RUTHFULLY YOURS

Tehran’s violations of the deal have become public, including: exceeding limits on uranium enrichment and production of heavy water; illicit efforts at international procurement of dual-use nuclear and missile technology; and obstructing international inspection efforts (which were insufficient to begin with).

There is ominous talk of America “not living up to its word.” This is nonsense. The president’s primary obligation is to keep American citizens safe from foreign threats. Should President George W. Bush have kept the United States in the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, rather than withdraw to allow the creation of a limited national missile-defense shield to protect against rogue-state nuclear attacks?

Care to bet how close Tehran — and North Korea — now are? Consider the costs of betting wrong.

For the second time during the Trump administration, the State Department has reportedly decided to certify that Iran is complying with its 2015 nuclear deal with the Security Council’s five permanent members and Germany, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

If true, it will be the administration’s second unforced error regarding the JCPOA. Over the past two years, considerable information detailing Tehran’s violations of the deal have become public, including: exceeding limits on uranium enrichment and production of heavy water; illicit efforts at international procurement of dual-use nuclear and missile technology; and obstructing international inspection efforts (which were insufficient to begin with).

Since international verification is fatally inadequate, and our own intelligence far from perfect, these violations undoubtedly only scratch the surface of the ayatollahs’ inexhaustible mendaciousness.

Certification is an unforced error because the applicable statute (the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015, or INARA) requires neither certifying Iranian compliance nor certifying Iranian noncompliance. Paula DeSutter and I previously explained that INARA requires merely that the Secretary of State (to whom President Obama delegated the task) “determine…whether [he] is able to certify” compliance (emphasis added). The secretary can satisfy the statute simply by “determining” that he is not prepared for now to certify compliance and that U.S. policy is under review.

This is a policy of true neutrality while the review continues. Certifying compliance is far from neutral. Indeed, it risks damaging American credibility should a decision subsequently be made to abrogate the deal.

Anyone who knows anything about President Trump knows that there’s something up with him and Russia. Yesterday, Donald Trump Jr. basically admitted to at least attempted collusion. And there is the long list of often embarrassingly positive statements Trump Sr. has made about the Russian president. Frank Bruni compiled them in a recent column for the New York Times. Yet there is something missing from Bruni’s article, and often, from the larger narrative about the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with the Russians: a single mention of policy.

That omission is telling. Trump’s comments might be suggestive, and his campaign team may well have sought and even used anti-Clinton information from Russian sources, but his policies have thus far been revealing—and not of any particular softness on Russia. Just the opposite: Where Obama was weak, the Trump administration has pursued a tough-on-Russia foreign policy.

Take Trump’s recent trip to Poland, a nation that has on occasion seen Russian troops and never wants to see them again. Look past the noise surrounding Trump’s excellent speech. Instead, focus on the air-defense memorandum signed on Thursday. “The U.S. government has agreed to sell Poland Patriot missiles in the most modern configuration,” Poland’s defense minister Antoni Macierewicz announced. This provides a real measure of Trump’s support for Poland, which is understandably nervous about the Russian Iskander missile system to be deployed in Kaliningrad.

This move also contrasts sharply with the Obama administration’s decision in 2009 to scrap missile-defense plans for Poland and the Czech Republic. Many Poles, including the heroic former president Lech Walesa, interpreted that as an abandonment.

Trump and Andrzej Duda, the president of Poland, also discussed American natural-gas shipments to Poland, the first of which arrived only last month. Trump is pushing American and Polish companies to sign a long-term liquefied natural gas (LNG) deal, though he won’t have to push very hard.

This is part of Trump’s strategy to achieve “energy dominance,” as he put it last week. “We will export American energy all around the world,” Trump said. Rick Perry, the U.S. secretary of energy, explained that the plan seeks to counter Russian influence. The goal is to provide vulnerable European nations with an “alternative to Russia” so they can no longer be “held hostage.” Trump echoed these comments in Poland.

