In private encounters with other world leaders, Obama has argued that there will be no comprehensive solution to Islamist terrorism until Islam reconciles itself to modernity and undergoes some of the reforms that have changed Christianity.

Though he has argued, controversially, that the Middle East’s conflicts “date back millennia,” he also believes that the intensified Muslim fury of recent years was encouraged by countries considered friends of the U.S. In a meeting during apec with Malcolm Turnbull, the new prime minister of Australia, Obama described how he has watched Indonesia gradually move from a relaxed, syncretistic Islam to a more fundamentalist, unforgiving interpretation; large numbers of Indonesian women, he observed, have now adopted the hijab, the Muslim head covering.

Why, Turnbull asked, was this happening?

Because, Obama answered, the Saudis and other Gulf Arabs have funneled money, and large numbers of imams and teachers, into the country. In the 1990s, the Saudis heavily funded Wahhabist madrassas, seminaries that teach the fundamentalist version of Islam favored by the Saudi ruling family, Obama told Turnbull. Today, Islam in Indonesia is much more Arab in orientation than it was when he lived there, he said.

“Aren’t the Saudis your friends?,” Turnbull asked.

Obama smiled. “It’s complicated,” he said.

Obama’s patience with Saudi Arabia has always been limited. In his first foreign-policy commentary of note, that 2002 speech at the antiwar rally in Chicago, he said, “You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East—the Saudis and the Egyptians—stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality.” In the White House these days, one occasionally hears Obama’s National Security Council officials pointedly reminding visitors that the large majority of 9/11 hijackers were not Iranian, but Saudi—and Obama himself rails against Saudi Arabia’s state-sanctioned misogyny, arguing in private that “a country cannot function in the modern world when it is repressing half of its population.” In meetings with foreign leaders, Obama has said, “You can gauge the success of a society by how it treats its women.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/

GordyL wrote on Mar 11^th, 2016 at 7:19pm:


Surprisingly I am not opposed to that concept, even though it is somewhat of a sweeping statement. However, I would more specifically point out that Obama withdrew US forces from Iraq which left an opportunity (vacuum) for ISIS to be formed from the 'leftovers' of Saddam's military and Iraqi military hierarchy in hiding, intermixed with the remnants of AQ and other terrorist clans.

The US Military didn't want to leave the job unfinished, but Obama did.

freediver wrote on Mar 14^th, 2016 at 7:18pm:


Does it matter? Unless you plan to see it through, don't start the job.

John Smith wrote on Mar 14^th, 2016 at 7:20pm:


Good idea.

Keep them out, have nothing to do with them.

There is NO job. treat them like the incompatible non-jobs they are.

Soren wrote on Mar 14^th, 2016 at 8:01pm:


Well, we did let you in, dear. Somebody must have wanted a stool softener/bed warmer.

Alas, that was before you had your turn. You must have been.most productive back in the day, no?

Still, every day in every way you’re getting better and better.

Keep repeating that, dear boy.

What makes you think that John?

And why does every discussion with you turn into you endlessly making up random crap and attributing it to me? It's like you think every one of the several dozen people you argue with here are the same person.

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