Headlines:
- Obama Weakened and Delayed Response to Russian Interference in US Election
- America Seeks a Permanent Role in Syria
- America Responds to Allegations of the Use of Torture in Yemen
Obama weakened and delayed response to Russian interference in US election
Despite knowing at least five months in advance about active Russian interference in the upcoming US presidential elections, former US President Barack Obama held back on strong action against Russia. According to an investigative report in the Washington Post:
“Over that five-month interval, the Obama administration secretly debated dozens of options for deterring or punishing Russia, including cyberattacks on Russian infrastructure, the release of CIA-gathered material that might embarrass Putin and sanctions that officials said could “crater” the Russian economy.
But in the end, in late December, Obama approved a modest package combining measures that had been drawn up to punish Russia for other issues — expulsions of 35 diplomats and the closure of two Russian compounds — with economic sanctions so narrowly targeted that even those who helped design them describe their impact as largely symbolic.”
Of course, Obama did take several actions against Russia, including verbally warning Putin, and these actions presumably prevented Russia from further intensifying its campaign or manipulating ballot results on voting day itself. However, the real reason for Obama’s muted response to Russia is that America was highly dependent on Russian engagement in the Syrian war at that time. Even here, America downgraded Russian relations, so that Russia was forced to coordinate its actions in Syria with Turkey instead of with America directly. But the entire episode reveals the vulnerability of the world’s leading power with regards to the Muslim world, where it is only able to act in conjunction with allies and agents. It is time for Muslims to eject America, its allies and its agents from Muslim lands and replace them with sincere indigenous leadership instead that will rule according to Islam. There are many sincere and capable leaders amongst Muslims; it’s only a matter of looking and placing our trust in Allah (swt).
America Seeks a Permanent Role in Syria
Now that America thinks the revolution in Syria is drawing to a close, the actual American intentions in the region are becoming more evident. According to the New York Times:
“To hear the Pentagon tell it, the United States still has no intention of getting involved in Syria’s six-year civil war; the American presence there is solely to help its allies defeat the Islamic State.
But a recent spate of incidents have raised alarm from diplomats and national security officials that the United States may be inadvertently sliding into a far bigger role in the Syrian civil war than it intended.”
In fact, America is not slipping into a wider role, but has planned this from the start. Faced with overwhelming Muslim opposition to foreign presence, America has had to craft a new approach to fighting in Muslim lands, where it depends heavily on many others to fight for it. However, now that the fighting appears to be coming to an end, America has begun to intervene more directly itself. The focus of American activity is eastern Syria, which is strategically important, lying at the conjunction of Syria, Iraq and Jordan, as well as being at the centre of the region more generally. It is also the location of Syria’s oil. A further point is that there is very little Muslim population in this desert area. Naturally, in American eyes, this makes it the perfect location for a permanent American base.
America Responds to Allegations of the Use of Torture in Yemen
After media and human rights organisations linked to the British released detailed reporting on torture in Yemen, American politicians have been forced to take up the matter. According to the Washington Post:
Pressure mounted on the U.S. Defense Department Friday after multiple U.S. senators called for investigations into reports that U.S. military interrogators worked with forces from the United Arab Emirates who are accused of torturing detainees in Yemen.
John McCain, Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the ranking Democrat, Jack Reed, called the reports “deeply disturbing.”
The American politicians act as if they never knew about such practices previously and only discovered them now. Senators wrote in a letter to the US Defence Secretary:
“Even the suggestion that the United States tolerates torture by our foreign partners compromises our national security mission by undermining the moral principle that distinguishes us from our enemies— our belief that all people possess basic human rights,” the senators wrote Mattis . “We are confident that you find these allegations as extremely troubling as we do.”
In fact, even Britain is well aware of such activity, being one of its principal perpetrators. The reason for exposing this now is only to put pressure on America in relation to an entirely different matter: Britain wants an end to the boycott of Qatar, which is one of Britain’s principal agents in the region.
Torture is a permanent part of the West’s approach to warfare because of the Capitalist ideology which makes material benefit the principal motivator in life. Torture and other deeply unethical practices in warfare were virtually unknown in the ages when Islam led the world because of the powerful example that it set, and such practices will only end once more when the world returns to be led by the re-established Islamic Khilafah State (Caliphate) on the method of Prophethood ﷺ.