America’s Influence Declining in Middle East
On the western shores of the Persian Gulf, the hitherto pro-Western sheikdoms are beginning to flinch. Sensing weakness on the American side, Sultan Qaboos ibn Said Al Said, the leader of the Emirate of Oman, recently visited Iran for the first time since the Islamic Revolution. And he brought along a delegation of security and economic advisors, despite pressure from the U.S. and its Western allies not to go to Iran. Oman has had strong security and economic ties with the U.S. and the West. The talk held with Iran’s President Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Khamenei on regional issues and on the best way to strengthen political and economic bonds between Oman and Iran should therefore be cause for concern.
Qaboos, like his fellow Arabs in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, is sensing that Iran’s power is ascending and that their traditional alliances with Britain and the U.S. will amount to nothing when Iran becomes a nuclear power with hegemony in the Persian Gulf and beyond. Qaboos and the other sheikdom rulers fear that Iran may destabilize their states. Moreover, they do not see a counter power to Iran that would stop the race by the Shiite mullahs to control the Gulf. Qaboos and the Qataris, like Jumblatt and others in the region, view Obama as weak and irresolute.
The largest of the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, is angry with Obama over his softness towards Iran and his impotence with stopping the Iranian nuclear project. Saudi Arabia fears the growing power of Iran and its influence over the Shiite masses in its oil-rich eastern provinces. Saudi Foreign Minister Feisal expressed his contempt for the Obama administration in front of the international media, when he rejected Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s request for Saudi goodwill gestures towards Israel.
President Obama’s friendliness towards the Arab and Muslim world and popularity as a different American president have done little to soften the positions of America’s enemies in the region. Rather, it has raised the confidence of America’s enemies — Iran and Syria — and increased fear in the hearts of American allies in Beirut, Cairo, Jerusalem, and Riyadh, not to mention the Gulf sheikdoms.
Obama’s claim that he understands Islamic culture is failing him. In the harsh and arid region that is the Middle East (Indonesia, where he grew up, is not the Middle East) you have to inspire fear in your enemies and confidence in your friends.
While I have no use for the Usurper and his socialist cronies, I don’t think he will have any problems pulling the trigger when the time comes.
A lad from the south side understands the value of a bigger gun. It was Bush that flinched when the Soviets invaded Georgia. When he chose to do nothing, America lost all creditability in the region. One B2 would have stopped the Sovie…..er.. Russian rape of Georgia.
I couldn’t help reading three times in the course of this article the following phrase – “America is an unreliable ally.” While this seems to be emphasized by the behavior of the dark prince of the setting sun, Obama, America’s unreliability was obvious to anyone who looked. There was its behavior towards South Vietnam, its behavior towards Saddam Hussein in early 1990, its behavior towards the Shi’a rebels in Iraq in 1991, its behavior towards Pakistan (even before 9/11), its behavior towards Israel, and more recently, its behavior towards Georgia. I mention these because all of them cannot be blamed on the dark prince of the setting sun of America’s democracy, the “blessed of Hussein”.
In short, anyone who relies on America is a blithering idiot. And now we have Netanyahu, who is showing what a blithering idiot he is.
You have to give the various MidEast potentates credit for being able to notice the obvious, at least.
In this case, the “obvious” is that President Obama’s “conciliatory gestures” were all aimed at the states and groups that have been the most violent in their determination to (a) remove all “Western influence” from the region, not just the American version, (b) force fundamentalist radical Islam down their coreligionists’ throats at gunpoint (with nuclear weapons soon to be “the round in the chamber”), and (c) erase Israel from the face of the Earth- as a prologue to doing likewise to the West as a whole.
(The reality or achievability of their goals is irrelevant; all that matters is that they believe they can accomplish them, their dogma demands the effort, and that they are willing to do whatever they can to attempt it- and not count the cost. As a rule, cultural entities which venerate “martyrdom” make disproportionately dangerous opponents.)
It doesn’t take a “nuclear genius” to understand that President Obama follows the “progressive” dogma of the last half-century, which views Israel as an “illegitimate state” and aggressive Islamism as the only “legitimate” form of polity in the region, mainly on the basis of (non-Western/pseudo-mystical)”tradition” coupled with its reflexive hatred of the West. To be fair, Obama probably honestly thinks that once he has thrown Israel and our regional allies (whom he considers to be just the opposite from his personal POV) “under the bus”, the Islamists will suddenly love us.