This initial memorandum of understanding with Poland is only the plan’s first step. More is planned. As Investors Business Daily notes:

Poland has just built a massive Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) terminal on the Baltic as an entry point for gas from the U.S. and other energy suppliers. What’s more, that terminal is big enough, according to estimates, to replace as much as 80% of Russia’s gas supplies to Poland. All of the Baltic nations — Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia — are likewise building LNG facilities. Croatia plans to open its own LNG terminal in 2019.

Already, Trump has offered to export American coal to Ukraine, which Russia has long bullied with actual or threatened cuts in natural-gas exports. The other nations at the recent Three Seas Initiative attended by Trump (Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Croatia, Slovenia, and Austria) would like U.S. energy too.

There is perhaps nothing the Russians fear more than American oil and gas production. It has the potential to supplant Russian gas exports, which are crucial to Russia’s coffers as well as its strategic ambitions. The absence of a strong “oil weapon” functioning as both carrot and stick would substantially reduce Russia’s ability to meddle in European affairs. Trump’s initiative, therefore, is poised to protect Europe and weaken Russia.

This is part of why Walter Russell Mead suggested in February that “Trump isn’t sounding like a Russian mole.” If Trump were under Putin’s influence, he would surely be doing everything he could to limit American natural-gas production, reject proposed pipelines, curtail fracking, and impose harsh emissions reduction targets. But Trump has done the opposite. He has withdrawn from the Paris agreement, approved the Keystone pipeline and set about repealing roadblocks to fracking on federal lands. In June, for instance, the Bureau of Land Management announced it would auction off 195,732 acres of federal land in Nevada for fossil-fuel development.

The State Department should declare both the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs), thus triggering the penalties and sanctions required by law when such a declaration is made.

Those “affiliates” of the Muslim Brotherhood that, in whole or part, meet the statutory FTO definition should be designated; those that do not can be spared, at least in the absence of new information.

Qatar can legitimately complain that it is being unfairly singled out. The proper response is not to let Qatar off the hook but to put every other country whose governments or citizens are financing terrorism on the hook.

In recent weeks, governments on the Arabian Peninsula have been having a diplomatic brawl. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain (together with Egypt and other Muslim countries) have put considerable economic and political pressure on Qatar, suspending diplomatic relations and embargoing trade with their fellow Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member. Kuwait and Oman, also GCC members, have been mediating the dispute or remaining publicly silent.

The Saudis and their supporters are demanding sweeping changes in Qatari policies, including suspending all financial support to the Muslim Brotherhood and other terrorist groups; joining the other GCC members in taking a much harder line against the nuclear and terrorist threat from Shia Iran and its proxies; and closing Al Jazeera, the irritating, radical-supporting television and media empire funded by Qatar’s royal family.

The United States’ response so far has been confused. President Trump has vocally supported the Saudi campaign, but the State Department has publicly taken a different view, urging that GCC members resolve their differences quietly.

As with so many Middle East disputes, the issues are complex, and there is considerable underlying history. Of course, if they were easy, Saudi Arabia and Qatar would not be nearly at daggers drawn seemingly overnight.

Washington has palpable interests at stake in this dispute and can make several critical moves to help restore unity among the Arabian governments, even though the issues may seem as exotic to the average American as the Saudi sword dance Trump joined during his recent Middle East trip.

Twin issues to confront

Confronting the twin issues of radical Islamic terrorism and the ayatollahs’ malign regime in Iraq are central not only to the Arab disputants but to the United States as well. In addition to providing our good offices to the GCC members, the Trump administration should take two critical steps to restore unity and stability among these key allies.

First, the State Department should declare both the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs), thus triggering the penalties and sanctions required by law when such a declaration is made. Both groups meet the statutory definition because of their violence and continuing threats against Americans. The Obama administration’s failure to make the FTO designation has weakened our global anti-terrorist efforts.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s defenders argue that it is far from monolithic; that many of its “affiliates” are in fact entirely harmless; and that a blanket declaration would actually harm our anti-jihadi efforts. Even taking these objections as true for the sake of argument, they counsel a careful delineation among elements of the Brotherhood. Those that, in whole or part, meet the statutory FTO definition should be designated; those that do not can be spared, at least in the absence of new information. The Brotherhood’s alleged complexity is an argument for being precise in the FTO designations, not for avoiding any designations whatever.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other Arab governments already target the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization but Qatar does not. That may sound suspicious, but as of now, of course, the United States hasn’t found the resolve to do it either. Once Washington acts, however, it will be much harder for Qatar or anyone else to argue that the Brotherhood is just a collection of charitable souls performing humanitarian missions.
A direct terrorist threat

Similarly, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps is a direct terrorist threat that has been killing Americans ever since the IRGC-directed attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, in October 1983. The only real argument against naming the IRGC is that so doing would endanger Obama’s 2015 nuclear agreement, given Tehran’s expected response to an FTO determination.

