Lead From Behind
Written by Congressman Dana Rohrabacher
If the president must lead from behind, could he at least get behind someone who wants to win the war against Islamic extremism?
It continues, dreadfully. Islamic State's advancing war on civilization-despite the Obama administration's protestations that it has been stanched-brazenly pushes the modern world toward despair.
Now Islamic State, or ISIS, announces it has taken 86 more Christians hostage, their likely fate a grisly martyrdom. On the same day, June 8, at the G-7 summit, President Obama admitted that he lacks a "complete strategy" to defeat the Islamic extremists now bedeviling Iraq and Syria, much of the rest of the Middle East, and beyond.
Typically, unconscionably, Mr. Obama half-blames the Pentagon for not presenting him with strategic options, which is news to the Pentagon. He blames the incompetent and corrupt Iraqi government, though he bears some of the responsibility for Baghdad's impotence.
The Earth had hardly turned a cycle after his admission about U.S. strategy before word came that the president was considering sending 500 military advisers to Iraq. Within hours after that headline, he backtracked to 450 advisers.
This ratcheting-up of involvement recalls the Vietnam War with a twist: It's as if President Ford were sending military advisers as Saigon fell.
So an admittedly incomplete strategy becomes an incoherent strategy.
We may begin to wonder: Is this irresolution or resolution? I do not like to ascribe darker motives but necessarily wonder what explains the commander in chief's uncertain trumpet.
Long months ago, the president said his strategy was to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIS. So where is the methodical degradation? Where is the righteous destruction of this hellacious force?
If the civilized world now searches desperately for steadfast leadership at this time of crisis, it can no longer look to the American administration.
Better to look to the embattled region itself-to Jordan's King Abdullah II, to Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to the leaders of formative Kurdistan, to the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammad bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and to Egypt's President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi.
If you would lead from behind, Mr. President, then please get behind these men.
It is a paradox of modern times that, as America matures, its foreign policy grows more ideologically naïve, even infantile. This is manifested by two deadly fallacies. One is a giddy globalism that would send the U.S. military to the far reaches of the planet upon any outbreak of instability. The other is an overcompensating retreatism that cites the nation's war weariness as an excuse for inaction-to our enemies' delight.
President Reagan, for whom I worked, found a third path in his fight against international Communism. Reagan's strategy focused on energetic and comprehensive support for popular uprisings against Moscow's client regimes. With our coordination, encouragement and supplies, others did the work for us-just as our allies are poised to do in ISIS-threatened countries.
Another deadly fallacy holds America's ability to maneuver to impossible, ahistoric standards.
When the Cold War ended in America's favor, many naïvely believed the U.S. could formulate foreign policy, at long last, with human rights at the top of its concerns. That America would no longer need to ally with unsavory rulers in pursuit of our national interest.
Yet the fact is that less-than-democratic, better-than-tyrannical leaders will play a pivotal role in shaping the world our children live in; we need them on our side.
A prime example: President Sisi of Egypt, who last year, as a military leader, seized power from the terror-supporting Muslim Brotherhood's President Mohammed Morsi.
These were turbulent times in Egypt, and Mr. Sisi held his own election, in which he polled vastly more Egyptian votes than his hapless predecessor, to secure his legitimacy.
Egypt remains engaged in its own war against regional terrorists, some affiliated with the ousted Muslim Brotherhood, who were dragging down the economy, persecuting Christians and Jews and keeping the populace in a state of terror.
The elevation of Mr. Sisi has to be seen as a historic confrontation that gave Egypt and perhaps the whole Middle East a chance to avert the calamity of radical Islamic dictatorship.
Mr. Sisi, with whom I have conversed candidly at length on two occasions, has employed tough methods to assure Egypt's progress toward self-government and a market-oriented economy. He has, with some success, encouraged capital investment to return to his country, an unsung encouragement for Egypt to protect human rights.
Yes, Egyptian dissidents and journalists have been jailed, with some since released while others wait. Mass death penalties have been meted out by the courts, though enraged Westerners forget that there is also an appeals process through which a clement president must wait. I have urged that the death penalty be lifted for Mr. Morsi.
Yet Mr. Sisi has also made inclusion a hallmark of his government, inviting every religious and ethnic community to participate in drafting a new constitution, also overwhelmingly approved by voters.
He is rebuilding Christian churches destroyed under the Morsi regime and encouraging Egyptians to make no distinctions between Muslims and Christians in civil life.
In an act of personal courage not seen since Anwar Sadat's 1970s peacemaking with Israel's Menachem Begin, Mr. Sisi addressed Islamic clerics at Al-Azhar University in February and demanded a reformation that would eliminate coercion and violence as defining features of the faith.
The Obama administration's response? A maddening silence.
As it has with others on the front lines of the fight against ISIS and its like, America has been shortchanging de facto allies in the Middle East such as Iraq's embattled Kurds, sending supplies the slow-or-no way through a balky Baghdad.
The Egyptians have not received the F-16 jets for which they have already paid. The Apache helicopters they have received lack defense systems, and the U.S. tanks delivered to them lack spare parts.
None of these people are pure enough for our president. This is the mindset on display across the administration. It damages the chance for peace in the region.
Seriously. Can our administration not make a strategic choice between Egypt's President Sisi and the Islamic State's would-be caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi? You do wonder.
Congressman Dan Rohrabacher (R-CA)is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats.
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