Images of
9/11: A Visual Remembrance
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/09/11/images-911-visual-remembrance/
OBAMA AND HIS SAUDIS
PAYMASTERS… Did he serve them well?
Malia,
Michelle, Barack and the College Admissions Scandal https://globalistbarackobama.blogspot.com/2019/03/malia-michelle-barack-and-college.html
GOOGLE WHAT THE OBOMB DID FOR HIS SAUDIS
PAYMASTERS
Barack Obama’s back door, however, was unique to him. Before
prosecutors send some of the dimmer Hollywood stars to the slammer for their
dimness, they might want to ask just how much influence a Saudi billionaire
peddled to get Obama into Harvard.
“Of course,
one of the main reasons the nation is now “divided, resentful and angry”
is because race-baiting, Islamist, class warrior Barack Hussein
Obama was president for eight long years." MATTHEW VADUM
The new startling revelations.
Subscribe to the Glazov Gang‘s YouTube Channel and follow us on Instagram: @JamieGlazov, Parler: @JamieGlazov and Twitter: @JamieGlazov.
With the new startling revelations now surfacing about the true fate of SEAL Team Six, Frontpage Mag editors have deemed it vital to run the special Glazov Gang episode in which Clare Lopez discusses Revealed: Obama’s Betrayal of SEAL Team Six.
Don’t miss it!
And make sure to watch our 3-Part-Special with Clare on Osama’s Post-9/11 Safe Haven in Iran, how 9/11 Came From Riyadh & Tehran and Helping Saudis Slip Away.
[I] Osama’s Post-9/11 Safe Haven in Iran.
[2] 9/11 Came From Riyadh & Tehran.
[3] Helping Saudis Slip Away.
Subscribe to the Glazov Gang‘s YouTube Channel and follow us on Instagram: @JamieGlazov, Parler: @JamieGlazov and Twitter: @JamieGlazov.
Pollak: Everything Joe Biden Said About Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Actually Describes Barack Obama’s
Johannes Eisele / AFP Getty
12 Jul 20193
3:48
Everything
former vice president Joe Biden said about President Donald Trump’s foreign
policy speech on Thursday actually applies to the policy that Biden carried out
together with former President Barack Obama — and not Trump.
In his speech, at City University of New York, Biden called
Trump an “extreme” threat to the country’s national security. No one has yet
taken Biden to task for describing the sitting commander-in-chief in such
alarmist terms.
But that wasn’t even the most bizarre aspect of Biden’s speech.
He said the main problem in Trump’s foreign policy was … Charlottesville,
Virginia. Biden went on to recite a version of the debunked “very fine people”
hoax, claiming that Trump had drawn a “moral equivalence between those who
promoted hate and those who opposed it.” That, he said, was a threat to
America’s mission of standing for democratic values in the world.
But in fact, Trump specifically condemned the neo-Nazis
in Charlottesville on multiple occasions. The entire premise of Biden’s speech
was a lie.
Biden went on to claim that Trump’s foreign policy rejects
democratic values and favors the rise of authoritarianism worldwide. He cited
Trump’s warmth to Russian president Vladimir Putin and North Korean dictator
Kim Jong-un. And he claimed that Trump has undermined America’s alliances with
democracies in favor of flattery from dictators.
Apparently Biden forgot that Obama literally bowed to the Saudi
king; that he abandoned the pro-democracy protests during the Green Revolution
in Iran; that he pushed for a “reset” with Russia and abandoned our Czech and
Polish allies on missile defense; that he promised Putin he would be even more
“flexible” after he won re-election; that he tried to normalize relations with
the Cuban dictatorship without securing any democratic reforms there; that he
gave the store away to the communist dictatorship in China; and that he
abandoned Israel, a betrayal in which Biden himself played a direct and
shameful role, condemning Israel for building apartments in a Jewish neighborhood
of Jerusalem.
Trump praises dictators as a negotiating tactic; Obama praised
them because he, too, thought America was a problem.
One of the few times the Obama administration embraced
democratic change was during the Arab Spring, when “democracy” meant the rise
of the Muslim Brotherhood — which had no interest in freedom, only in power.
