Did President Obama's Negative View On U.S. Engagement In The Middle East Produce The Disaster That Is Now Unfolding?

President Obama meeting in the Oval Office in late August with his national security advisers to discuss strategy on Syria, in a photo released by the White House. Credit Pete Souza/White House

Fred Hiatt, Washington Post: Obama’s fatal fatalism in the Middle East

Surveying the wreckage of the Middle East and the fraying of Europe, President Obama understandably would like us to believe that no other policy could have worked better.

The United States has tried them all, his administration argues: massive invasion, in Iraq; surgical intervention, in Libya; studied aloofness, in Syria. Three approaches, same result: chaos and destruction.

So why bother? Why get sucked into “a transformation that will play out for a generation,” as Obama described it in his State of the Union address this year, “rooted in conflicts that date back millennia”?

Even setting aside the offensiveness of such a sweeping dismissal of Arab potential, the formulation is wrong on two counts, one prescriptive and one analytical.

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WNU Editor: I cannot help but feel that after seven and a half years of being in the White House .... and now seeing the entire Middle East gripped with sectarian violence and bloodshed that was only isolated in Iraq when he entered the White House in 2009 .... President Obama must be personally deeply disappointed with what has unfolded. And while blaming others for this disaster has been the norm for his administration since the beginning .... after seven and a half years .... it just does not hold much water any-more.