I hope someone gets a photo of the deer-caught-in-the-headlights look on his face when realizes the enormity of his error.
clear ether
eon
The US should disengage from this region and leave these folks to sort out their own problems. It’s a dysfunctional backwater full of horribly sectarian people.
Frankly, I still propose that Pilsudski’s plan be updated and implemented. A plan of his that didn’t get implemented would have seen Poland lead a federation that include Finland, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. This, primarily to apply a European cordon sanitaire around Lenin and his gang, because Pilsudski had no illusions about the viciousness of those early folk who marched under the hammer and sickle.
Well, a different batch has picked up where the hammer and sickle crowd has left off when it comes to man’s inhumanity to man. So, at the very least, a united foreign policy based on the Borjomi Declaration comprising the countries of the Pilsudski plan (even though I am not sure if
Azerbaijan would fit today), and add Ukraine, the Czech Republic, the Balkan states, and the Baltic states, as well as Hungary and possibly Italy.
For when this constellation of countries gets behind the idea of equal property rights for all,
the potential for change is hardly insignificant.
Especially when it comes to the perpetuation of man’s inhumanity to man.
In other words, the perspective expressed here:
http://www.huembwas.org/Media/UnitedWeStand.htm
Not just about WMD, but about taking on the forces of darkness aptly named, “The Sons of Allah”.
The US should disengage from this region and leave these folks to sort out their own problems.
Agreed. While the Americans themselves may be decent folk, the American government is a pack of evil trash representing imperialist thieves who have created more backwaters than one wishes to imagine with their exploitative policies. Let’s give just three examples: the exploitative sugar and fruit plantations of Central America and the Caribbbean, the Union Bank backing the animal in Nejd, ibn-Saud, allowing him to conquer Arabia, the same Union Bank investing in a German politician, building him a big house in Bavaria. Welcome to Adolf Hitler!
When you Americans can honestly fess up to the damage you have done the world, then you can whine about “dysfunctional backwaters full of horribly sectarian people”.
Till then, just get out and let us folks sort out our own problems. We do not need you.
OK, let me get this straight. We spend multiple billions upon billions of dollars in that region of the world, developing their product, investing in their product, using our technology for their product, then buying their product, and now they consider us unreliable? The best freaking customers they could ever hope to have. We turn our backs on their tyrannies, their cruelties, their oppression and buy, buy, buy and we aren’t considered reliable customers?
You must be kidding. What they now know is, that we are in our proper place; dhimmis, sorry that they had to attack us.
Mission accomplished. We don’t matter to them, because we don’t matter to them, we are infidels. They always knew they couldn’t rely on us, and now after electing Obama, they don’t even have to say it, he said it for them.
The worst thing we have done to the rest of the world is we have taken away their HOPE, because they now also know that we won’t even fight for ourselves let alone anyone else.
Oh, and Israel, well it hard to hold onto a friend when your hands are covered in oil. Do you have any oil Israel? Because well, then we might consider…
Sorry!
The largest of the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, is angry with Obama over his softness towards Iran and his impotence with stopping the Iranian nuclear project. Saudi Arabia fears the growing power of Iran and its influence over the Shiite masses in its oil-rich eastern provinces. Saudi Foreign Minister Feisal expressed his contempt for the Obama administration in front of the international media, when he rejected Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s request for Saudi goodwill gestures towards Israel.
A few things here. First of all your claim from the headline “America’s Influence Declining in the Middle East” is unsupported. Nowhere have you etablished a verifiable decline, nowhere is there a decline that can be charted. Certainly, you don’t mean to have people believe that 5 months is any kind of valid period for charting a decline in anything. You also have no citations or proof of Saudi rejection of goodwill gestures. What were these gestures, exactly and how were they rejected. This is sophomoric crap, you should be ashamed to have your name associated with it. Oh wait, I just looked up your name on google. Actually, this is pretty mild crap compared to your other stuff.
What a way to distort the facts. Walid Jumblatt has NEVER been an ally of the US. If anything he’s been a very vocal critic. It was only after Hariri’s assassination, did he open up a bit for support. More for his own self-preservation than because he’s suddenly ga-ga for America.
At least you admit that Bush Sr. sold Aoun up the river to Syria and didn’t pin it on Obama too.
The Middle East is doing what the Middle East does the best, and that is be a vocal critic of the United States so they don’t have to address their own shortcomings.
