Special to WorldTribune.com

By Grace Vuoto

President Barack Obama’s tortured foreign policy has brought war and devastation to Iraq.

The Noble Peace Prize winner tried to end American military involvement in Iraq by a premature withdrawal of our troops and an incessant attempt to appease our mortal enemies. Yet, all of his pandering to the Muslim world has garnered only contempt and has led to accelerated destruction.

A five-part documentary produced by Vice News reporter Medyan Dairieh provides a shocking look at the barbarism and determination of those leading the new Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) also known as ISIS or as it now wants to be called: Islamic State. These jihadists are emboldened by American weakness and are convinced that they are even more formidable than the world’s only superpower.

They have captured territory in Syria and Iraq with lightening speed and ferocity. They claim to have established a caliphate and are now vowing to overrun America.

“I say to America that the Islamic Caliphate has been established,” said Islamic State Press officer Abu Mosa in the documentary, currently on YouTube.

“And we will not stop,” he said.” Don’t be cowards and attack us with drones. Instead, send your soldiers — the ones we humiliated in Iraq. We will humiliate them everywhere, God willing, and we will raise the flag of Allah in the White House.”

The jihadists in the region did not regard the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq in 2011 in the same manner as Obama did. “Mission accomplished,” he declared, touting this repeatedly as a great victory and as the fulfillment of a cardinal campaign pledge.

But the terrorists had an alternate interpretation: They viewed the departure of U.S. forces as a defeat for us — an unwillingness to see the mission through to the end, a capitulation to the Islamists from a war-weary public and an irresolute leader.

Obama is now facing a catastrophe in Iraq so great he has called it an impending “genocide.” The ruthless conquerors have driven Christians and Yazidis out of their homes and into the mountains, where they face death by thirst and starvation. The president has now been forced back into Iraq; he has been compelled to send military advisers and to authorize targeted air strikes to help civilians who face extermination. He must now also protect Americans from ISIS’s advance on Irbil.

In other words, the president’s policies have caused more chaos than ever before. Contrary to his stated intention, there is no peace in the region. Now, the fighters are prepared to not only seize territory but to exterminate whole groups. Our enemies are so brazen and vile that even Al Qaida has disavowed them.

Some analysts on both the left and the right, such as Fox News contributors George Will and Kirsten Powers, argue that many tragic events around the world are not the president’s making.

Will has said we must beware of “narcissistic policy disorder” which he defines as “the belief that everything in the world is about us.”

“What the U.S. does or says cannot always make everything in the world well,” he said on Fox News Sunday.

In a June 17 column in USA Today titled “Iraq crisis not Obama’s fault,” Powers argues that Iraq is “inherently unstable” and that ISIS would not have emerged if President George W. Bush had not invaded Iraq.

Both Will and Powers both often downplay the direct causal relationship between the president’s actions and the growing global turmoil.

However, the strongmen of the world are not so sophisticated. They see that the American president is aloof and absent — paying attention to global hotspots by fits and starts. “Now, while the giant is asleep,” they whisper, “is the time to strike as quickly as possible.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken over Crimea and is now menacing Eastern Ukraine with greater brazenness than ever before because he knows no one will stop him. In a similar manner, ISIS tramples on Syria and Iraq to the point of possibly causing genocide — precisely because the terrorists do not fear that anyone will stop them.

The Islamic State openly threatens to hoist a black flag in the White House as they see that its occupant prefers to appease them and diminish their differences rather than confront them head on.
No one respects or fears a coward.

The president can use all the fancy language he wants to dress up his foreign policy. The world simply sees and hears that he would rather not fight for the American way of life. And so, the evildoers churn their hatred ever faster and sow their destruction ever deeper.

Grace Vuoto is the Editor of Politics and Culture at World Tribune, host of American Heartland with Dr. Grace on WTSB Radio and is the founder of the Edmund Burke Institute for American Renewal.

  “narcissistic policy disorder”, ISIL, Islamic Caliphate, Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama’s foreign policy: War through weakness