Not Just A Muslim

It was not until Obama said, in his speech to the UN on Sept. 25, 2012, “The future does not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam", that I finally agreed with my friends who were convinced he is a closet Muslim.  Now we have an additional explanation of his puzzling foreign policy steps that have decimated our positions all through the Middle East.  That speech to the UN was given as part of the lies Obama was putting out about the Benghazi disaster.

The Obama Doctrine Revealed

Richard Butrick  January 7, 2014 American Thinker (Excerpt)

“But now an Obama doctrine has emerged. And the irony is that the basics of the Obama doctrine have been revealed in a New York Times article designed to remove the Benghazi stain from Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State. It is a revisionist piece claiming that Al Qaeda was not involved in the attack on the American consulate. Here is an account from The Weekly Standard:

In a December 30 editorial, published under the headline "The Facts About Benghazi," the newspaper proclaims an end to the 15 months of debate about the fatal attacks on the U.S. consulate on September 11, 2012. Citing an "exhaustive investigation by The Times" that it says "goes a long way toward resolving any nagging doubts about what precipitated the attack" and "debunks Republican allegations," America's Newspaper of Record declares that "in a rational world" the investigation "would settle the dispute over Benghazi."

In the process of exonerating Clinton, the 8,000-word account by David Kirkpatrick uncovers the two pivotal points of the Obama Doctrine:

(1) Radical Islam in general is not inherently hostile to the US and once they are shown due respect they can become US allies. This may mean weakening ties with our traditional allies.

(2) The only Islamic group that is a bona fide terrorist organization is the faction of al-Qaida directly subordinate to Osama bin Laden's successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Only this group cannot be appeased and must be destroyed through force.

This explains:

(1) the attempts to accommodate the Taliban in Afghanistan,

(2) the backing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt,

(3) the initial backing of the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Syrian opposition,

(4) siding with the PLO against Israel,

(5) the kid glove treatment given Iran's nuclear policy. In general, any group not in obeisance to Zawahiri is a potential US ally.

The beauty of this is that once revealed, the central tenets of the Obama Doctrine are so reality-challenged that the self-anointed "smart diplomacy" mantle becomes ludicrous. Moreover, they have led to one disaster after another to the extent that the US is not even considered the main player in the foreign policy arena. From Russia's Putin to France's François Hollande to China's Xi Jinping, American counsel is met with polite distain.  Here is a summation from V.D. Hanson:

Abroad, American policy in the Middle East is leaderless and in shambles after the Arab Spring -- we've had the Syrian fiasco and bloodbath, leading from behind in Libya all the way to Benghazi, and the non-coup, non-junta in Egypt. This administration has managed to unite existential Shiite and Sunni enemies in a shared dislike of the United States. While Iran follows the Putin script from Syria, Israel seems ready to preempt its nuclear program, and Obama still mumbles empty "game changers" and "red line" threats of years past.

We have gone from reset with Russia to Putin as the playmaker of the Middle East. The Persian Gulf sheikhdoms are now mostly anti-American. The leaders of Germany and the people of France resent having their private communications tapped by Barack Obama -- the constitutional lawyer and champion of universal human rights. Angela Merkel long ago grasped that President Obama would rather fly across the Atlantic to lobby for a Chicago Olympic Games -- or tap her phone -- than sit through a 20th-anniversary commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

But like his green-energy fixation, no matter how many Solyndras erupt, President Obama can be expected to cling to his foreign policy doctrine. Like the rest of his "avant guard" agenda - locked and loaded into his brain at Columbia and Harvard and at the feet of his mentors from Frank Marshall Davis to Jeremiah Wright - they are crucial to his own self-image of being  a visionary, transformative world leader. The Grand Alliance with Islam? Damn the failures, blunders and self-stultifications, full speed ahead.”