The American plan to mold Hamas into a moderate organization is ludicrous. Hamas is already a moderate organization, but only because the fighting is outsourced to PIJ, PRC, PLFP, and others. No doubt Hamas can be made to accept coexistence with Israel, as indeed the Muslims have offered many times. But their own state will necessarily be radical because so many hotheads remember past grievances and villages lost to Israel. There will always be tension. When Saudi Arabia sees civil war, when Iran rules in Lebanon and Syria, when Islamic radicals eye power in Jordan, there is no way to keep the West Bank state as political oasis.

US aid constitutes much a larger chunk of the Palestinian budget than of Israel’s—about 40 percent vs 3 percent. Nevertheless, the Palestinians publicly defy the White House behemoth in a manner the Jews can only dream of.

The Muslim Brotherhood presents itself to the West as moderate. In Egypt, they are religious moderates and political right-wingers, arguing against peace with Israel. The Brotherhood’s radical aims are served by its offshoots, Hamas and Jemaa Islamiya. In Jordan, away from Western news media, the MB is radically anti-Israeli and religiously fundamentalist. In Syria it is willing to join non-Sunni sects for the sake of political expediency.
Iran cooperates with the MB in Egypt and helps Assad to eradicate it in Syria.

Turkey cooperates with Iran and Syria against the Kurds, with the US and the Saudis against Syria, with the Saudis against Iran, and points a US-supplied weapons system at Israel.

And so Obama’s academically inspired policies are doomed at best, and likely to catapult the region into chaos.

Any resolution to the Libyan crisis will betray the NATO and reward Germany and Russia for agreeing to take a stand against Gadhafi. And we still doubt that Gadhafi’s family will abandon power.

Meanwhile, Obama’s hand can be seen in the resurgence of mass protests in Turkey and Damascus. A democratic government in Syria would be heavily influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood. And getting Russia to agree to Assad’s ouster almost certainly required offering the Russians the economic perks Erdogan had hoped to win for himself. Obama thus seems to have abandoned his newly acquired good friend, Turkey.

The US policy seem idiotic only until we recognize that Obama’s friends and advisers are of Samantha Powers’ ilk. Obama’s alliances with Russia (which is itself torn by internal quarrels) and Germany (whose conservatism runs at odds with Obama’s activism), are likely to be short-lived.

Only Israel sticks to US dollars, no matter the damage to her national interests.

Gadhafi killed next to no civilians. Saleh killed mostly insurgents. Assad murdered civilians. The more brutally a ruler treats his people, the better he is treated by Obama.

Besides, Shalit is being held by Hamas, whose parent organization, the Islamic Brotherhood, is backed by the White House in its rise to power in the Middle East.

Gen. Petraeus will lead the CIA. This reflects a new paradigm: wars conducted by drones instead of soldiers. Too indecisive for proper military action, yet too imperially-minded to avoid foreign incursions, US presidents increasingly opt for undeclared proxy wars. Petraeus lost the war in Afghanistan. He achieved a temporary victory in Iraq because of three factors: Iran scaled down its involvement in Iraq to let the Americans go, Maliki proved a more savage ruler than Saddam, and tribal chiefs gladly accepted bribes to get rid of the hated Al Qaeda. Such luck will not be available in Yemen, Sudan, Sinai or other places of interest to the CIA in our region.

Obama traded Mubarak for Erdogan, the new lynchpin of America’s Middle East policy. The differences are glaring: unlike Mubarak, Erdogan is a talkative type. He is weak, silly, and Islamist. Erdogan shares with Obama the fundamental leftist notion that every political problem can be mediated. For decades, the United States served as an international arbiter. Now Erdogan is trying unsuccessfully to develop Turkey into a regional mediator: Israel-Syria, Saudi-Syria, West-Iran, etc. Shamefully, Netanyahu has joined the empty Obama-Erdogan alliance.

Obama mildly criticized Assad and mostly ignored the ayatollahs when they engaged in bloody repressions. But he tried to assassinate Gadhafi who was helping the West to fight Al Qaeda groups in Africa. Obama accepted the loss of America’s strategic alliance with Saudi Arabia and gave the green light to its nuclearization.

Obama’s actions, we believe, are guided by the leftist urge to create a blank slate on which to create a shining new world. Ever since the Iranian revolution and the advent of Palestinian terrorism, leftists have supported the Muslim cause because Islamists were also bent on destroying the current political order.

The American attitude toward Iran contrasts with the White House’s calls for democratization in Syria, and to its much harsher approach in Egypt, where Obama demanded that Mubarak step down. The more anti-Western a Muslim government is, the better it is treated by Washington.