Thursday, October 17, 2013

The Enemy of My Friend's Enemy's Frenemy?

President Obama has embraced the "tame" Islamists who increasingly dominate Turkey as a partner in the Middle East. Is Turkey behaving as our president intended?

The Obama administration has stiff-armed Israel in many ways in an effort to reach out to the Moslem world and disengage from the War on Terror. Embracing the Islamist government of Turkey was supposed to be a pillar of this new approach.

So is Turkey undermining our Middle East diplomacy or supporting it by screwing Israel?

Turkey deliberately blew the cover of an Israeli spy ring working inside Iran in early 2012 and dealt a significant blow to Israeli intelligence gathering, according to a report in the Washington Post on Thursday.

There was no immediate comment from Israel or Turkey, but Israeli ministers have accused Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of adopting an anti-Israeli stance in recent years to bolster his country's standing in the Muslim world.

And what the Hell are the Turks thinking? They want to bolster Iran that is seeking nuclear weapons and is supporting Assad's bloody campaign to retain power in Syria? Just to stick it to the Jews?

If Turkey is the pillar of our Middle East strategy, what on Earth are our objectives?

I can't answer my questions. It's very confusing.

Or possibly frighteningly clear.

We just don't lead the West and we are finding that leading from behind is to leadership as phone sex is to actual sex (and I hasten to add that this is not based on personal experience!): you may feel good for the moment, but it really produces nothing and seems kind of silly in retrospect.