DANIEL GREENFIELD: THE PRESIDENT AND BOKO HARAM
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obamas-alliance-with-boko-haram/print/
Leftist policy is the search for the root cause of evil. Everything from a street mugging to planes flying into the World Trade Center is reduced to a root cause of social injustice. Throw poverty, oppression and a bunch of NGO buzzwords into a pot and out come the suicide bombings, drug dealing and mass rapes.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s Boko Haram, the Islamic terrorist group that kidnapped hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls, or a drug dealer with a record as long as his tattooed arm.
Obama and Hillary resisted doing anything about Boko Haram because they believed that its root cause was the oppression of Muslims by the Nigerian government. Across the bloody years of Boko Haram terror, the State Department matched empty condemnations of Boko Haram’s killing sprees with condemnations of the Nigerian authorities for violating Muslim rights.
Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton haven’t championed #BringBackOurGirls because it’s a hashtag in support of the kidnapped girls, but because it undermines the Nigerian government. They aren’t trying to help the kidnapped girls. They’re trying to bring down a government that hasn’t gone along with their agenda for appeasing Boko Haram and Nigerian Muslims.
The hashtag politics aren’t aimed at the terrorists. They’re aimed at helping the terrorists.
There’s a reason why the media and so many leftists have embraced the hashtag. #BringBackOurGirls isn’t a rescue. It denounces the Nigerian government for not having already gotten the job done even as the State Department stands ready to denounce any human rights violations during a rescue attempt.
Obama and Boko Haram want to bring down the Nigerian government and replace it with a leadership that is more amenable to appeasement. It’s the same thing that is happening in Israel and Egypt.
State Department officials responded to Boko Haram attacks over the years with the same litany of statistics about unemployment in the Muslim north and the 92 percent of children there who do not attend school. When Hillary Clinton was asked about the kidnappings by ABC News, she blamed Nigeria for not “ensuring that every child has the right and opportunity to go to school.”
Clinton acted as if she were unaware that Boko Haram opposes Muslim children going to school or that it would take the very same measures that her State Department has repeatedly opposed to make it possible for them to go to school. This is a familiar Catch 22 in which the authorities are blamed for not fixing the socioeconomic problems in terrorist regions that are impossible to fix without defeating the terrorists and blamed for violating the human rights of the terrorists when they try to defeat them.
The mainstream media has been more blatant about carrying Boko Haram’s bloody water. Their stories begin with the kidnapped schoolgirls and skip over to a sympathetic reading of history in which Boko Haram only took up arms after government brutality.
Two years ago the New York Times ran an op-ed titled, “In Nigeria, Boko Haram Is Not the Problem.”
The op-ed contended that Boko Haram didn’t exist, that it was a peaceful splinter group and that the Nigerian army was worse than Boko Haram. Somehow these three claims were made on the same page. The editorial warned the US not to give the impression that it supports Nigeria’s Christian president or it would infuriate Muslims and suggested that Christians might really be behind the Muslim terror attacks.
Last year, Secretary of State John Kerry , after a pro forma condemnation of Boko Haram terror, warned, “We are also deeply concerned by credible allegations that Nigerian security forces are committing gross human rights violations, which, in turn, only escalate the violence and fuel extremism.”
Kerry was blaming the victims of Boko Haram for the violence perpetrated against them and claiming that resistance to Boko Haram caused Boko Haram’s attacks.
The US Commission on International Religious Freedom, three of whose members had been appointed by Obama and one by Nancy Pelosi, issued a report blaming Nigeria for Boko Haram’s murderous Jihad.
The report’s findings claimed that the Nigerian government’s “violations of religious freedom” had led to “sectarian violence.” It echoed the propaganda of the Islamic terrorist group, stating that, “Boko Haram also justifies its attacks on churches by citing, among other things, state and federal government actions against Muslims.”
The report suggested that the Nigerian government was too focused on fighting Boko Haram and not focused enough on dealing with Christian violence against Muslims. “The Nigerian government’s failure to address chronic religion-related violence contrasts with its commitment to stop Boko Haram, which at times has resulted in the indiscriminate use of force against civilians and in human rights abuses.”
The solution was to scale back the fight against Boko Haram and appease Nigerian Muslims.
“In meetings with Nigerian officials, including Secretary Clinton’s meeting with Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan in August 2012, the U.S. government consistently has urged the Nigerian government to expand its strategy against Boko Haram from solely a military solution to addressing problems of economic and political marginalization in the north, arguing that Boko Haram’s motivations are not religious but socio-economic,” the report stated.
“Additionally, senior U.S. officials frequently warn in private bilateral meetings and in public speeches that Nigerian security forces’ excessive use of force in response to Boko Haram is unacceptable and counterproductive.”
A year earlier, Deputy Secretary of State William Burns had proposed helping Nigeria develop “a comprehensive counterterrorism strategy” that includes “citizen engagement and dialogue.” This was really a proposal to export Obama’s failed appeasement strategy in Afghanistan that had cost over 1,600 American lives to Nigeria.
Boko Haram’s kidnapping of the schoolgirls is both convenient and inconvenient for Obama and the State Department. On the one hand it has brought negative attention to their stance on Boko Haram, but on the other hand it may end up toppling the Nigerian government and empowering Muslims. And they see a more flexible Nigerian government as the only means of coming to terms with Boko Haram.
This isn’t just their strategy for Nigeria. It’s their universal approach to Islamic terrorism. It’s why Kerry blamed Israel for the collapse of the peace talks with the PLO. It’s why Egypt is being pressured to free its Muslim Brotherhood detainees. And It’s why the United States is never allowed to defeat Al Qaeda.
Obama is trying to bring down governments that fight Islamic terrorism, whether in Egypt, Israel or Nigeria, and replace them with governments that appease terrorists. This shared goal creates an alliance, direct or indirect, open or covert, between Obama and the Muslim Brotherhood, Obama and the PLO and Obama and Boko Haram.
Comments are closed.