Second, Trump should follow up his successful Riyadh summit by insisting on rapid and comprehensive implementation of the summit’s principal outcome, the Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology (GCCEI). This center can provide governments across the Muslim world a face-saving mechanism to do what should have been done long ago, namely taking individual and collective steps to dry up terrorist financing.

U.S. President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump join King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, and the President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, in the inaugural opening of the Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology, May 21, 2017. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

One could write books on the intricate financing that supports international terrorism, and finger-pointing at those responsible could take years. But whether terrorists are financed by governments, directly or indirectly, or by individuals or groups, with or without government knowledge or encouragement, it must all stop. Qatar can legitimately complain that it is being unfairly singled out. The proper response is not to let Qatar off the hook but to put every other country whose governments or citizens are financing terrorism on the hook.

Considering the toxic Russophobic atmosphere nurtured by the Beltway establishment, the first meeting between presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin last Friday went reasonably well. Contrary to the mainstream media pack’s predictions and predictable post mortems, there were no “winners” or “losers.” The encounter was not perceived by its principals in terms of zero-cum game. It was a businesslike encounter between two grownups and their foreign ministers.

It is a good thing that the meeting did not include various staffers and advisors. The danger of leaks was thus eliminated, the setup was more conducive to candor. In the end it went on for over two hours, much longer than either side had anticipated, and covered a broad range of topics. For all their differences of temperament and background, Trump and Putin both understand that the business of U.S.-Russian relations is too serious to be subjected to the Deep Staters’ shenanigans or to the ukase of corporate media commentariat. Their initial agreements, notably on Syria, may not look earth-shattering. It is significant that they were reached in the first place.

On the subject of Russia’s alleged meddling in last year’s election, the two sides’ accounts of what was said may differ in detail but not in substance: it is time to move on, rather than litigate the past. We do not know whether Trump actually accepted Putin’s denials of interference (according to Sergei Lavrov), or simply acknowledged them without prejudice (according to Rex Tillerson, who also emphasized the two leaders’ “positive chemistry”).

Either way, he was just going through the motions. It is obvious that Donald Trump does not believe the establishmentarian narrative on Russian hacking, and he does not want to be bound by it. A day earlier in Poland he gave notably tepid support to the assertion that Moscow interfered in the 2016 election process: “I think it was Russia, but I think it was probably other people and/or countries, and I see nothing wrong with that statement. Nobody really knows; nobody really knows for sure.”

On the other side, it is noteworthy that Putin effectively put his credibility on the line by giving Trump his personal assurances that there had been no meddling. Next March he will be duly reelected to another six-year term, probably his final. He will therefore need to develop and maintain a solid relationship with Trump until at least January 2021, and possibly even until 2024. If various ongoing investigations in the U.S. produce credible evidence of official Russian interference, that would deal a fatal blow to the relationship of trust which Putin hopes to establish with his American counterpart; it would also make the Russian president look foolish. Putin’s readiness to disregard that possibility indicates his confidence that, in reality, no such evidence exists.

North Korea — and China — have us where they want us.

North Korea reached a milestone on the Fourth of July by launching its first ICBM, the “Hwasong-14.” Fired on a steep trajectory the missile flew for almost forty minutes before coming down about 800 miles from the launch pad. On a shallower trajectory, it could have reached Alaska.

The launch was accompanied, as usual, by a taunt from Kim Jong Un. This time he said the launch was a message to “the American bastards.”

