WarSclerotic

Obama and the snakes – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

Op-ed: Putin proves that, as opposed to Obama, he is loyal to his allies and acts as bitter rival towards their enemies

An alarmed assistant entered Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir‘s office one day and informed him that Labor Party candidates had won the student union elections. “Excellent,” Shamir responded. “Now the snakes will grow there.”

Barack Obama, most likely, hasn’t heard about Shamir’s punch line, but in practice that’s what his foreign policy is based on. After Iraq, after Afghanistan, after the disappointment from the results of his speech at Cairo University, after the revolutions and internal wars which followed the Arab Spring, Obama is leaving the snake breeding to others.

If Putin insists on managing Bashar Assad‘s chemical arsenal, let him enjoy it: Syria will be his headache from now on. America has moved aside: It will no longer be the world’s policeman; it will no longer be the world’s fool, the world’s sucker.

Obama is not the first American president trying to turn his back on the world. Many preceded him. The exceptional thing in his case is the course he took: Presidents usually hope at the beginning of their term to create miracles within America, and are gradually dragged, something willingly, sometimes under compulsion, into foreign issues. Bush Jr. was a remarkable example: Until the attack on the World Trade Center he showed no real interest in what was going on outside the continent’s boundaries. The wars he went on following Bin Laden defined his presidency.

Obama took the opposite course: He began with great aspirations in the foreign policy, and gradually withdrew back home. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which gave him the Nobel Peace Prize at the begging of his first term, selected him just because his name wasn’t Bush. That concluded and concludes, for now, his contribution to world peace.

This void was entered by Vladimir Putin. His starting points are good: He has ambition; he has money and weapons; he has no opposition or restricting conditions at home. He proves to heads of state on a daily basis that, as opposed to Obama, he is loyal to his allies and acts as a bitter rival towards their enemies. Obama is wriggling between Morsi and al-Sisi; Putin never wriggles. Those who have missed the Cold War era, in which two rival world powers nurtured satellite countries, are welcoming Putin’s ambition with open arms.

Big brother has his own interests

Obama’s inward alignment falls into line with the state of mind of large parts of the American public opinion. That doesn’t mean his conduct is winning praise. Hawkish rightists are attacking what they perceive as weakness, softness, escaping responsibility, un-American behavior; those interested in foreign policy are anxiously watching the renewal of the Cold War; the liberal Left is troubled by Obama’s indifference in light of the massacre of civilians and serious violations of human rights. Everyone is bothered by the gap between rhetoric and action.

This week will be filled with diplomatic headlines. Iranian President Rohani will arrive at the UN General Assembly in New York, where he will continue his peace offensive and receive applause everywhere; Obama will also be in New York. They may meet. Even if they don’t meet, messages will be relayed. There will be a feeling that the crisis with Iran is behind us. Early next week Netanyahu will arrive and explain that the nuclear project still stands, and so the crisis still stands. There is no Iranian moderation – just public relations. The world will refuse to be impressed. It’s convenient to let Iran reach the nuclear threshold, hoping it will stop there.

A renewed Middle East is being formed, one which is divided into satellites of two rival world powers and regimes which are being threatened from the inside, with a cold American president who is neck-deep in internal issues, a determined and uninhibited Russian president, an enigmatic and manipulative Iran, and a weak and disintegrated European Union.

It won’t be easy for Israel to move around in this maze. For generations the entire neighborhood knew that we have a big brother who will come down the moment we cry for help. Now the big brother wants to look after his own interests.

Report: Americans among al Shabaab terrorist group behind Westgate Mall massacre | JPost | Israel News.

Witnesses say they heard attackers shouting in English, identifying them as a “multinational collection,” says Kenyan military chief; Twitter suggests Britain’s wanted ‘white widow’ may be alleged female attacker.

“We are fighting global terrorism here,” Kenyan Military Chief Julius Karangi said, adding that some of the al-Shabaab attackers may be of American citizenship.

Many witnesses said they heard the attackers shouting commands at each other in English, during an attack on Nairobi’s Westgate Shopping Center, which killed 62 people. Karangi insisted that the gunmen inside the mall were “clearly a multinational collection from all over the world.”

Al Shabaab, whose name in Arabic means “The Youth,” includes several dozen American recruits, according to Washington Post counter-terrorism analysts.

The Post reported on Tuesday that Kenyan Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed confirmed “two or three Americans” and “one Brit” were among the militants who perpetrated the attack.

In an interview Monday with PBS Newshour, Mohamed reportedly explained that the American attackers were 18 to 19 years old, of Somali or Arab origin and lived “in Minnesota and one other place” in United States.

One intelligence officer and two soldiers also told Reuters that one of the dead militants was a white woman, and speculation over their identities began to rise.

Interior Minister Joseph Ole Lenku said they were all men but that some had dressed as women.

The British jihadist was a woman who has “done this many times before,” Mohamed reportedly said.

This is likely to fuel speculation that she is the wanted widow of one of the suicide bombers who together killed more than 50 people on London’s transport system in 2005.

Called the “white widow” by the British press, Samantha Lewthwaite is wanted in connection with an alleged plot to attack hotels and restaurants in Kenya. Asked if the dead woman was Lewthwaite, the intelligence officer said: “We don’t know.”

US authorities are urgently looking into information given by the Kenyan government that residents of Western countries, including the United States, may have been among the attackers, US security sources said.

White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said he had no direct information that Americans had participated in the attack, but expressed US worries.

“We do monitor very carefully and have for some time been concerned about efforts by al Shabaab to recruit Americans or US persons to come to Somalia,” Rhodes told reporters traveling with US President Obama to the United Nations in New York.

Twitter

A Twitter account that claimed to be at the fingertips of the al-Qaida-linked al Shabaab terrorist entity has allegedly been documenting the Westgate mall siege with real time updates through the social media site.

Tweets from the account, which has now been blocked, described several of the jihadists as being of Western origins. One tweet even specifically named the “white widow,” Samantha Lewthwaite, saying she is a “brave lady” and they are glad to have her in their ranks.

However, according to the Washington Post, the militant group said Monday — on a different Twitter handle verified by the SITE Monitoring Service, that it had not sent the earlier messages or released the names or any other details about the attackers.

Global Terrorism

From Mali to Algeria, Nigeria to Kenya, violent Islamist groups – tapping into local poverty, conflict, inequality or exclusion but espousing a similar anti-Western, anti-Christian creed – are striking at state authority and international interests, both economic and political.

John Campbell, a former US ambassador to Nigeria, said he believed insurgents such as those who rebelled in Mali last year, the Nigerian Boko Haram Islamist sect and the Nairobi mall raiders were also partly motivated by anger with what he called “pervasive malgovernance” in Africa.

“This is undoubtedly anti-Western and anti-Christian but it also taps into a lot of deep popular anger against the political economy in which they find themselves, in which a very small group of people are basically raking off the wealth,” he said.