In 2008, the Obama campaign cast Biden as a foreign policy guru,
though he had been wrong on almost every foreign policy issue in his career. On
Thursday, he mostly ignored his own record.
Astonishingly, Biden claimed credit for Trump’s success in
crushing the so-called “Islamic State,” saying he worked with Obama “to craft
the military and diplomatic campaign that ultimately defeated ISIS.” In fact,
Biden was complicit in the rise of ISIS. He was Obama’s point man on Iraq when
the U.S. suddenly pulled out of the country, leaving a vacuum that ISIS filled.
He did not object when Obama called the
terror group “junior varsity.”
Biden offered nothing new in terms of solutions to current
foreign policy challenges. He claimed that the Iran nuclear deal had been a
success — on the very day Iran was reportedto have been
cheating all along. He said the U.S. should re-enter the deal once Iran did,
offering no idea how to ensure that it did so. On North Korea, Biden promised
he would “empower our negotiators,” whatever that means.
He said that he would get “tough” with China, which Trump is
already doing (and which Biden previously suggested he
would not do). And
on immigration, he ridiculed the very idea
of borders — literally: “I respect no borders.”
And this is the best Democrats
have on foreign policy.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior
Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and
Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard. He is a winner of the
2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author
of How
Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from
Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Tulsi Gabbard: U.S. Government ‘Is Hiding the Truth’ on 9/11 Terror Attacks
1 Nov 2019698
4:22
Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Rep.
Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), a candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential
nomination, reacted to the difficulties Chris Ganci and Brett Eagleson,
two relatives of victims of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks were having
in their quest to obtain more information about Saudi Arabia’s involvement in
9/11.
Gabbard accused the federal government of undermining efforts of
achieving more transparency, which she said was being done at the behest of
Saudi Arabia.
Partial transcript as follows:
CARLSON: This is one of those issues I don’t think is partisan.
It doesn’t need to be. It shouldn’t be partisan in any sense.
GABBARD: Absolutely not.
CARLSON: It’s an American issue. Why would the U.S. government ever
side with the Saudi Kingdom of all countries against our citizens?
GABBARD: This is the real question that’s at stake. This story
that we’re hearing from the families of those who were killed on 9/11 pushes
this issue to the forefront where, for so long, leaders in our government have
said, well, Saudi Arabia is our great ally. They’re a partner in
counterterrorism, turning a blind eye or completely walking away from the
reality that Saudi Arabia time and again, has proven to be the opposite.
CARLSON: Yes.
GABBARD: They’re undermining our National Security interests.
They are — as you said, they are the number one exporter of this Wahhabi
extremist ideology.
CARLSON: Yes.
GABBARD: They’re a fertile recruiting ground for terrorists,
like al Qaeda and ISIS around the world. They’re directly providing arms and
assistance to al Qaeda, in places like Yemen, and in Syria.
And as we are seeing here, it is our government, our own
government that is hiding the truth from Chris and Brett and the many other
families of those who were killed on 9/11. For what? Where do the loyalties
really lie?
CARLSON: So I was thinking in the commercial break that of the
number of people I know personally, not abstractly, but have had lunch with in
this city who are taking currently money from the Saudi Kingdom or their allies
in the Emirates, the Gulf States, and I wonder if that maybe play some role,
like a lot of people on their payroll here.
GABBARD: Yes. We talk about the foreign policy establishment in
Washington.
CARLSON: Yes.
GABBARD: We talk about the political elite, the
military-industrial complex. We hear things from some of those people, well,
you know, hey, we sell a lot of weapons to Saudi Arabia. So you know, if we
burn bridges with them, then who are we going to sell our weapons to? Where are
we going to get that money from?
All of these excuses that have nothing to do with the interests
of the American people, with our national security interests. And that’s — I’m
proud and honored to be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with these 9/11
families in demanding this truth because, yes, it is about truth and justice
and closure for all of them now as we approach 20 years since that attack on
9/11. It’s also about our National Security.
CARLSON: Yes.
GABBARD: Safety and security of the American people.
