Helping al-Qaeda? I hope not.

Here’s a tidbit I find myself unable to ignore, yet because of my lack of access to reliable information, any opinions I have are conditioned on the reliability of other people’s opinions. (How I hate that! Usually I remain silent about such things….)

Anyway, Brian P. Fairchild (who has a CIA background and who seems quite well informed, notwithstanding certain aspects of his POV) thinks that the Arab revolts are improving a-Qaeda’s strategic position, and his conclusion is ominous:

….superficial statements by commentators regarding al-Qaeda’s diminished stature make good sound bites, they underscore a poor understanding of al-Qaeda as well as the political dynamics of the region, and provide a false sense of security.

When one assesses the situation in an objective, fact-based, country-by-country manner, one can only conclude that al-Qaeda’s strategic position has vastly improved, that it will continue to reap benefits from the chaos, and that we will likely pay the price for these developments in the not-too-distant future.

I sincerely hope that he is wrong, because doing anything that might help enable al-Qaeda is not in our national interest. 

Because of my ignorance, like many Americans I would like to think that we have leaders who know what they are doing.

However as Victor Davis Hanson reminds us, our foreign policy is being conducted by a president with no idea what he is doing:

…Obama has no principled or strategically logical foreign policy. So it is mostly loud declarations that he is not George Bush and making things up ad hoc as he goes along. Here, I think, is what happened with Libya.

Nearly the entire Middle East (save the bugaboo democracies in Iraq and Israel) erupts three months ago against a potpourri of oligarchy, theocracy, dictatorship, monarchy, and military juntas — the common thread being anger against corrupt, kleptocratic dynasties that have ruined the economies of what should be otherwise rich countries and denied basic freedoms.

Obama is confused and has no typology of these uprisings, except a crude binary. On the one hand, some of the demonstrations are against pro-American strongmen and thus can be channeled into “the hope and change,” “we are the change we’ve been waiting for” left rhetoric. He thus piggy-backed (albeit belatedly as is his “vote-present” style) onto Tunisia and Egypt. We endorsed the reformers only when we knew they were going to win and they seemed to reflect liberal “change” against Cold War-like, American client SOBs.

Some others rebellions, however, were clearly aimed at anti-American pseudo-revolutionary regimes and so they have prompted a very different response from Obama. In the case of Iran, he apologized for 1953 and promised not to “meddle”; initially with Qaddafi he was silent. And he still practices “outreach” with the Syrian “reformer” Assad.

Well, Obama’s foreign policy may be incoherent, but at least his incoherence has become predictable. But that incoherence should not be taken literally.

Ugh.

Further confounding any attempt at analysis on my part is my tendency to weigh possible domestic political implications. In a fit of paranoia, I worried that one of Obama’s foreign policy goals even might be to encourage divisions on the right, especially among Tea Party supporters.

I should know better, right?

After all, foreign policy is never dictated domestic political considerations….

I can only hope that this does not turn out to be a mess.

But even hope is getting to be one of those weasel words, dammit!

MORE: The evidence accumulates.

A look back at the origins of the Libyan insurrection shows that a victory by the rebels could be a victory for Islamist-inspired blasphemy laws and a defeat for freedom of expression.

Read it all. I understand that sometimes it is necessary to form coalitions with one enemy to defeat another enemy, but this is a particularly worrisome example.

I don’t like it.