U.S. Foreign Policy Is Making A Mess In The Mideast

Secretary of State John Kerry met Tuesday with Sultan Qaboos bin Said al Said, Oman’s ruler, at the royal palace in Muscat. Pool photo by Jim Young

John Kerry’s Silly Play -- Lee Smith, The Tablet

The secretary of state prattles about imaginary treaties while the Arab world is engulfed by a Sunni-Shia civil war

Secretary of State John Kerry says that’s it’s now or never for Israelis and Palestinians to reach agreement on a two-state solution. Interestingly, neither Israeli nor Palestinian officials have any idea what Kerry is talking about. With the Arab Spring uprisings tilting the Middle East status quo on behalf of Israel’s enemies, Jerusalem is not about to give up the West Bank—nor is the Palestinian Authority in any position to defend it. Little wonder then that an Israeli official recently told Haaretz, that Kerry “looks like a naive and ham-handed diplomat.”

But of course, Kerry’s public statements have little connection to workable diplomacy. Rather, the secretary of state is the leading man in a theatrical production about American Middle East policy whose only audience members, at this point, are Beltway pundits.

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My Comment: A brutal assessment on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. The 'money quote' is the following ....

.... Having exited Iraq, packed up our gear in Afghanistan, abandoned our “red lines” about Iran’s nuclear program and Syria’s use of chemical weapons, America has gone from player to kibitzer.

Ouch.

In short .... from President Obama's Cairo speech in 2009 to today's mayhem on the Arab street .... the U.S. has lost it's credibility. And while it is easy to heap disappointment (and blame) on this U.S. administration .... events are spiraling out of control on the ground .... events that no one can really control.  Lee Smith in the above commentary is correct when he states that what we are now witnessing in the Middle East is a growing Sunni - Shiite sectarian conflict that is slowly metastasizing into all-out war .... a war that no one can really stop .... but what is unfortunate is that in this environment we have a U.S. that is completely unprepared to face this new reality, and instead is pursuing policies that are (probably) decades out of date.

Update: More indications that U.S. diplomacy on Syria is falling apart .... Syrian rebels, U.S. disagree on peace talks.