CARLSON: I’ll never forget right after 9/11, living here in the
City of Washington, our airports were closed. All airports were closed in this
country.
GABBARD: Yes.
CARLSON: And learning that chartered flights of Saudi citizens
had been allowed with U.S. government approval to take off and run back to
Saudi Arabia without being questioned by authorities here and thinking you
know, if I tried to do that, I’d be in prison. Why are we giving preference to
Saudi citizens over our own citizens?
GABBARD: Exactly. It makes no sense if you think about what
would happen if we actually had leaders who were putting the interests of our
country above all else. You follow the money trail. It goes back to the
military-industrial complex.
You look at how many of the think tanks here in Washington who
send so-called experts to go and testify before Congress who are funded by
Saudi Arabia to spout their talking points.
You saw how the legislation that we passed in Congress. I was proud
to vote for legislation that allowed families like Chris and Brett’s to sue
Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia trotted out all of their lobbyists to say why that
would be so dangerous, so dangerous for our interests, for them to be allowed
to seek justice for their families.
This is about standing up for our country. This is about
standing up for our principles and our freedoms and for the truth.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
Obama-Clinton Fundraiser Imaad Zuberi Cops a Plea
October 31, 2019
Lloyd
Billingsley
Since his election to the
presidency in 2016, the Democrat-Deep State-Media axis has targeted Donald
Trump for foreign entanglements they claim should remove him from office. Now
comes news of foreign entanglements and foreign cash for the previous
president.
“Middleman helped Saudi give to
Obama inaugural,” proclaims the headline on the October 29 report by Alan Suderman and Jim
Mustian, billed as an Associated Press exclusive. As the authors explain, U.S. election law prohibits foreign
nationals from making contributions to the inaugural celebrations of American
presidents. As it turns out, the law was violated.
A “Saudi tycoon,” Sheikh Mohammed
Al Rahbani, routed hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Obama inaugural
through an “intermediary,” Imaad Zuberi. He, in turn, is a “jet-setting fundraiser and venture
capitalist,” who has “raised millions of dollars for Democrats and Republicans
alike over the years.” Despite the appearance of bipartisanship, Zuberi is more
narrowly tailored.
Imaad Zuberi “served as a top
fundraiser for both Obama and Hillary Clinton during their presidential runs,
including stints on both of their campaign finance committees.” One campaign,
not identified, took donations “in the name of one of Zuberi’s dead relatives”
and a political committee, also unidentified, “took donations from a person
Zuberi invented.” As the DOJ charged, Zuberi pleaded guilty to
“falsifying records to conceal his work as a foreign agent while lobbying
high-level U.S. government officials,” and it was hardly his first brush with
the law.
“Elite Fundraiser for Obama and
Clinton Linked to Justice Department Probe,” read the headline on Bill Allison’s August 28, 2015 exclusive in Foreign Policy. The calling card of the elite political fundraiser are
photographs, “bumping fists with President Barack Obama in front of a Christmas
tree at a White House reception. Sharing a belly laugh with Vice President Joe
Biden at a formal luncheon,” and posing “cheek to cheek with Democratic
presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.”
Not only is Zuberi a major
fundraiser for her campaign, notes Allison, “he also donated between $250,000
and $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation, which has already come under fire for
accepting money from donors — many of them foreign — with interests before the
U.S. government while she was secretary of state.” And as Allison learned, Hillary’s 2008 campaign benefitted
from “straw donors” set up by Sant Singh Chatwal and Norman Hsu, both convicted
of election law violations.
Zuberi also used straw donors in
more recent illegal activity. As to the affiliation of those mysterious
campaigns and committees, the AP writers provide a hint.
Sheikh Mohammed Al Rahbani has
“talked about his support of Obama. He posted pictures on his website of
himself and his wife standing with Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden and
their spouses at a 2013 inaugural event.” Alas, “the website was taken down
shortly after Zuberi’s plea was made public.”
As Paul Delacourt of the FBI’s Los
Angeles office explains, “American influence is not for sale.” Mr. Zuberi
“lured individuals who were seeking political influence in violation of U.S.
law, and in the process, enriched himself by defrauding those with whom he
interacted.” According to the DOJ, that “could send him to prison for a lengthy
period of time.”
According to Suderman and Mustian,
“Zuberi’s case raises questions about the degree to which political committees
vet donors.” And as FEC boss Ellen Weintraub told the writers, “I’m
deeply concerned about foreigners trying to intervene in our elections, and I
don’t think we’re doing enough to try to stop it.” They might start by looking
in the right place.
Unconventional candidate Donald
Trump, a man of considerable means, financed his own campaign. Trump had no
need to consort with the likes of Zuberi or his dead relatives and those he
invents. And because Trump financed his own campaign, he owes nothing to
anybody, foreign or domestic.
Adam “sack of” Schiff, as Judge
Jeanine Pirro respectfully calls him, claimed he had evidence in plain sight
that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election from Hillary Clinton. Two
years and a Mueller investigation later, such evidence is nowhere in sight.
Schiff’s current inquisition, perhaps more bogus than the Mueller probe, is
best seen a diversion from John Durham’s criminal investigation of those who
launched the Russia hoax. That is where DOJ and election officials should be
looking.
Did Clinton Foundation donor Imaad
Zerubi turn up on any of those 30,000 subpoenaed emails Hillary Clinton
deleted? Did Zerubi see any classified material? Were there any texts from
Zerubi and his foreign clients on the cell phones Hillary’s squad smashed up
with hammers? Was Clinton grossly negligent, or just extremely careless? And so
on. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton also enjoyed other foreign intervention, right
out in the open.
Mexican foreign minister Marcelo
Ebrard, a former mayor of Mexico City, had worked with voter-registration and
participation groups in California, Arizona, Florida, Chicago, and elsewhere.
As Ebrard told Francisco Goldman of the New Yorker, in 2016 he “decided to get more involved” by working on
get-out-the-vote campaigns on behalf of Hillary Clinton.
A powerful foreign national openly
interferes in an American election, and nobody calls him on it. Now that
Clinton Foundation lackey Imaad Zuberi has copped a plea, the FEC and DOJ
should look into it.
Congress overrides Obama
veto of bill allowing 9/11 lawsuits
By Tom Carter
On
Wednesday, the US Congress overturned President Obama’s veto of legislation
that would permit victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks and their families
to sue Saudi Arabia. Declassified documents released this year confirm the
involvement of Saudi intelligence agents in the funding, organization, and
planning of the attacks—facts which were covered up for years by the Bush and
Obama administrations.
The vote,
97-1 in the Senate and 348-77 in the House of Representatives, represents the
first and only congressional override of Obama’s presidency. Under the US
Constitution, the president’s veto can be overturned only by a two-thirds
majority vote in both houses of Congress.
The Obama
administration and the military and intelligence agencies, backed by sections
of the media, including the New York Times, have vigorously denounced the
legislation. Obama personally, together with Central Intelligence Agency
director John Brennan, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, and Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford among others, have all publicly opposed
the bill.
In a letter
to Congress opposing the legislation, Obama warned that the bill would
“threaten to erode sovereign principles that protect the United States,
including our U.S. Armed Forces and other officials, overseas.”
In a lead
editorial on Wednesday, the New York Times similarly warned that “if the bill
becomes law, other countries could adopt similar legislation defining their own
exemptions to sovereign immunity. Because no country is more engaged in the
world than the United States—with military bases, drone operations,
intelligence missions and training programs—the Obama administration fears that
Americans could be subject to legal actions abroad.”
In other
words, the bill would set a precedent for families of victims of American
aggression abroad—such as the tens of thousands of victims of “targeted
killings” ordered by Obama personally—to file lawsuits against US war criminal
in their own countries’ courts.
Obama
denounced the vote with unusual warmth on Wednesday. “It's an example of why
sometimes you have to do what's hard. And, frankly, I wish Congress here had
done what's hard,” Obama declared. “If you’re perceived as voting against 9/11
families right before an election, not surprisingly, that's a hard vote for
people to take. But it would have been the right thing to do ... And it was,
you know, basically a political vote.”