Love how Saudi Arabia reforms the terrorists they raise in the madrassas, they fund with the money we spend buying their product. They don’t even have to try that hard any more to pretend that our relationship has always been anything other than their benefiting from calling for our demise as they hold out their hand for more. Allah Akbar!
Paint a pretty picture!
Oh and it’s great that we’ll help them with our nuclear technology, since we know how they love us an all.
Ruvy;
So old man Saud and his tribesmen rose fully formed out of the Arabian sands by US conjury?
You might want to ditch the idea that third world people are dumb sheep with no minds, agency, or agendas of their own.
Ruvy is a communist. Pay him no attention.
As for disengagement, it isn’t possible without ceding a vast economic fulcrum to the southern wing of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. If you think the oil embargo of the 70s was a problem, imagine if the same weapon were put at the disposal of the global anti-NATO, as led by Moscow and Beijing, to be deployed at a time of maximum strategic benefit. Yikes.
The (political) difficulties of remaining engaged would be neutralized utterly if the media and politicians who report on the region were allowed to describe things in the same way in which the region’s own citizens do. Instead they peddle the pablum that Arabs are higher on the civilization food chain then everyone can see and knows they are. Fro example, the obvious answer to the question of the Arabs are so backward and cruel and incompetent is… because they are Arabs. But who could say such a thing? Instead they invent myths, and the myths corrupt, because by implication we are supposed to apologize for their debauchery. Stupid.
Why? Ruvy’s communism.
The disillusion with the Obamista America goes far beyond the ME!
There was not even a tangential reference to the Open Letter that the erstwhile Eastern and Central European leaders sent to this Communist Muslim bastard, Hussein O.
i”At stake is America’s credibility in a region it wholeheartedly embraced in the 90′s, but which now, according to the signatories, it takes for granted.
“A group of former presidents, prime ministers, and cabinet members from what was once known as the Soviet bloc warn the US president in an open letter that the region’s close alliance with Washington, once treated as axiomatic, is today being put to its most severe test ever.
Also opinion polls show a steady decline in public support for the alliance with Washington in the region.”
Source: http://presseurop.eu/content/article/56131-dear-barack-just-reminder
The letter was signed, along with the former presidents of Poland and the Czech Republic, by the ex-heads of state of Lithuania, Valdas Adamkus; Romania, Emil Constantinescu; Slovakia, Michal Kovacz; and Latvia, Vaira Vike-Freiberga.
Soon the US only friends will be the Communist dictators worldwide and the Darkie-Communist thugs and their sympathizers at SEIU, ACORN, ANSWER, and the Bolshevik tribe of Emanuel the Dead Fish.
An Open Letter to the Obama Administration from Central and Eastern Europe
I enclose only a short excerpts from this long letter which merits a serious reflexion and careful consideration:
“Relations have been so close that many on both sides assume that the region’s transatlantic orientation, as well as its stability and prosperity, would last forever.
- snip
That view is premature. All is not well either in our region or in the transatlantic relationship. Central and Eastern Europe is at a political crossroads and today there is a growing sense of nervousness in the region.
-snip
We must also recognize that America’s popularity and influence have fallen in many of our countries as well. Public opinions polls, including the German Marshall Fund’s own Transatlantic Trends survey, show that our region has not been immune to the wave of criticism and anti-Americanism that has swept Europe in recent years and which led to a collapse in sympathy and support for the United States”
http://wyborcza.pl/1,75477,6825987,An_Open_Letter_to_the_Obama_Administration_from_Central.html
“If you think the oil embargo of the 70s was a problem, imagine if the same weapon were put at the disposal of the global anti-NATO, as led by Moscow and Beijing, to be deployed at a time of maximum strategic benefit. Yikes.”
Balderdash! Shale OIL. The USA has the worlds largest reserves of non-liquid OIL. Google it. Any time Americans want to, they can produce enough OIL to supply the world for the next several thousand years.
It won’t be cheap, with production ppb in the 50′s to start. That is not competitive with the Saudi’s who are in the low teens, I think. But if it becomes a matter of national security, the swampies will get told to buzz off and we will start producing OIL from internal sources.
If America takes political action to gain access to OIL, it is because of the environmental movement preventing the use of indigenous resources, not the lack of those resources.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shale_oil
{snipped}
“Global technically-recoverable reserves have recently been estimated at about 2.8-3.3 trillion barrels of shale oil, with the largest reserves in the United States, which is thought to have 1.5-2.6 trillion barrels.”
