Terrorism is not the biggest threat to Americans rising from the Middle East these days: It’s Islamic statehood, according to guest speakers at the Capistrano Valley Republican Women Federated meeting Wednesday morning.
J.E. Dyer, a former naval intelligence officer specializing in the Middle East, and John Sullivan, a vocal critic of President Obama's foreign policies and an executive producer for the movie, “2016: Obama’s America,” addressed the threats and opportunities for America in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.
With the arrival of an Arab Spring, the U.S. had the opportunity to make sure the country’s – and the world’s – interests were kept in check, Dyer said.
“Unfortunately, we sat on our hands for much of the Arab Spring,” she said, speaking at the Marbella Country Club in San Juan Capistrano. Now, groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood – and others even more extreme are quickly governing the region.
“We could’ve done a lot more, and we probably could‘ve achieved everything we wanted without boots on the ground,” Dyer said.
What the movement has “unleashed” is worse than any threat from the Taliban or Al Qaeda, she said.
“It’s not about terrorism anymore. What’s new and hot is state Islamism,” she said.
While at first blush, democracy sounds like something Americans should support, Sullivan said, it’s not a democracy our founding fathers would recognize.
“Democracy without liberty is not a good thing. It becomes a tyranny of the majority,” he said. And yet, that is what the current administration has let happen.
Obama’s, however, is not simply a do-nothing policy, said Sullivan, who also co-wrote and co-directed “2016” with Dinesh D’Souza. With proceeds more than $30 million, it’s the second-highest grossing documentary in history.
According to Sullivan, the administration’s policy is actually designed to prop up anti-colonialists in the Middle East while diminishing the United States’ influence in the area. Seen through the prism of an anti-colonial stance, the president’s foreign policy makes more sense, even as he appears to do little, said Sullivan.
“He believes we are a colonial power. We’ve dropped Israel in as a colonial power into the Middle East … we’ve been occupying [the region] far too long,” Sullivan said. “We don’t want to show our strength too much, and we don’t want them to feel bad.”
Now that Egypt and Libya have institutionalized radical Islam, Kuwait will be next, said Sullivan.
Both speakers said that a Romney presidency would never be able to press the reset button on foreign policy back to Jan. 20, 2009. However, they both believe he will be able to course-correct enough to improve lives there and here.
“At the moment, we are living with the consequences of a policy of passivity,” Dyer said. “Too much has changed, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do what’s right for America.”