“Oh, what a
tangled web we weave,” Sir Walter Scott famously wrote, “When first we practice
to deceive!” As the tangled web of lies surrounding the September 11 attacks
continue to unravel, one senses that the American ruling class and its
representatives do not see a clear way out of the dilemma.
Openly
torpedoing the legislation is tantamount to an admission of guilt. Indeed, the
Obama administration, the military and intelligence agencies, and theNew York
Times are publicly working to cover up a crime perpetrated by Al Qaeda and its
backers in Saudi Arabia, which in turn is an ally of the United States. The
mere fact that Obama vetoed this bill constitutes an admission that the US
government is hiding something with respect to the September 11 attacks.
The
alternative, from the standpoint of the American ruling class, is also fraught
with risks. Court proceedings initiated by the families of September 11 victims
will inevitably expose the role played by the Saudi monarchy, an ally of both
Al Qaeda and the United States, in the September 11 attacks. This, in turn,
will highlight long and sordid history of American support for Islamic
fundamentalism in the
Middle
East, which continues to the present day in Syria and Libya.
Perhaps
most dangerously of all, a full public accounting of the roles of Saudi
intelligence agents in the September 11 attacks will once again raise
questions about the role of the American state in the attacks. Why did US
intelligence
agencies
ignore the activities of Saudi agents before the attacks, based on Saudi
Arabia’s supposed status as a US ally?
Why did the
US government deliberately cover up the Saudi connection after the fact,
instead claiming that Afghanistan was a “state sponsor of terrorism” and that
Iraq was developing “weapons of mass destruction?” Why was nobody
prosecuted?
The New
York Times, for its part, simply lied about the evidence of Saudi complicity.
“The legislation is motivated by a belief among the 9/11 families that Saudi
Arabia played a role in the attacks, because 15 of the 19 hijackers, who were
members of Al Qaeda, were Saudis,” the editors wrote. “But the independent
American commission that investigated the attacks found no evidence that the
Saudi government or senior Saudi officials financed the terrorists.”
In fact, at
least two of the hijackers received aid from Omar al-Bayoumi, who was
identified by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a Saudi intelligence agent
with “ties to terrorist elements.” Some of the hijackers were paid for work in
fictitious jobs from companies affiliated with the Saudi Defense Ministry, with
which Al-Bayoumi was in close contact. The night before the attacks, three of
the hijackers stayed at the same hotel as Saleh al-Hussayen, a prominent Saudi
government official.
These and
other facts were confirmed by the infamous 28-page suppressed chapter of the
2002 report issued by the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities
Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001. After 14 years of
stalling, the document was finally released to the public this summer.
Yet the New
York Times continues to describe the Saudi monarchy, the principal financier
and sponsor of Islamic fundamentalist groups throughout the world, as “a
partner in combating terrorism.”
The Justice
Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, passed Wednesday, is a direct reaction to
these revelations of Saudi complicity in the September 11 attacks, under
pressure from organizations of survivors and families of victims. The law
amends the federal judicial code to allow US courts “to hear cases involving
claims against a foreign state for injuries, death, or damages that occur
inside the United States as a result of. .. an act of terrorism, committed
anywhere by a foreign state or official.”
Although
the bill nowhere names Saudi Arabia, the Saudi government has threatened
massive retaliation, including by moving $750 billion in assets out of
the country before they can be seized in American legal proceedings.
This reaction alone confirms the monarchy’s guilt.
During Wednesday’s
session, many of the statements on the floor of the Senate were nervous and
apprehensive. Casting his vote in favor of the bill, Republican Senator Bob
Corker declared, “I have tremendous concerns about the sovereign immunity
procedures that would be set in place by the countries as a result of this
vote.” More than one legislator noted that if the bill had unintended
consequences, it would be modified or repealed.
The anxious
comments of legislators and the crisscrossing denunciations within the ruling
elite reflect the significance of this controversy for the entire American
political establishment. For 15 years, the American population has been
relentlessly told that the events of September 11, 2001 “changed everything,”
warranting the elimination of democratic rights, the militarization of the
police, renditions, torture, assassinations, totalitarian levels of spying,
death and destruction across the Middle East, and trillions of dollars of
expenditures.