Days before his inauguration, Mr. Trump wrote a tweet that said of North Korea’s ambition to develop an ICBM, “… it won’t happen.” Now it has.

The missile had some very important features. It was a two-stage missile, of which at least the first stage was liquid-fueled, meaning it took considerable time to fuel and, unlike solid-fueled missiles, had to be launched within a day or two after fueling.

The nosecone, in which a nuclear weapon could ride, is, according to a Washington Times report, very similar to a Chinese-supplied one Pakistan uses atop its nuclear-armed missiles. It may be that North Korea bought it from China or Pakistan or manufactured the nosecone itself. The missile’s engines closely resemble those of Russian-designed launchers, probably resulting from Russian scientists giving North Korea their designs and either Russian or Chinese engineers helping North Korea to develop a similar missile.

It is probable that the North Koreans haven’t yet devised a nuclear warhead capable of functioning after undergoing the enormous stresses of a missile launch and the tremendous heat generated during reentry into the atmosphere. But it’s only a matter of time, and not much time, until they do.

North Korea is under a total arms embargo by UN resolution. China would have violated the UN arms embargo by sending such missile nosecones to North Korea. There’s no reason to believe the Chinese haven’t and will continue to do so.

And they’ve done much more. China is almost certainly supplying the mobile missile launch systems such as those North Korea displayed in its huge April military parade.

On the day of the Hwasong-14 launch, the president launched his response on Twitter. He wrote, “North Korea has just launched another missile. Does this guy have anything better to do with his life? Hard to believe that South Korea and Japan will put up with this much longer. Perhaps China will put a heavy move on North Korea and end this nonsense once and for all!”

As they say on Monday Night Football, “C’mon, man.” South Korea and Japan are as dependent on us for defense leadership as the deadbeats of NATO despite their enormous investment in defense. They will have to follow our lead, and when we don’t lead, they’ll remain in a state of political entropy. China isn’t going to put any “moves” on North Korea because North Korea may be doing exactly what China wants it to do.

China’s goal is not to avoid war: it is to keep us tangled up with North Korea while it expands across the South China Sea and elsewhere. And although China has enormous influence on North Korea, China may not have the power to disarm Kim of his nuclear weapons or missiles unless it decides to remove Kim and substitute a more pliable puppet.

Yes, China doesn’t want an influx of North Korean refugees that might result from toppling Kim’s regime. But that concern pales in comparison to China’s fear of a unified, democratic, and U.S.-aligned Korea on its border. In short, relying on China to restrain or topple the Kim regime is foolhardy.

Mr. Trump said he was considering “some pretty severe things” in response to the North Korean missile test and said he’d confront the threat “very strongly.”

The Trump administration said that it would be ready to use force to counter the growing threat of a North Korean attack. UN Ambassador Nikki Haley said at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council that “[North Korea’s] actions are quickly closing off the possibility of a diplomatic solution,” and that America has “considerable military forces. We will use them if we must. But we prefer not to have to go in that direction.” That is an understatement.

The ceasefire in three Syrian provinces announced Friday after the Trump-Putin meeting in Hamburg is the first step in the right direction that the United States has taken in the Middle East in more than 20 years. The Syrian deal should be understood in the context of President Trump’s address in Warsaw the day before, a challenge to Russia to “join the community of responsible nations in our fight against common enemies and in defense of civilization itself.” Syria’s civil war has become a school of subversion for tens of thousands of Shi’ite as well as Sunni terrorists, and the major powers have an urgent interest in extinguishing it.

As a first step towards a “broader and more detailed arrangement,” in the words of a senior State Department official, the ceasefire opens a path to what I have called a Westphalian Peace, referring to the 1648 treaty that ended the devastating Thirty Years War. Trump achieved this result by calling Russia to account for past misbehavior while offering a deal that is in both countries’ best interests. It is a small step involving only a fraction of contested Syrian territory, but the agreement nonetheless breaks new ground.

The senior official briefing reporters July 6 said, this is an important step, but it is a first step in what we envision to be a more complex and robust ceasefire arrangement and de-escalation arrangement in southwest Syria. The official added that “there’s an expectation the Russians will use their influence to ensure that [the Iranians] respect the ceasefire.” He added, “The basis of the whole understanding is obviously that each side, each party to it uses its influence with those parties on the ground with which we have relationships. So we and Jordan, in particular, have good relationships with the Southern Front, with the principal armed factions in southwest Syria.”

