For years, the Democratic choir sang the praises of being nicer to the enemy, of more rights for suspected terrorists, and for the normalization of relations with abnormally cruel and dangerous tyrants. With the Left firmly in control of Washington what we are witnessing in Iran is the logical consequence of that policy. The new administration has abandoned the courageous Iranian people who risk life and limb to demand freedoms that we Americans take for granted. Technology now allows us to see the raw reality of the Iranian regime’s crackdown on unarmed protesters, including the murder of individual protesters that serve as heart-wrenching rallying cries for the pro-democracy demonstrators and people around the world. In real-time, Americans can now watch what happens when tyranny goes unopposed and unchecked in the world… if this is how they treat unarmed protesters, then imagine what the Iranian regime is willing to do to us and Israel with nuclear weapons. Yet the unfolding events caused or enabled by a weakened America have not taught the new administration that their soft approach to our enemies is just plain wrong…

Enter Iraq, where Obama pledged a withdrawal of troops and is currently reducing our troop levels there. It was a short-sighted reaction to what was and is an unpopular war. The withdrawal of troops, to be mostly completed a year or so, is seen by the enemy as a direct consequence of their prolonged terror campaign against our troops. The problem with Obama’s plan for withdrawal is that it does not seem to outline a “post-exit strategy.” Take the recent events in Iraq that have largely been ignored by the mainstream media: four bombings in Iraq killed more than 20 including one that killed three students on their way to exams, more than 9 killed from bombings and gunmen attacks Sunday, last Saturday a suicide bomber killed about 80 people in a Shiite mosque, in separate attacks 4 people were killed on Saturday from bombings, gunmen attacks, and mortar attacks, just to name a few. Add to that the fact that the new administration is started to release thousands of suspected terrorists and insurgents as the dismantling of the US presence continues, and what you have is a situation where all of the gains made by the surge are being undone. The logic of our enemies in Iraq is clear: Obama responded to terror attacks by calling for a withdrawal of troops, therefore if they increase their attacks, Obama will accelerate his withdrawal while Al Qaeda and other groups can claim victory. By withdrawing because it is politically expedient rather than because we have achieve sustainable security gains, we are handing Iraq over to our enemies. Just by looking at another multi-religious state in the Middle East, Lebanon, we can expect Iraq to divide along sectarian lines and break into different sub-states. This exists in Lebanon today, where the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah is the de facto government in many areas and cannot be disarmed by the central government. While I advocate an eventual withdrawal from Iraq, I am more concerned over whether Iraq will become the new epicenter of Al Qaeda and/or other international terror groups because of a weak central government… or whether the Iranian “revolution” will spread to Iraq, which may spark a major war between Sunnis and Shiites across the Middle East, eventually involving us.

The new administration’s policies in these two countries will leave a lot of unresolved issues and may lead to the rise of a new terrorist state in Iraq. Obama has not thoroughly addressed how the Al Qaeda threat will be neutralized in Iraq during and after the withdrawal of US troops nor how we will deal with excessive Iranian influence over the Iraqi government. To leave these questions unanswered, or half-answered, will lead to an emboldened and strengthened enemy that we will have to face in the future. When the Bush administration was in power, they miscalculated and did not have an adequate “exit strategy” but at least they recognized that withdrawing as a response to terror attacks or setting arbitrary timetables would only invite more attacks on our troops. The Obama administration is making a similar mistake by not preparing for the consequences of our withdrawal, except that the cost of giving Al Qaeda the opportunity to re-constitute itself in Iraq or for Iran to turn Iraq into a satellite state is far too great. Worse still if half of Iraq goes to Iran and the other half to Al Qaeda. In retrospect, the Bush strategy of taking the fight to the enemy is superior to the Obama strategy of allowing the enemy to bring the fight to us. Al Qaeda cannot be allowed to rise again… which means we cannot hand them Iraq on a silver platter and we cannot engage in talks with their allies, the Taliban, like Obama is currently doing. The security of our citizens depends on a smart and strong foreign policy, not a weak and ideological foreign policy. Great nations only fall when they are weak, not when they are strong.

-AG