Another Landmark and Barack Obama's Incoherent Foreign Policy

Mike L.

{Cross-posted at Geoffff's Joint Bar and Grill and Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers.}

Every so often something pops onto the political horizon that represents a type of landmark in my political thinking. For me the last big one, before Obama's invitation to Islamist Egyptian president Mohamed Mursi, was the Mavi Marmara episode. At the time I found it exceedingly difficult to accept the fact that western progressives were literally, physically, and financially joining with actual Jihadis for the purpose of confronting Jews on the high seas in order to break the blockade of Gaza, thereby assisting Hamas.

For so many years I was a liberal and a progressive and a Democrat, so when I realized that the progressive movement was making a home of itself for anti-Semitic anti-Zionists it was something of a shock. The Mavi Marmara became a sort-of personal landmark. A symbol. It represents the fact that the progressive-left is not a friend to the Jewish people and therefore Jewish people need to move on politically. This is one of my fundamental convictions. I do not require that people share this conviction in order to participate here on Israel Thrives because the blog is not about projecting a political ideology.  It is about providing a forum for discussion among people who care about Israel. It is about thinking aloud.  I may have political views, but the very last thing in this world that I want is to enforce a political ideology.

It is for this reason that we are welcoming to people throughout the political spectrum. The only people that are not welcome on IT are anti-Zionists or Israel Haters. Other than that we are welcoming to all sorts of viewpoints, so long as one remains collegial, more or less.

But, I have to say, this most recent thing... Barack Obama's invitation to Mohamed Mursi to visit the White House... represents another landmark. From a symbolic standpoint this is just huge. I cannot know what Obama is thinking, and maybe he honestly does believe that when radical groups take power they tend to moderate, but it should be axiomatic that one does not promote the well-being and legitimacy of one's enemies. From a basic geo-political standpoint, you promote the well-being of your allies and undermine the well-being of your enemies.

Is that not obvious?

Therefore, what are we to make of the fact that the Obama administration has been supportive of the Muslim brotherhood since before the Cairo speech? The Muslim Brotherhood is an enemy of the Jewish people and of the Jewish state, yet it is a friend to the Obama administration. If this will not give progressive-left American Jewry pause concerning the Obama administration then I cannot begin to think of what might.

It also, however, demonstrates a fundamental incoherence in Barack Obama's foreign policy. Obama tells the world that the United States is at war with al-Qaeda, yet he is welcoming to the Brotherhood which is the parent organization of the very organization that Obama claims to be at war with. I'm sorry, but this policy is just entirely incoherent and nonsensical. One cannot be "at war" with Qaeda and yet friendly with the Muslim Brotherhood. Qaeda derives from the Brotherhood, as does Hamas.

Some may suggest that Barack Obama is a sort-of foreign policy genius who is playing three dimensional chess with America's adversaries. Who knows? Maybe Obama does, in fact, think that supporting one's enemies is a super-sophisticated trick wherein to undermine them. But I very much doubt it. I do not know what is behind Obama's support for the Muslim Brotherhood. What I do know is that he is supportive of the organization and the organization, itself, is both riddled with race hatred toward Jews and hostility toward the Jewish state of Israel.

And, yet, most American Jews will continue to support this president.

What are we to make of that, I wonder?