The Obama Doctrine is dead

The Obama Doctrine is as dead as Yahya Sinwar. And the world is better off in both cases.

While the massacre of Oct. 7, 2023, was one of the most traumatic events in modern Jewish history, it’s obvious now that it was a massive, perhaps existential, blunder by the Islamic State as well as a stunning defeat for its allies both in the Middle East and Washington.

Oct. 7 transformed the Middle East in ways that seemed impossible only a few years ago. Hamas, perhaps the most immediate threat to both Jewish and Arab lives in the region, is largely eradicated. Hezbollah, the theocratic militia that’s kept Lebanon in a state of turmoil and war for decades, is reeling.

Indeed, it was Israel’s success against the latter that helped send Bashar Assad, a real-world genocidal dictator, into Russian exile. Most of all, events have left Iran, which spent decades building its proxies throughout the Middle East, impotent.

It’s no surprise that on their way out, Barack Obama cronies in the Biden administration approved another $10 billion in sanctions relief for the mullahs by waiving restricted payment transfers from the Iraqi government.

These are the same people who had attempted to lift Hamas and propped up its benefactors in Iran with planeloads of treasure. And the same people did everything possible to handcuff Israel in its war against Hamas and Hezbollah.

Not only had the White House threatened to withhold aid if the Israeli military went into Rafah to eliminate Hamas battalions cowering behind women and children, but when Israel pulled off its ingenious pager operation, wounding and killing hundreds of Hezbollah operatives, our uncannily misguided secretary of state, Antony Blinken, warned that “all parties” should “avoid escalating conflict,” treating our close allies and Islamists, in this case a group that once murdered 220 Marines in Beirut, as equals.

Fortunately, Israel ignored Joe Biden and eliminated Hassan Nasrallah, who was involved in those murders, and decimated much of Hezbollah’s capacity to wage war. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, far more risk-averse and far less hawkish than his critics maintain, was compelled by the popular will to settle all family business after Oct 7. The conventional wisdom has been that Israel, a small nation, is impelled to finish wars quickly or risk an economic crash. That was surely the case in the conventional wars of the past. The Jewish state proved it could engage in a prolonged conflict, striking one decisive victory after the next.

Conventional wisdom also said that Israel would be unable to effectively strike deep within Iran. Yet, after the Islamic regime launched 500 ballistic missiles and drones in its direction, Israel slipped 100 jets into the Iranian territory and calmly engaged in precision strikes – a warning that it could mete out far more devastation if it felt like it. And perhaps it will in the future.

On Oct. 8, 2023, Israelis woke up to a gruesome massacre and perhaps the most devastating security failure in their country’s history – behind only the Yom Kippur War. This month, they woke up to the news that Israel was annihilating the Syrian Air Force, its armaments and perhaps chemical weapons storehouses, ensuring that no advanced weaponry falls into the hands of jihadis.

Power and strength, rather than capitulation and mollification, work in the Middle East. And the world is a better place today because of Israel’s victories.

It’s not outlandish to believe that Iranians might now be more open to making a genuine deal with President-elect Donald Trump, rather than risking implosion. What would be best for the world, of course, is if the U.S. exerted its economic pressure and precipitated the fall of the mullahs in Iran, a country that has no real geopolitical reason to be at war with Israel or the West.

Though there’s a chance for peace in the region, we should not be pollyannaish.

The Turkish government would like to set up its own proxy state in Syria, though the Arabs tend to detest the Turks. And the Turks, of course, detest the Kurds, who are being ethnically cleansed as we speak. (No college campus protests for a Kurdish state, alas.) And, of course, the Christians and Alawites are now in danger from Islamists.

Or, in other words, the Middle East is still the Middle East.

Whatever happens, though, the Middle East has been forever transformed by Oct 7.