Hear the words of President Obama’s Department of Defense Spokesman
about the Egyptian air strike against Islamic State targets following the
wholesale beheadings of twenty one Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya.
“We discourage other nations
from taking a part in Libya’s issues through violence. We want the issues
solved in Libya to be done peacefully and through good governance and politics
and not violence.”
Libya is a country in dangerous chaos, partly due to Obama’s
policy of leading from behind, in this case too far behind. It resulted in the
terrorist murder of an American ambassador and three security men which Obama
and Hillary Clinton ridiculously blamed on an amateur video movie angering
local Muslims to violence.
Libya is in anarchy. Ansar
al-Shariah, An al-Qaeda-linked group,
controls much of Benghazi and another Islamist faction, Fajr (“Dawn”), seized Tripoli
airport a just over a week ago. In the turmoil, Islamic State is gaining ground
and killing people, and yet the Obama Administration’s policy is that the
situation in that country must be solved politically, and peacefully.
Obama’s strategy in fighting Islamic state has come under a
lot of criticism, but this Administration’s attitude to Egypt; more pointedly against
the al-Sisi government is deeply troubling. There appears to be a covert
commitment at the White House to the Muslim Brotherhood, to where many of its
leading American representatives seem to have an open door, according to media
reports.
In early February, the White House reluctantly released the
names of leading American Muslims that had been invited to a closed door
meeting with the President and Valerie Jarrett. Among them were members of the
Islamic Society of North America, and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), two
groups founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
One individual was Salam
al-Marayati, who was the Executive Director of MPAC, who infamously on 9/11
said, “If we are going to look for suspects we should look to groups that
benefit the most. We should put the State of Israel on the suspect list.”
Al-Marayati has been a
cover-up guy for Hamas and Hezbollah and an advocate for having them removed
from the US terror list.
Both Egypt and Saudi Arabia expressed their outrage when the
names were released. The Middle East Research Institute (MEMRI) reported, “The Egyptian regime, outraged by the visit, accused the
U.S. administration of not respecting the Egyptian law that defines the MB as a
terrorist organization, and of discounting the will of the Egyptian people.”
Breitbart Media reported that President Sisi reacted
to the State Department’s belated confirmation of the Muslim Brotherhood
meeting by describing the Brotherhood as “the world’s most dangerous secret
terrorist organization” and saying it “has clandestine wings and secret
ideas and tools… which is why Egyptians rose up against it.”
Obama’s Director of National Intelligence,
James Clapper, once infamously described the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas
is an offshoot, as being “largely secular.”
In 2014, the Obama Administration suspended
weapon sales to the Egyptian government for a resupply of arms to enable them
to fight terrorism in the Sinai and internally. This request was rejected. The
Egyptians have been negotiating arms supply from Russia. President Sisi hosted
Vladimir Putin in Cairo in early February.
It is in this light, linked to the utter
weakness of the Obama leadership in fighting the growth and spread of Islamic State,
which led to the worrying statement by Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby who called
the Obama relationship with Egypt “complicated.”
In six months, the US-led coalition has launched an estimated
2,400 air strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria. Compare that
number to the 5,500 Israelis air strikes by the Israeli Air Force against Hamas
and other terror targets in the Gaza Strip during the fifty day Gaza conflict
last year, and it appears that the Obama strategy is to take out Islamic State
terrorists one at a time, but not in Libya where they have to be dealt with “peacefully,”
according to Obama’s military spokesman.
Barry Shaw is the author of the upcoming book ‘Fighting Hamas,
BDS and Anti-Semitism.’
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