The
collapse of the official version of that day’s events shows that American
politics for 15 years has been based on a lie.
A Radical Shift
The nightmare Obama brought to U.S. foreign policy.
Editors' note: Walid Phares has a new book out on the difference in foreign policy between Obama and Trump titled: The Choice: Trump vs. Obama-Biden in US Foreign Policy. Below is an exclusive excerpt - Chapter 3 - which illustrates the nightmare that Obama brought to U.S. foreign policy.
Soon after landing in the White House, President Obama initiated two major moves, which by the end of May or early June 2009 indicated where his administration was going in terms of national security and foreign policy. It was obvious to me at the time that the country was veering away from the post-9/11 posture and the so-called War on Terror and heading in the opposite direction of demobilization of America on the one hand and the activation of an apologist policy on the other in order to engage with future partners who were actually at the core of terrorism and extremism.
Most Americans in the early years of the Obama administration focused on the domestic agenda and therefore did not see or understand the much wider change of direction that the new team at the White House was implementing: the eventual dismantling of the War on Terror and with it the war of ideas. In other words, the Obama doctrine was telling Americans that our conflict with the radicals overseas was in error because the conflict was caused by us—and therefore we need not only to cease our efforts of resistance against the jihadists, Iran, and the other radicals but jump on a train going in the other direction, one that would lead us to engaging the foes and finding agreement with each of them in order to transform American policy overseas.
The first major benchmark that indicated a massive Obama-Biden change in foreign policy with implications on national security was Obama’s trip to Egypt in spring 2009 and his address at Cairo University. The main idea of President Obama on the political philosophy level was to inform the American public that the United States has been seen as an aggressor against Arabs and Muslims since 9/11—maybe even decades before that. This perception prevailed on U.S. campuses for decades among leftist academics and intellectuals. It was explained as the American branch of Western colonialism. But the urgency behind this U-turn made by the administration in foreign policy perception was in fact linked to how the United States reacted to the 9/11 attacks.
In my own experiences after the 2001 jihadist strikes against New York, D.C., and elsewhere, the immediate reaction after al-Qaeda suicide missions on American soil was explained by a combination of Far Left and neo-Marxist circles actually accusing the United States of provoking the attacks. During the seven years of the Bush administration, both the Islamist lobbies and their Red allies in America were organizing to oppose any form of American self-defense and thus did oppose both the war in Afghanistan and the one in Iraq while also framing them as neocolonialist conquests.
It was imperative for the Obama team to change the national security doctrine that had been approved by a unanimous and bipartisan 9/11 Commission to align with their own narrative. The reality was that for years, before the Obama victory in 2008, a new alliance was being forged between the Islamists in general (the Muslim Brotherhood and the Khomeinist Iranians in particular) and the core left-wing neo-Marxists within the West in general (and the United States in particular). The Obama group belonged to that core—a subset found mostly on campuses but also in parts of the media.
With the alliance already in place, it made sense for the new administration to unleash its plans as early as possible. Hence, Obama’s 2009 address in Cairo was essentially an open invitation through public acknowledgment of his desire for a partnership between his administration and the Muslim Brotherhood. Though Egypt was ruled by authoritarian President Mubarak, Obama’s visit and his praise of the Ikhwan talking points were the opening salvo of a campaign designed to crumble the Egyptian regime and, later, other Arab governments—and replace them with the Brotherhood. The genesis of the Islamization of the Arab Spring of 2011 thus started in 2009.
The Obama speech at Cairo University, in fact, officialized a partnership between the United States and the Muslim Brotherhood, and in general terms with the Islamist movements in the MENA region. One might think that such a move would be checked by the mainstream Republican Party in D.C., but it was not—due to the equal impact of the Qatar and Islamist lobbies on the Republican institution. It did, however, unnerve the conservative sectors of the Republicans both in Congress and in the grassroots while also putting pressure on the traditional liberals in the Democratic Party after the ilk of Joe Lieberman and others.