As I explained in a June 9 essay [“No-one likes Trump, I don’t care”], “There is no way to end the conflict without an agreement with Russia and China, who are backing Iran’s intervention in Syria as much as Washington backed the Sunni rebels fighting the Bashar al-Assad regime. That means both sides must leash their own dogs.”

Trump sent a double message to Moscow in Warsaw. The address was reminiscent of Reagan’s spirited defense of freedom before the Berlin Wall in 1987, and not by accident. The defense of a beleaguered Western Civilization echoes a speech that White House chief strategistSteve Bannon made before a Vatican conference in 2014. The salient fact about the speech, though, is where it was given, namely in Poland, not in the Ukraine. America has fundamental interests in Poland, which is a NATO member and the land of origin of nearly 10 million Americans. It does not have fundamental interests in the Ukraine, a country artificially stitched together from Russian, Ruthenian, Polish and other ethnicities by Nikita Khrushchev as a buffer against the West.

WASHINGTON—Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrived in the Persian Gulf region for a round of shuttle diplomacy aimed at resolving a conflict among U.S. allies that Washington fears will drag on for months.

The former Exxon Mobil Corp. chief executive, who has close ties to many Arab officials in the region and has attempted to mediate the dispute, is throwing himself more deeply into efforts to resolve differences between Qatar on one side and Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt on the other.

The four countries accuse Qatar of funding terrorist groups and meddling in their domestic affairs, and severed diplomatic relations and imposed a transport ban on June 5. Qatar denies the allegations and accused the bloc of Arab nations of waging a smear campaign.

Top officials from the feuding nations have been passing through Washington in recent weeks, making their case to Mr. Tillerson and others.

The U.S. diplomat first traveled to Kuwait and later will head to Saudi Arabia and Qatar to try to bring the sides closer to a solution.

It is unclear if he will meet with Emirati and Bahraini officials this week.

“The purpose of the trip is to explore the art of the possible of where a resolution can be found,” said R.C. Hammond, a communications adviser traveling with Mr. Tillerson. “Right now…we’re months away from what we think would be an actual resolution and that’s very discouraging.”

Mr. Tillerson’s trip to the Gulf follows stops in Ukraine and Turkey, where he headed after the summit leaders from the Group of 20 leading nations in Germany.

Last week, the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates met in Cairo to formally discuss Qatar’s response to a list of demands that includes curbing diplomatic ties with Iran, severing links with the Muslim Brotherhood and closing the Al Jazeera television network. CONTINUE AT SITE

President Trump’s ringing defense of Western civilization during his speech in Poland was a welcome answer to the phony cultural relativism, fashionable self-loathing, and smug hypocrisy of leftist Westerners who bash the West but wouldn’t live anywhere else. So it’s no surprise that the progressive establishment bashed the speech as “racial and religious paranoia,” as one screed in the Atlantic was titled.

That headline, and the essays’ claim that “the West is a racial and religious term” and a dog-whistle for alt-right racists, bespeak a profound ignorance about what defines the West. The core ideas of the West began in the city states of ancient Greece, then for centuries were further elaborated by the Romans before Christianity existed. Most important of these ideas was the notion of citizenship, the belief that the laws and customs comprising the political order were a collective possession of free and equal citizens, not of a king or elite defined by birth and lording over subjects. Power no longer belonged to men, to be used to further their personal status or wealth or ambitions. Power became abstract, embodied in the laws, offices, and electoral procedures used by citizens to make the decisions about who should use power, and for what power should be used.

The principle that power resides in laws, not men, was the foundation stone of our own Constitution and every subsequent political order that vests power in free citizens. And this order exists to ensure and protect political freedom and equality, ideas likewise born in ancient Greece and found only in the West or its imitators.

