OPINION:
The news that four American soldiers were wounded on the Egyptian-Gaza border and were evacuated, and their injuries are not life-threatening, is good news. But the bad news is that the incident demonstrates how out of alignment American policy is in the region.
The four Americans are part of a small and ill-equipped United Nations peacekeeping force that was put in place in the Sinai when Egypt’s martyred Anwar el-Sadat made peace with Israel in 1979. The Israelis withdrew their 10-year-old occupation, returning the desert peninsula to Egypt and the U.N. force was dispatched to police the withdrawal.
Through the maze of Islamic terrorist factions and their constantly fluctuating alliances, it’s difficult to formulate an American strategy that contributes to peace and stability and that does not involve the United States in another unresolved war. The combination of President Obama’s hurried withdrawal from Iraq and his attempt to start a romance with the mullahs in Tehran guarantees chaos. Without more effective American leadership, disasters will accumulate.
The instincts and inclinations of the Obama administration continue to be hesitant and wrong-headed. The administration still curries the favor of the Muslim Brotherhood, whom President Abdel-Fattah el-sissi threw out of power in Egypt to widespread dancing in the streets. Mr. Obama’s former secretary of state has her Brotherhood ties, too, through her principal assistant, Huma Abedin, whose family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood are considerable.
The Brotherhood encourages the radical Islamic doctrine that Islam permits lying to non-believers in pursuit of Islamic goals. It may be true, as Mr. Obama seems to believe, that many members of the Brotherhood are a kind of Islamic Christian Democrats. But it is also true that the Brotherhood has been the source of worldwide Islamic terrorism.
Mr. Obama’s reliance on his friendship with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has soured as Mr. Erdogan has moved steadily toward radical Islam, following Turkey’s half-century of moderate secular rule. Turkey now supplies aid for Hamas terrorists. Mr. Erdogan blames the West for the network of human trafficking that has sent a million Syrian refugees into Turkey and an unprecedented flow of migrants clamoring to get into Europe.
The Obama administration opposed the military takeover that installed Mr. el-sissi, and has warmed only slowly to his subsequent election as a civilian president. Mr. Obama’s refusal to recognize the reality in Egypt reduces America’s ability to influence Mr. el-sissi to move his regime from authoritarianism. He has sent Mr. el-sissi looking for support elsewhere, including Moscow, which has been looking for a way back to meddle again in the Middle East.
Dithering now in the face of these new realities, including a tacit alliance between Israel and the Persian Gulf Arab states, once bitter enemies, Mr. Obama postpones withdrawing the 750 American man-force in the trouble zone. With the new technical wizardry, whatever intelligence the force collects is likely no longer worth the price. If Mr. Obama is not wary, whether by decision or his characteristic indecision, he could stumble into the escalating conflict in the Sinai.
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