Is the Obama administration working at cross purposes in its battle with Islamic terrorism?
On the one hand, we have U.S. forces battling the Taliban in Helmand Province as part of an overall strategy to stabilize Afghanistan before a U.S. draw down begins in 2011. Thus far, the operation appears successful and is being complimented by a number of high-profile Taliban arrests in cooperation with Pakistan. India and Pakistan are engaged in peace talks. By all appearances, the administration's approach to South Asia is bearing (provisional) fruit.
Yet move to the Middle East and the position looks quite different. The administration failed - spectacularly and publicly - in its early efforts to jump start the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. More importantly, it is moving to bulk up its forward military forces in the region in an effort to contain Iran.
It is a well documented fact that the presence of foreign military forces in the Middle East is a driver of terrorism. American forces stationed in Saudi Arabia to contain Iraq were a staple of al Qaeda propaganda throughout the 1990s so much so that former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz (hardly one to "blame America") cited their removal as one of the salutary effects of the Iraq invasion (never mind that that move injected orders of magnitude more troops into the region). It would be foolish to believe that the U.S. could undertake a similar buildup to contain Iran and not court the same wrath. But that is what the Obama administration is doing. It is fighting and hopefully winning a tactical battle in Afghanistan (and perhaps more if it does reorient the geopolitics of Pakistan and India) while entrenching the dangerous status quo in the Middle East that has driven Arab jihadists into the Pakistani hinterlands in the first place.
Hopefully the terrorist threat is now small enough that even with the negative dynamic in place in the Middle East we can contain it through intelligence work and homeland security. But such a reactive posture is bound to fail on occasion.
(AP Photo)