overthrown and executed, and the same can be easily and reasonably feared if President Bashar Assad (a horrible man if ever there was one) is removed from power.
Yet for those who never bothered to read a newspaper over the past few years, and who still can't find Iraq or Egypt on a map, it's not that simple, and lumping all these nations together just isn't fair or accurate...despite the common factors and similarities that have dogged each nation's climb to democracy while ensuring safety.
Saddam Hussein of Iraq constantly and repeatedly threatened his Arab neighbors and Israel, and chose not to reconciliate with the West. Moammar Khadafi of Libya, on the other hand, DID reconciliate with the West and was no such threat. Bashar Assad of Syria did and still does play a game of cat and mouse with the West, with Russia, with his Arab neighbors (he once brought the longstanding Lebanese civil war to an end) and even with Israel.
Enter the year 2014. Guantanamo Bay is still open, the NSA is still spying on Muslims in the U.S. (often with the tacit cooperation of local imams and mosque leaders, something too many Americans overlook), and anyone that believes that ISIS isn't trying (or perhaps hasn't already succeeded) in sneaking in anti-American jihadis over the Mexican border or raising them here at home is guilty of being either naive or criminally stupid.
Both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama must work both with Muslims abroad and here at home to fight a multi-headed, protean enemy that speaks for Islam but whose primary death toll is majority Muslim (despite terrorizing the West and the non-Muslim world more than ever) and is currently highlighted by the monster-head known as the Islamic State (IS), ISIS or ISIL.
Very few Americans know (or cared enough to ignore local celebrity gossip and read a newspaper) that the Syrian civil war was started by courageous and secular individuals who marched while being shot at and gassed, and who was the primary target of a horrific Bashar Assad policy of killing them first. The "good guys" in Syria, the "moderates" and the "pro-West" allies have been virtually decimated, leaving only ISIS, al-Qaida and its allies...and Bashar Assad.
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It does appear that if we get rid of Assad (who, like Saddam Hussein, was once a quasi-Western ally we could do business with but did not stay that way) the extremist monsters will take over in Syria.
Yet President Obama must figure out how to confront Assad and pull him from power without repeating the mistake that he and the West made in Libya, where insignificant boots on the ground allowed a fledgling democracy to descend into Islamist/extremist chaos.
And a quick side-note to my politically-correct friends: what DO we call the Islamist/Radicalist extremists who are primarily killing fellow Muslims while terrorizing the West? European and other imams are joining the Pope and the West in decrying ISIS and extremist terror performed "in the name of Islam", but much really is in a name, and we must ally with each other globally to avoid World War III.
Getting back to Libya, that nation's descent into chaos is particularly troublesome because (as aforementioned) Khadafi had made peace with the West, and he was overthrown AFTER President George W. Bush's blunders in Iraq.
The blunder in Libya was all President Obama's doing, and it stands in direct contrast with his other failure in Egypt, where the military and the people yanked Western ally Mubarak from power (with Obama's support) and actually had to encounter resistance from Washington when it then yanked elected president and Muslim Brotherhood supporter Morsi and replace Morsi with former Egyptian general al-Sisi.
Egypt is now relatively stable and is forced to thrash the civil rights of the hardline Muslim Brotherhood in order to preserve the civil rights of the rest of the nation, and is now playing both hardball and peacemaker to the equivalent of the Muslim Brotherhood in the adjacent Gaza Strip--Hamas--by encouraging the leadership of Palestinian Authority leader and moderate Mahmoud Abbas.
(And does anyone reading know that Egypt just offered an end to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict by offering the Sinai Peninsula to the Palestinians with the Palestinians being asked to disavow their claim to the West Bank? Probably not...pity.)
So Egypt is our friend. Jordan, a refugee encampment from the Iraqi and other foreign crisis, is another.
Iran is a longtime enemy that probably is about as lousy a choice of a friend as any, and still supports a Hezbollah and Hamas coalition that is anything but peaceful.
The Kurds are our friends, and are the best bulwark we have against the warring feuds in Iraq, in Syria, and perhaps our newest and most dangerous frenemy--Turkey.
Turkey bailed on us when President George W. Bush took on Saddam Hussein, and is bailing on us again when President Obama is trying to take on both ISIS and Bashar Assad.
Arguably, Turkey's earned the right to be thrown out of NATO, and an American military base presence in a new Kurdistan is probably in just about everyone's best interest.
President Obama will have to figure out how to reward his friends (like Britain, Europe and our Arab allies), and how to treat his enemies (and I mean foreign enemies, not the Republican Party who is as American as he is).
Tough decisions need to be made, and the "un-Bush" or "anti-Bush" presidency of Barack H. Obama must now turn from cautious and politically-correct policies into a coalescing and unifying force that does NOT lead from behind but rather from the front. He must BE a sort of President George W. Bush because if the U.S. does NOT lead from up front...someone else will (like China, Russia, Iran or some other dangerous entity).
And President Obama must be a more presidential figure--show moral courage (LINK: http://carolineglick.com/of-politicians-and-moral-courage/) like British Prime Minister Cameron. Give up the golf like his presidential predecessor did, and/or apologize to the American people for golfing within 15 minutes of announcing the dreadful beheading of American journalist James Foley.
Say what must be said, reach out to whatever entities must be worked with (both here at home and abroad), and don't be afraid to speak honestly to the American people that things have changed.
Less politician, more world leader.
President Obama, meet President George W. Bush. But don't be afraid, Mr. President--you need not ignore the lessons your predecessor taught you, and you need not be so scared to apologize that you forget how forgiving, and in need of a great leader, the American people are...and have always been.
(Ken Alpern is a Westside Village Zone Director and Board member of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at [email protected] . He also does regular commentary on the Mark Isler Radio Show on AM 870, and co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.)
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 75
Pub: Sep 16, 2014