The Obama-Kerry Team : O-K or K-O'd in Syria and Iran?

It's becoming more and more difficult to talk about one country in the Middle East without being forced to talk about all of them. ~~~~~ We witnessed this weekend the al-Sabaab terrorist attack on innocent shoppers in a Nairobi mall. At least 62 are dead and several hundred wounded. Al-Shabaab, an extremist sunni Islam faction, is identified with Somalia - think of Mogadishu - but they are angry with Kenya's efforts in Somalia to suppress them. Al-Shabaab, an al-Qaida affiliated group that also works with the Taliban, has terrorized southern Somalia -- they behead Christians and display their bodies in public with crucifixes and Bibles next to them; they send gangs with a female to inspect women for bras and arrest those who wear them; they have banned BBC and other world radio; they stoned a 13-year-old girl to death after she tried to report that she had been raped and they shot neighbors who went to the execution to try to stop the stoning. Nice people, al-Shabaab. ~~~~~ On Sunday, Taliban suicide bombers attacked worshippers at a historic church in northwestern Pakistan, killing 78 and wounding 141 in the deadliest-ever attack against the country's Christian minority. The wing of the Pakistani Taliban that calls itself Jundullah claimed responsibility, raising questions about the government's push to strike a peace deal with the Taliban to end a decade-long insurgency that has killed thousands of people. The Jundullah said they would continue to target non-Moslems until the United States stops drone attacks in Pakistan's remote tribal region. The 78 dead included 34 women and seven children. Another 37 children were among the 141 wounded. The number of casualties from the blasts was so high that the hospital ran short of caskets for the dead and beds for the wounded. The bishop of Peshawar announced a three-day mourning period and blamed the government and security agencies for failing to protect Christians. "If the government shows will, it can control this terrorism," the bishop said. "We have been asking authorities to enhance security, but they haven't paid any heed." Hundreds of Christians burned tires in the street in the southern city of Karachi to protest the bombing. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condemned the attack in an unusually strong statement sent to reporters : "The terrorists have no religion and targeting innocent people is against the teachings of Islam and all religions....Such cruel acts of terrorism reflect the brutality and inhumane mindset of the terrorists." Islamic militants have carried out dozens of attacks since Sharif took office in June, even though he has made clear that he believes a peace deal with the Pakistani Taliban is the best way to solve the problem of violence in the country. Pakistan's major political parties have endorsed Sharif's call for negotiations. But the Taliban have said the government must release militant prisoners and begin pulling troops out of the northwest tribal region that serves as their sanctuary before they will begin talks. Critics of peace talks point out that past deals with the Taliban have collapsed and simply given the militants time to regroup. "I don't think appeasement will work," a senior leader of the main opposition group, the Pakistan People's Party, said. "This is a message from them that they don't believe in negotiations. If they don't, we should also stand up and fight them." Supporters of negotiations say that is the only way forward since military operations against the Taliban in the tribal region have failed to subdue them. ~~~~~ In Iraq, this year alone, approximately 5,000 Iraqis have died, largely in sunni-on-shiite terror attacks, with a recent surge in violence killing 1,000 Iraqis each month. Hardly a day goes by without multiple attacks throughout the country, as Iraq domestic carnage grows. ~~~~~ You may ask, dear readers, why we are talking about Somalia, Kenya, Pakistan and Iraq when the entire world is tightly focused on the US-Russian Syria chemical weapons deal. Because there is one major footprint on all these violent affairs. It is the absence of an Obama Middle East strategy, a lack which emboldens terrorists everywhere in the region because they believe that President Obama is weak and will not undertake serious counter-measures to stop them. He abandoned Iraq. He then promised to curtail and eliminate the Taliban in Afghanistan, but he is now in tbe process of abandoning Afghans to a future that can only mean new domination by the Taliban. AND now, having made a complete mess of Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama is turning to Syria and Iran in his search for a Middle East victory. This is disconcerting, to say the least, if the Obama-Kerry Syria effort is an example of things to come with Iran. So far, the entire world, except for a few American Democrat Party diehards, is of the opinion that the Obama-Kerry team has failed either to get anything that could be called concrete out of Russian president Putin or to use the chemical weapons issue to prevail on the al-Assad regime to join the cause of a ceasefire and peace deal for Syria. If this is the best Obama-Kerry can do with a regime actually under severe pressure in a civil war, imagine what their result will be when face-to-face with the coldly efficient Iran hardliners. As New York columnist Mike Goodwin wrote today : "The idea that the hollow 'solution' to the Syrian problem is a template for White House goals with Iran rings frighteningly true, given how quickly President Obama dropped his red-line threats....the talk is growing that Obama quickly pivoted to Iran in hopes that Russia would help him pull off another Houdini escape from responsibility....The problem is that the “peace at any price” approach always raises the price later. Syria and Iran are not likely to give up their weapons of mass destruction, especially with Vladimir Putin protecting them. His embrace shields both from the Security Council and American military action. Even Israel will find it impossible to use force against Iran’s nukes while Putin has lured a desperate Obama into endless negotiations." ~~~~~ And, dear readers, even President Obama's own past defense secretaries, Robert Gates and Leon Panetta, have criticized Obama's handling of al-Assad and Putin. I'm tempted to call Obama and Kerry amateurs because that's the image they project. Worse, they seem to be grasping at straws to make a deal with Iran. I would feel a lot better if they had at least one heavyweight diplomat on their O-K team. Otherwise, it may become the K-O team, with Obama and Kerry down for the count and the Middle East knocked out with them. Sad. Dangerous.