On June 12, 1987, the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, speaking in Berlin, said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” It fell in 1989 and, in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. From the end of World War Two in 1945, the United States had stood strong against the Communist empire’s effort to extend its power and influence around the world.
Today, however, we have a President who not only swapped five Taliban generals, men whom the United Nations regards as war criminals, but likely also paid a yet unreported ransom as well. We have a President who made it clear that he intended to close Guantanamo where jihadist enemies have been detained because he thinks the United States is provoking the Islamic fanatics by maintaining it.
President Obama’s mindset is so favorable to Islam that he seemingly cannot grasp that jihad is a sacred duty for Muslims and nothing the U.S. or any other nation does will cause their holy war to end. Or maybe he does understand that and his true sympathies are with the growing army of Islamists?
The Rand Corporation, a think tank, recently released a report noting the accelerating rate of jihadist groups worldwide and the number of jihadist fighters which it estimates at 100,000. The number of attacks by al Qaeda affiliates between 2010 to 2013 rose to approximately one thousand from an initial 392.
The five Taliban generals were sent to Qutar, a small Arab state that borders Saudi Arabia, with the understanding they would remain there for a year. That is unlikely. Muslims are permitted to lie to infidels to advance Islam and jihad. The practice is call taqqiya. I have little doubt we will see them return to Afghanistan and Pakistan, both of which are still home to al Qaeda and allied groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Taliban.
At the heart of the deal struck to get the return of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, a deserter from his unit in Afghanistan, bespeaks the utter weakness of American foreign policy that has been the hallmark of the Obama administration. In a recent commentary, “Meet Obama’s Kissingers”, Wall Street Journal columnist, Kimberly A. Strassel, spelled out the alarming fact that Obama’s key national security and foreign affairs advisors are all politicians as opposed to experts in those respective fields.