Thus the other uniquely Western goods that Trump touched on came into existence to protect that unprecedented invention of citizenship and consensual rule. Free speech, for example, the ability of citizens to discuss and deliberate openly without fear of retribution, arose among the ancient Greeks, who had two words for free speech. Search the ancient empires contemporary with the Greeks and you will not find anywhere the ideas of free speech, or constitutional government, or politics, or citizenship, or words expressing each. You will find only power: rule by coercion and force.

The other defining idea is critical consciousness: the freedom and inclination to question and examine everything, from the gods to nature to one’s own political-social order. Examining nature and trying to understand it apart from traditional myths, and by relying on reason and empirical evidence, sowed the seeds of modern science. An astonishing example of this new drive to know and understand without reliance only on tradition or religion can be found in the Hippocratic corpus of ancient writings on medicine. In a book on epilepsy, known in antiquity as the “sacred disease,” the author writes: “It is not, in my opinion, any more divine or more sacred than other diseases, but has a natural cause, and its supposed divine origin is due to men’s inexperience, and to their wonder at its peculiar character.” That sentence could be the motto of modern science and medicine alike.

On climate change and other issues, Donald Trump has departed the G20 summit at odds with much of the world. That was to be expected, given his compliant predecessor is much missed by Merkel & Co. Nowhere are the two presidents’ differences greater than in the Middle East.

Both Barack Obama and Donald Trump began their presidencies with outreach to the Islamic world—and that, with one exception, is where the similarities between their respective Middle East doctrines begin and end. President Obama’s June 4, 2009, Cairo speech, delivered at Al-Azhar University, can be read as the manifesto for a post-America world. President Trump’s May 22, 2017, Riyadh speech, in startling contrast, was an unapologetic exposition of his America First creed.

The insinuation, in some quarters, remains that Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim and perhaps even a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, the activist Salafists who aim to destroy the West from within using the strategy of “civilisational jihad”. Key political Islamic organisations in the United States, including the Council of American-Islamic Relations, are impenitent affiliates of the transnational Muslim Brotherhood movement. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, in the form of Mohamed Morsi’s Freedom and Justice Party, ruled the country from June 2012 to July 2013. Activist Salafism and Salafi jihadism (Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, Boko Haram, Jemaah Islamiyah, and so on) are not one and the same but they are first cousins. Embracing the views of Sayyid Qutb, the Muslim Brotherhood scholar who argued for the restitution of an Islamic state in Egypt and throughout Dar al-Islam, might not automatically turn a Muslim into a terrorist but it does encourage an apposite degree of contempt for the kafir (disbeliever).

Almost completely unreported at the time of the December 2, 2015, San Bernardino massacre was the fact that the husband-and-wife terrorists, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, were aficionados of the works of Sayyid Qutb. The homicidal duo posted on Facebook their allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Islamic State before murdering fourteen Americans and wounding another twenty-two at a work-related Christmas luncheon. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton responded to the slaughter-fest by intoning against the laxity of America’s “gun safety laws”. Presidential candidate Donald Trump, on the other hand, made an explicit connection between a certain kind of modern-day Muslim and terrorism: “I would close up our borders to people until we figure out what’s going on … We don’t learn … The whole thing gets worse as time goes by.” President Obama, to be fair, upgraded his erstwhile depiction of Islamic terrorism from “workplace violence”—à la the 2014 Fort Hood Massacre—to “larger notions of violent jihad”. Whew! Barack Hussein Obama, the apotheosis of modern-day chic, was prepared, at last, to make a connection, however indirectly, between the “religion of peace” and the murder of the innocent.

But it was not always so. President Obama’s Cairo Address could almost have been written by a Muslim Brotherhood scribe, blaming as he did the anti-West “tensions” in the Muslim world on European colonialism and Cold War machinations that treated Muslim-majority countries as “proxies without regard to their own aspirations”. Additionally, American-style “modernity and globalisation” caused “many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam”. The only thing omitted from his mea culpa was Christendom’s involvement in the Crusades. It was, naturally, Islam that paved the way “for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment”. That said, Obama singled out the likes of Al Qaeda for censure, but even then he tacitly blamed 9/11 on the West itself for creating the “tensions” that “violent extremists” in the Muslim world were able to exploit.