The Enemy of My Enemy

Come 2016, if things have come to no good end in the Middle East, and territory is lost, and territory is gained, and nothing has much changed, the USA will come to a very interesting crossroads.  We will have to take a stand.

A dozen or so Republicans and one Democrat will be vying for the presidency of the United States, and the Republicans will be wending their way through a convoluted primary and caucus system, trying to gain enough votes to be the one to keep the Clintons out of the White House.

The Republican campaign will -- or should -- be a fascinating forum.  Not about getting rid of at least the worst aspects of Obamacare (please give me back my low-cost, high-deductible plan!), or seeking a balanced budget, or getting rid of the Department of Education; those are a given.

No, I would like to see a healthy, productive debate in the Republican primary campaign as to what constitutes "right" in the USA's role in the Middle East.

The facts are not as complex as the morality, so it is difficult to say with reflexive accuracy what "right" even means, which is why I'm hoping it will be the key issue in the campaign.  We have to discuss facts like:

- We have a committed Arab friend in Jordan, and less-committed friends in places like Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia
- We have a formerly-committed Jewish state friend in Israel, the only strong democracy in the region, which the Obama Administration regards as an impediment to peace
- We have relationships with nations such as Turkey and Egypt that have to be restarted somehow because the Obama Administration has had no idea how to manage them
- There are virtual non-countries like Yemen and Iraq, which have barely-existent governments
- There are Palestinians without land but with a government associated, for the moment, with terrorists like Hamas
- There are countries openly hostile to the USA, like Syria and Iran
- There is a non-state actor called ISIS committing murder and seizing territory in the name of an Islamic Caliphate
- There is a state actor, Iran, which is not only hostile to the USA, but which is using front organizations like the Houthis in Yemen, to carry out territory grabs
- There is frightening poverty in almost every one of these countries.

And oh, by the way -- as we all know, the Iranian (Shiite) form of Islam is diametrically opposed to the Sunni form practiced by ISIS, so the Iranians and the ISISites, both evil, hegemonistic Muslim groups, are fighting each other in northern Iraq, as they holler "Death to America" and hate the Israelis at the same time.  Whom do we root for?

The Iranians are busily trying to build a nuclear bomb to use on ... I don't know whom, but I'm guessing it is not New Zealand.  And we have a president trying to create a legacy by signing am agreement with them, no matter the consequences or the enforceability of it. Whom do we support?

So what should we be doing?  What is, to make it easy, "right"?

I do not know the answer to this.  There are very few fundamentals to start with -- security for Israel, that sort of thing.  But after that, what is needed is a real discussion, so we can decide as a country what "right" actually means in the context of what is good for the USA.

The Democrats are stuck in a lock-step goose-step with their president as, defying our Israeli allies, he tries to get an agreement with Iran that has little chance of being ratified and no chance of leading to peace in the region.

It is left to the Republicans to have a reasonable debate as to what the future Middle East needs to be, and what, if any, is our role there.  We can successfully get ourselves out of worry about supporting countries there just because they have oil -- we pretty much don't need their oil.  We can start worrying about what is actually the right thing to do.

So let's do it, GOP.  Let's have that discussion and that debate, and create a well-formed, well-informed policy that your 2016 standard-bearer can present to the USA and speak to with passion.  The opposition will look like the uninformed, politically-driven hacks that they are.

Would that be too much to ask?

Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton