America Is Rapidly Losing Friends

One of the campaign claims of Barack Obama was that George Bush’s foreign policy had resulted in America being disliked around the world and that he, Barack Obama, would change that. Well, it hasn’t exactly worked that way.

On Friday, Richard Fernandez posted an article at PJ Media about the changing relationship between America and Saudi Arabia.

The article reports:

Today Saudi Arabia rejected a seat on the UN Security Council to which it had been unanimously elected in protest against “its long-time patron United States’ overtures to Iran, among other peeves,” according to the Times of India.

Alienating Saudi Arabia is not necessarily a good thing. I understand that the government of Saudi Arabia is a repressive Islamic state. It is a dictatorship that severely limits the rights of women. However, the Saudis have been the major support of the U.S. dollar as the trading currency for oil. That is one of the major things that has prevented the U.S. dollar from becoming worthless paper.

The Saudis understand the threat that Iran presents. On October 3rd, the National Interest reported:

The Saudi royal family has seen Iran as a threat to their survival ever since 1979, when Iranian leaders began encouraging Shi’ite communities in Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern Province to rebel. Subsequently, the Kingdom has been engaged in a regional battle for influence with Iran, and the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq removed a traditional counterweight to Iranian power. Sunni rulers now fear a Shi’ite crescent stretching from Iran to the Mediterranean—and possibly south into the Arab Gulf states.

Fearing Iranian advances, the Kingdom spearheaded a 2011 military intervention by the Gulf Cooperation Council that was designed to rescue the minority Sunni regime in Bahrain from its Shi’ite opposition. But of late, Syria has been the biggest regional source of conflict between Riyadh and Tehran. Saudi officials insist that Syria’s Assad regime is guilty of genocide, and they see Iran’s efforts to rescue Assad as aiding and abetting this slaughter.

I have lost faith in the idea that any of the Muslim countries in the Middle East will form governments that will actually promote freedom. Sharia Law is not compatible with freedom, and Sharia Law is one of the basic tenets of Islam. I suspect our best course of action is to understand who we are dealing with and distance ourselves when necessary. Saudi Arabia is an ally in the fight against radical Shiite Islam, but the Wahabi brand of Sunni Islam in Saudi Arabia gave us Al Qaeda. We would be better off the let the radicals deal with each other and stay out of the way.

This is how Richard Fernandez sums up President Obama”s foreign policy:

Obama sold himself to the voters as the candidate of the future. His real talent however, apparently lies in missing every opportunity that history presents. It has been said that “generals always fight the last war, especially if they have won it”. With Obama it’s different. He always fights the last war and can’t even remember who won it, except to remain confirmed in his conviction that the future is some other country’s past.

President Obama may be a very intelligent man, but he obviously does not have a gift for dealing with (or understanding) the complexities of the Middle East.

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