David Brooks, "Hillary Clinton Takes On ISIS": Bullshit!

Tweet

Yes, I'm furious.

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Hillary Clinton Takes On ISIS," David Brooks praises Hillary Clinton's speech on Thursday at the Council on Foreign Relations. Brooks writes:

"The speech was very impressive. While other candidates are content to issue vague calls to get tough on terror, Clinton offered a multilayered but coherent framework, not only dealing with ISIS but also putting that threat within the crosscutting conflicts that are inflaming the Middle East.

For example, instead of just issuing a generic call to get tough on the terrorists, she pointed to the reality that ISIS will be toppled only if there is an uprising by fellow Sunnis. There has to be a Sunni Awakening against ISIS in 2016, like the Sunni Awakening that toppled Al Qaeda in Iraq starting in 2007.

That will not happen while President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria is spreading mayhem, terror and genocide."

Both Hillary and David fail to recognize that the Sunni Gulf states in the past funded the Islamic State and are now turning a blind eye to donations to ISIS from their wealthy citizenry. You see, Saudia Arabia is more afraid of Shiite Iran's ambition to gain hegemony over the Middle East than it is of ISIS. And lest anyone forget, the courtship of Iran has been a cornerstone of Obama's foreign policy, implemented in no small part by Secretary of State Clinton.

Or stated otherwise, by stoking Sunni fears involving American overtures to Iran, Obama and Hillary share partial responsibility for the emergence of the Islamic State.

Worse still, the Clinton Foundation has also been taking money from these same Gulf states.

Assad? Brooks fails to mention how Hillary declared in March 2011:

"There is a different leader in Syria now. Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he's a reformer."

Assad a reformer? This comment alone should disqualify Hillary as a presidential candidate.

And today, Hillary Clinton cannot even bring herself to say the words "radical Islam." It's almost akin to Harry Potter and friends trying not to utter "Voldemort."

Brooks goes on to say that the US should be "supporting institutional reform, as Clinton said, throughout the Arab world, to revitalize nations as functioning units. Not an unsustainable stab at nation-building, but better governance from top to bottom." Reform the theocracies and dictatorships which comprise the Muslim Middle East? Good luck at that. We already witnessed what came of the Arab Spring.

My advice to Brooks: Go back to writing about the "great religions . . . based on love." You know absolutely nothing about the Middle East.