RAYMOND IBRAHIM recently summarized the toll of U.S. intervention in the Muslim world:

[E]very Muslim nation that the U.S. has helped “liberate,” including in the context of the “Arab Spring,” has become significantly worse for Christians and other minorities. Previously moderate Syria is now ranked the third worst nation in the world to be Christian, Iraq fourth, Afghanistan fifth, and Libya 13th. All four receive the worst designation in the ranking process: “extreme persecution.”

Three of these countries—Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya—were “liberated” in part thanks to U.S. forces, while in the fourth, Syria, the U.S. is actively sponsoring “freedom fighters” against the regime, many of whom have been responsible for any number of atrocities—including massacres, beheadings, and the crucifixion of Christians and others.

— Comments —

Pete writes:

Concerning your piece, “U.S.: Enabler of Christian Persecution in the Muslim World,” Raymond Ibrahim’s observations are both timely and accurate concerning the pro-Islamic sympathies of U.S. foreign policy – and the on-going campaign of persecution against Christians being waged both within the Muslim world and elsewhere.

The larger issue is one of how this nation, once one of the mightiest bulwarks protecting the [Western] world, came to be one of the forces most-destructive of it. There are many ways of answering that question – some of which have been covered in depth in this space and by stalwarts such as the late Lawrence Auster and the good people at the “Gates of Vienna” website, among others. In historical and geopolitical terms, there are a number of distinct inflection points which mark the transformation of U.S. foreign policy into what it has now become.

In a speech delivered shortly after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, then-President George W. Bush assured American citizens and people around the world that “Islam is a religion of peace,” and that only a small, fanatical set of “extremists” were responsible for the attacks. He went on to reassure his audience that the members of al-Qaeda were not true Muslims and that their actions were not representative of Islam as a whole.

Bush’s remarks can only be called a whitewashing of the true nature of Islam and the threat which then faced (and still faces) western civilization. Perhaps this should not have been surprising, given the long-standing ties between the Bush political dynasty and the Saudi royal family. However, it does illustrate the reach and extent of the penetration of our government by powerful forces in the Islamic world. It is a near-certainty that King Fahd – then the monarch of Saudi Arabia – or one of his senior representatives – was on the phone with the White House within minutes of the attack, doing his best to conduct damage control in a way most-favorable to the Muslim world.

Bush’s appeasement of Islam – his dhimmitude, if you will – would have been unimaginable in a major western leader of the mid-twentieth century, yet it is utterly representative of present-day leaders throughout the western world. One cannot imagine Winston Churchill, the “Last Lion of Great Britain,” making such weak and ineffectual remarks as those made by the likes of Bush, Tony Blair, et alia. Clearly, western political leaders – with the exception of rare figures such as Geert Wilders – are afraid of their own shadows where the subject of Islam is concerned. It wasn’t always that way; what happened? To answer that question, we must delve into the past.

The 1973 oil crisis and the subsequent Arab oil embargo are watershed events in the history of relations between the Islamic nations of the Arab Middle East and the U.S.-led western alliance. On October 6, 1973, Egypt, Syria and an alliance of other Arab nations, launched a surprise attack upon Israel beginning on Yom Kippur – the holiest day on the Hebrew calendar. Although a near-run thing, Israel survived the attack and managed – at great cost – to defeat her enemies on the battlefield. This victory, according to informed sources, would not have been possible without critically-needed supplies and munitions airlifted to Israel by the United States and the Nixon administration. In retaliation for U.S. support of Israel, the members of OPEC (Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries) declared an oil embargo – sending the open-market price for a barrel of oil dramatically upward. The era of cheap oil was over.