2 Trillion barrels. Saudi Arabia has a few billion. Why should we kiss their arse for OIL? Just to keep a handful of environmental Luddites happy?
“If you think the oil embargo of the 70s was a problem, imagine if the same weapon were put at the disposal of the global anti-NATO, as led by Moscow and Beijing, to be deployed at a time of maximum strategic benefit. Yikes.”
Balderdash! Shale OIL. The USA has the worlds largest reserves of non-liquid OIL. Google it. Any time Americans want to, they can produce enough OIL to supply the world for the next few thousand years.
It won’t be cheap, with production ppb in the 50′s to start. That is not competitive with the Saudi’s who are in the low teens, I think. But if it becomes a matter of national security, the swampies will get told to buzz off and we will start producing OIL from internal sources.
If America takes political action to gain access to OIL, it is because of the environmental movement preventing the use of indigenous resources, not the lack of those resources.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shale_oil
{snipped}
“Global technically-recoverable reserves have recently been estimated at about 2.8-3.3 trillion barrels of shale oil, with the largest reserves in the United States, which is thought to have 1.5-2.6 trillion barrels.”
2 Trillion barrels. Saudi Arabia has a few billion. Why should we kiss their arse for OIL? Just to keep a handful of environmental Luddites happy?
Whoopsie! Sorry.
#14 Thomas.
You can’t hide behind the USA forever.
As an American, I’m getting tired of pouring resources into 3rd world mudholes and getting nothing but grief in return.
If Bush wasn’t such a woosie, he would have pulled out of NATO when the European members refuse to honor their treaty commitments by sending troops to Iraq.
I would like to see the USA with draw from the UN, the Geneva Conventions, the NPT, SALT, START, LOST, ETC. The purpose of a treaty is to advance the national interests. I can argue that non of the mentioned treaties do that anymore. They did at one time, but that time has passed and so should those treaties.
@18. John “birther” Samford:
What the hell are you talking about?
Haven’t you noticed that the American people voted just for the very opposite of your ideas? And it’s only the beginning…”
Eastern Europeans (the ” NEW EUROPE”) FOUGHT with arms for their freedom: care to remember their uprising against the Soviets? Americans with their messianic “let spread democracy” fervor did nothing but the pious “Freedom” blabbering as usual.
Iraq: You forgot that all Eastern European countries were represented in Iraq but not the Germans, French and the Turks gave you their finger.
You forgot Rumsfeld’s “New Europe”:
“Yesterday, 10 Eastern European countries that constitute the Vilnius group jointly pledged to support the U.S. position on Iraq….”
Source: Radio Free Europe
You forsaken every nation which trusted you: Vietnam, Hungary, Georgia, Czechs, Poles, HONDURAS!!! – Israel, Taiwan….
Care to explain what type of “resources into 3rd world mudholes” did America pour into Hungary or the Czech Rep. Poland?
They bought your outmoded F16- junks to support you!!! with their €€€.
Sir, you are way behind the Times: your America, as shown on the Hot Air Video: “This used to be America!” “It ain’t no more, okay?”
http://hotair.com/
So old man Saud and his tribesmen rose fully formed out of the Arabian sands by US conjury?
If you knew Middle Eastern history, you would know that the ibn-Sauds were the henchmen of a man named el-Wahhab for about two centuries, ever attempting to overthrow the Khalif, and overthrow Islam. They succeeded on US money when the last Khalif died and when the Hashemi family was not as well armed as they were. And now the greed of American bankers has come to bite the Americans in the butt – the Arabs who flew the mission to destroy the World Trade Center were Wahhabi – the same people who Obama bowed to, and whom the Bushes kow-towed to.
I live out here – in Israel. In Samaria, to be precise. When I talk about these things, I better know what I’m talking about.
Ruvy’s a communist – ignore him.
My father, a war refugee from the First World War, taught me about the kind of people communists are. They kill their own brethren without the least thought – not a whole lot different from the Wahhabi but screaming Marx (or Stalin) hu akbár!
I’m no communist. Communists disgust me as much as the Wahhabi do.
I’m a Jew who keeps the commandments – so I didn’t get on this computer during the Sabbath – which is now over.
Well, yeah duh. These jihadist radicals admire *strength*. Obeyme is a wuss pantywaist who is going around the world on an apology tour stating how mean the US is, and promising never to do it again. I’m sure the jihadi’s find him even more pathetic and pantywaist than most American Patriots. Of course, the jihadi’s will consider his apology tour an invitation to expand. After all, president pantywaist won’t stop them, and they KNOW it. (people got mad at Reagan for bombing Libya, but Quaddafi wasn’t nearly as much trouble afterwards.)
alinski’s pathetic tribe visits with greater numbers engaged in their silly
pack like behaviors. This attempt,”to bang their boots” to rudely bog down the free exchange of intelligent adult conversation has no place in public discourse,and they shall soon be slinking off to lick their wounds.bye
you sad children..bye bye.
“Haven’t you noticed that the American people voted just for the very opposite of your ideas? And it’s only the beginning…”
Actually, that isn’t what happened. The American voters that chose to vote in ’08 voted AGAINST the republicans because of the economy and the mishandling of the Iraqi campaign. Whichever Democrat was running was going to win. Donald Duck would have won if he ran as a democrat. Same for Alfred Newman, Boris Karlof or anyone else you care to name.
The Usurper and his Chicago cabal were just clever enough to see it coming and take advantage of it.
Obama is an empty suit. Reid and Pelosi actually run things. They will both be gone in 2010, the Usurper shortly thereafter.
Notice I said “I would like to see”. Those words are different from ‘I think this will happen’. Unfortunately, the USA is not going to withdraw from a bunch of treaties. That would be real change.
ALL the legislation passed during the Obama administration will be voided after he is gone.
Thomas
“Iraq: You forgot that all Eastern European countries were represented in Iraq but not the Germans, French and the Turks gave you their finger.”
If you digg into the real causes of this official “no”, there was a quarrel about American Nato interferrences into our wishes (german and french) of creating an EU army, that the enlargement of EU to the eastern republics condamned to be unborn. America had de facto decided for us, and already enrolled Polish and Czecks &… into her alliance as foreign recrues for launching the Irak war, and thus taken away our opportunity to make a unique EU answer to the question : Europe became inductively separated into 2 poles, the pro Bush policies, and the partisans of more reflexion and discussion (probably this wasn’t for displease the US administration, which saw EU as a future concurrent, therefore theis lack of unity was welcome, and the French got all the opprobe).
The obvious response from the 2 leading powers of EU, that were passed under the Bush administration bus, was therefore not to take part to this coalition to affirm their european identity
http://www.diploweb.com/forum/poirier.htm
I advise you to read the articles of this site (in french, but you can read it I understood), they are from “professionals” that know their subject
24. Marie Claude:
You said:
“they are from “professionals” that know their subject”
When we were on the streets in Budapest, Prague, Gdansk your Communist “professionals” like Cohn-Bendit supported the murderous Russian Communist against us. The French are the most hated people in E. Europe, hence their pro-American sentiments that was before Soetero-Obama
Go back and learn Arabic, your future is with them as Sarko said:
“”Il faut investir dans la langue arabe”, a-t-il indiqué, car “son enseignement est un moment d’échange, d’ouverture et de tolérance” et qu’elle “porte l’une des plus anciennes et prestigieuses civilisations dans le monde”.”
According to Sarkozy:
“(Arabic)is the language of the future, of science and of modernity,” and expressed the hope that “more French people share in the language that expresses great civilizational and spiritual values.”
Eurabia has no future, it will be Sharia Muslim.
Cohn Bendit isn’t French but German
and surely you weren’t one these guis in the streets that manifested with the Czechs the Poles, or the Hungarians against URSS
you are a son of the Nomanklatura that benefitted of the regime privileges, and if Russia didn’t collapse you would still press on the populations there
your pro american sentiment is “interested” like they are for our EU subventions, we never thought that you like us, you’re only looking for our money
Now, you’ll have to learn to not whin, cuz uncle Sam is broken, and we have not much spared money either
you give me the envy to know what there are in the Kremlin archives !
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_POLAND_GERMANY_WAR_GUILT?SITE=AZMES&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
yeah, only the poor Easterners have the right to complain
bad consciensceness doesn’t exist by their standards, they were/are “victims”, Hmm, it reminds me that also we have many other “victims” that request apologies and retribution, but from colonies
Middle eastern countries are worst hit by these Amercian domination. It should be put to end.