The major shift towards engaging the Islamists worldwide also opened the door for partnerships with their lobbies and NGOs inside the United States. This led to an unstoppable rise of influence of militant groups such as CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), which in turn became the spearhead of a campaign to silence the critics against Obama’s new policies in Congress and in the media.
But a shift to align with the Muslim Brotherhood was not the only onslaught of the Obama administration in foreign policy; it was simply the first one. Indeed, in the same month of June 2009, President Obama engaged in a second track that would change another U.S. national security policy, one that was established in the early 1980s: the containment of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In early June 2009, President Barack Obama addressed a letter to the Grand Ayatollah of Iran, Imam Ali Khamenei, calling on him to begin a new era of cooperation between Tehran and Washington. That letter, which was as apologist as the speech to the Muslim Brotherhood weeks earlier in Cairo, signaled the beginning of a long process that would lead to the negotiation and signing of the Iran nuclear deal in 2015. But June 2009 had one more surprise that revealed a third shocking policy shift, one that would divert the country from its longstanding tradition of helping nations facing oppression and seeking freedom.
Indeed, America, in one century—between the First World War, the Second World War, and the collapse of the Soviet Union—had demonstrated its commitment, through blood and treasure, to stand by peoples on many continents as they had been brutalized and oppressed—from Europe and the Middle East to Asia and Latin America. But the events in Iran at the end of June 2009 signaled a drastic third policy change. Millions of Iranians, including many women, took to the streets to protest the suppression by the regime. Many of these protesters held signs in English—one of which called on President Obama by name to help them. Yet to reaffirm that the U.S. would not “meddle” in Iranian politics or stand with the democratic revolution in Iran, a second letter was sent to Khamenei on September 3.
The abandonment by the Obama administration of the Green Revolution in Iran was the benchmark that told me that the American policy of supporting freedom fighters and people’s uprisings against totalitarian governments, the praise for dissidents, and the backing of free societies around the world had ended.
2009 was the year that broke the backbone of post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy and rebuilt it into a radical approach inconsistent with the feelings and perceptions of the majority of Americans. Yet most Americans were not informed and educated enough, particularly by their academia and media, to correct such radicalization of policy via their members of Congress—or to elect a new president who would change directions one more time to align policy to once again be consistent with U.S. national security and traditional American liberty principles.
Fears for the Future
Both the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon in 2005 and the Green Revolution in Iran in 2009 provided indications that peoples in the region had reached critical mass in regard to their tolerance for authoritarians and would eventually protest and demand change. Social media has also evolved and has become much more accessible by ordinary people. In my book The Coming Revolution, I predicted that most countries in the Arab world were going to witness social and political unrests, results I had been waiting for, for many years, to push back against the extremists.
I briefed many members of Congress during that same period of time and convinced them that there were authentic forces of change in the region, including seculars, women, and minorities, and that the United States should immediately partner with them as the authoritarian leaders were going down—and fighting a lost battle to support ailing dictators would not be the right battle for the United States.
My concern was that the moment would be squandered as the Obama administration was racing to connect with the Islamists and the Iranians in the region and thus diverting the resources of the U.S. government to the wrong factions instead of helping civil society forces. I observed how the lobbies of our traditional foes were moving with great speed at all levels within the bureaucracies and the administration. I was also receiving many complaints from Middle East human rights and minorities groups that officials and governments were no longer engaging them like the Bush administration had tried to do. In addition, members of Congress in the Republican opposition (who won the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010) were sharing their fears that the administration had abandoned our allies in the region, not just allies among Middle East minorities, but also Israel. So by the end of 2009, early 2010, I could see the whole picture, and it was a dark and dire one.
Professor Walid Phares served as a Foreign Policy Advisor to Presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2016. He also served as a National Security Advisor to Presidential Advisor Mitt Romney in 2011-2012. Professor Phares has been an advisor to the US House of Representatives Caucus on Counter Terrorism since 2007 and is the Co-Secretary General of the Trans-Atlantic Legislative Group on Counter Terrorism since 2008. He is also a Fox News National Security and Foreign Affairs expert.
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