The war and the subsequent oil crisis were critically-important events – but what came afterwards may have been even more-important in the long run – namely, the rise of the so-called petro-dollar system. The petrodollar system, as it came to be called, was the quid pro quo agreement between the U.S. government and the government of Saudi Arabia (de facto, the leader of the Arab oil bloc and OPEC) that all market transactions involving OPEC oil would be conducted exclusively in U.S. dollars. In return, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger promised that the oil-producing (Islamic) nations of the Middle East would be protected militarily by the United States. Coupling with the end of the Bretton Woods economic arrangement and the subsequent renunciation of the gold standard by Nixon/Kissinger, the petrodollar system effectively gave license to the U.S. government to print money to its heart’s content – knowing that it alone had the power to create greenbacks out of thin air. In the long term, the petrodollar system was one of the chief causes of the dramatic rise in deficit spending and indebtedness since the 1970s – because it addicted both the United States government and its people to cheap and easily-available credit and fiat money. The petro-dollar system marks the point at which the governments of places like Saudi Arabia began to have their hands on the tiller steering our foreign policy. Since that time, their influence has, if anything, grown stronger. When the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council – Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, etc. – say “Jump!,” the White House and Congress answer “How high?” – or else the GCC and their colleagues will pull the plug on the petrodollar system – thus ending the debt-fueled spending spree the government has been on for the last forty years.

Quite literally, the Arab sheiks have had us over a barrel.

The shadow geopolitics of the petrodollar system have exerted their various effects on U.S. (and thereby western) foreign policy in innumerable ways. The petrodollar is one of the reasons why the Clinton administration supported not Christian Serbia but Muslim Bosnia, during the mid-1990s Balkans civil war. It is also why we fought Gulf War I and Gulf War II. Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator, yes, but his brutality was of no consequence to the western elites so long as it didn’t threaten the economic status quo. When Hussein threatened to upend the petrodollar system is when the gloves came off. The Saudis hit speed dial to the White House and the rest is history.

Similarly, the Obama presidency is symptomatic of the hidden power of the petrodollar – and of the long reach of pan-Islamic interests both within the U.S. and elsewhere. Indeed, Obama’s improbable and meteoric rise to the White House raises some tantalizing and fundamental questions about the “powers behind the throne,” so to speak. Obama’s stated loyalties lie with Muslims “should the winds shift in an ugly direction against the Islamic world” – those words come directly from one his books. Obama is, de facto or de jure, a Muslim – who can recite lengthy passages from the Koran by memory, in perfectly-accented Arabic, and who once called the Muslim call to prayer “the most beautiful sound on earth.” Obama bowed deeply to the present king of Saudi Arabia on his first state visit there. Are these the words and actions of a non-Muslim, or are they the actions of a true believer – a shahid? No one knows for certain save Obama and his closest confidantes, but the preponderance of evidence indicates the latter. This is certainly proven by Obama’s policies in the Middle East, which have unambiguously supported the Muslim Brotherhood – the oldest and most-powerful pan-Islamic organization on earth.

Some analysts believe that the so-called “Arab Spring” movement began with a deal struck between the royal family of Qatar and the senior leaders of the Ikhwan – the Muslim Brothers. Seeing in Obama a historic opportunity to advance their agenda in the Middle East, these parties agreed to a quid pro quo deal under which the ‘Brotherhood would not attack the royal families of the GCC member states, and would support the massive Sunni natural gas pipeline project then in competition with similar projects originating in Russia and in the Shi’ite nations of the Middle East and Asia – namely, Syria and Iran. In return, the GCC states and their patrons – the U.S., European Union, NATO and Israel, amongst others – would turn a blind eye to uprisings in Libya, Syria, and other states judged to be ripe for the picking for the new caliphate the Ikhwan wanted to form. Consistent with the Koran, these jihadists and soldiers of Allah would purge the conquered areas of all non-Muslims, either by killing them, converting them or subjugating them into bondage.

In closing, the present turn of events results not only from historical and geopolitical incentives – but from a confluence of events both here in the U.S. and in the Middle East/Southwest Asia. In the eyes of the powers-that-be, Christians in places like Egypt and Syria are nothing more collateral damage on the road to the new world order they are striving to create.

James N. writes:

The outcome of the recent “Arab Spring” liberations reveal, in a most clear way, the fatuity of “liberation” and “freedom” as ends, rather than means.

If one is liberated, if one is freed, the question immediately presents itself: Liberated to what end? Free to do what?

OF COURSE Muslim mothers want their children to be free. They want them to be free to slaughter Jews and to become martyrs for jihad.

OF COURSE the Hutus wanted their freedom. They wanted to be free to slaughter Tutsis.

OF COURSE the Afghan people want their freedom. They want to be free to organize their families in accordance with their customs, and to slaughter infidels.

“Freedom” is not an end. It is a means, and whether it is good or bad depends on the ends to which it is directed.

Please follow and like us: