The Patriot Post - Alexander's Column 9-9-2015

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The Patriot Post - Alexander's Column 9-9-2015
From The Federalist Patriot
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Obama's Middle East Legacy: A Catastrophic Humanitarian Crisis
Coming to a Theater Near You!

By Mark Alexander

Sep. 9, 2015

“A feeble executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever may be its theory, must be, in practice, a bad government.” —Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 69 (1787)

There has been a lot of heated and well-deserved debate about the illegal migration across our southern border — most of those migrants seeking economic opportunities, and most ending up costing American taxpayers far more than any economic benefit. Indeed, they are pouring across that border because Barack Obama has opened the flood gates1, fervently hoping that these illegal immigrants and their relatives here will prop up the Democratic Party2 in perpetuity.

Today, there is another mass migration underway3, which is also the direct result of, and irrevocably tied to, another of Obama’s cynical political calculations.

For the past week, the media has served up a steady stream of heart-wrenching images and stories about refugees fleeing Islamist terror in the Middle East. That coverage was sparked by an image of a drowned three-year-old washed up on a Turkish beach, but the fact is more than 2,000 refugees have drowned in the exodus. There are now almost five million people exiting Syria and other nations in the region, and another six million remain displaced internally.

But, of course, the media fails to report what gave rise to this crisis – Obama’s politically motivated foreign policy malfeasance.

The hard truth is that Obama’s ill-advised withdrawal from Iraq4, an asinine re-election campaign ploy, left a power vacuum in the heart of the Middle East. That void was rapidly filled by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant5 as Syria collapsed into civil war6. Of the resulting refugee migration, Obama’s spokesman Josh Earnest claims, “The president has directed his national security team to continue to play a leading role in our response to this situation.” That remark is tragically laughable, given that Obama’s “national security team” played a “leading role in *creating* this situation.”

The media may not get it, but my Special Forces contacts on the ground there right now, all of whom are seasoned OIF7 and OEF8 veterans, understand well the causal relationship between the Obama/Clinton policy failures, the rise of Islamist fascism and the resulting humanitarian crisis.

My contacts refer to the largest of the refugee sites on the Jordanian border as “Camp Obama,” and dubbed another massive site “Camp Red Line” in reference to Obama’s faux threats against Syrian tyrant Bashar al-Assad.

Some Leftmedia outlets have hinted at the chain of evidence directly linking Obama to the crisis, but most are adopting Hillary’s “What difference does it make?9” refrain. The difference is accountability.

This week, Fred Hiatt, editor of The Washington Post’s editorial page, offered an honest, accurate and scornful indictment of Obama’s policy failures in the region10.

More on that in a minute, but first, how is it that babies are now washing up on beaches?

By way of quick review, in 2008, Obama campaigned successfully on “ending the war in Iraq.” Not only did he dupe a sufficient percentage of the American people, he duped the leftist Norwegian Nobel Committee into bestowing upon this completely unknown foreign policy neophyte11 its once-noble Nobel Peace Prize for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people.”

In 2011, opting for his now infamous “Obama Doctrine of appeasement12” instead of capitalizing on George W. Bush’s successful “surge” strategy13 and establishing a status of forces agreement (SOFA) to secure our hard-won gains in Iraq and the region14, Obama decided to abandon Iraq. He declared, “Everything Americans have done in Iraq — all the fighting, all the dying, the bleeding, the building and the training and the partnering — all of it has led to this moment of success. … We’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq.”

Not exactly.

In 2012, amid the cascading failure of his domestic economic and social policies, Obama centered his re-election campaign on his faux foreign policy successes15, which were crafted around the mantras, “Four years ago, I promised to end the war in Iraq16. I did,” and, “al-Qa'ida is on the run17.” And again, he duped voters into re-electing him, with a little help from Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi Cover-Up18.

Predictably, Obama’s “hope and change” retreat from the region left fertile ground for the resurgence of a far more dangerous incarnation of Islamic terror that calls itself the Islamic State19. IS rapidly displaced al-Qa'ida20 as the dominant asymmetric threat to security in the region and, thus, to our own national security21.

And it should be noted that the resulting influx of millions of Muslims is creating a significant security risk – primarily because mixed in with those refugees are Jihad Terrorists22 who are using the migration as cover to enter the West via the “Jihadi Pipeline.” The Obama administration has authorized the intake of more than 250,000 Islamic migrants annually – while ignoring persecuted Christians from Muslim nations. Obama on the eve of 9/1123, Obama announced the U.S. would take in an additional 10,000 Syrian refugees next year – a drop in the bucket compared to the number of illegal aliens Obama has invited to across our southern boarder – but it’s a very deadly drop. Recall that the 9/11 terrorists were here legally on visas….

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper called Obama’s crisis a “disaster of biblical proportions.” He warned that terrorists would infiltrate the ranks of refugees: “Exactly what’s their background? We don’t obviously put it past the likes of ISIL to infiltrate operatives among these refugees.” The CIA and FBI have already indicated they have no failsafe method for vetting these refugee/immigrants.

Beyond the security risk, the influx of refugees/migrants is going to put an enormous strain24 on Europe’s failing economy. I note “refugees/migrants” because as many as half of the Muslims flooding into Europe do not fit the UN’s definition of “refugee25.” According to the UN’s own migration data26, many of those coming into Europe are migrants, not refugees. Consider that almost 70% of the incoming migration are male, while only 15% are children. If they are refugees and not migrants seeking economic opportunities, where are the women and children?