THE MIRACLE WORKER

 By the time I was 23 years old there had been 4 major wars in the Middle East. The 1948 Arab-Israeli war, the 1956 Suez war, the 1967 Six Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The results of the 1948 war secured Israels right to exist as a nation. The 1956 war was an attempt to overthrow Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser by England, France and Israel. The 1967 Six Day War enabled Israel to capture Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. Finally the 1973 Yom Kippur War where Israel initially took a beating along with high casualties. Yet by the end of the war they were marching on Cairo. Only a near nuclear confrontation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union stopped the Israeli Army from advancing any further. If you believe the Bible peace will never truly be attainable in the Middle East but we can never give up trying. 

 Jimmy Carter was a horrible president but I have to give him credit for the 1978 Camp David Peace Accords. This agreement ended the seemingly endless string of major Arab-Israeli wars. There hasn't been a major Arab-Israeli war since 1973. There have been military actions but nothing on the scale of the previous Arab-Israeli wars. The brilliance of the 1978 camp David agreement is that it took Egypt out of the mix. Egypt had been the vital player in any Arab alliance. It had the strongest military, the largest population, and the most wealth of any of the other Arab nations such as Jordan, Syria and Iraq. If you take Egypt out of the equation the remaining three countries are not likely to fight Israel without Egypts involvement. This has proven to be true. The Camp David agreement would not have been possible without the persistence of Jimmy Carter and the statesmanship of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. Statesmen are hard to find in the Middle East and Sadat was a great statesman and human being. It took great courage for a Muslim to sit down and iron out a peace agreement with a country so hated in the Muslim world. Sadat had the interests of his country in mind because these endless wars were a huge drain on Egyptian financial resources and in Egyptian lives. Sadat's courage would ultimately cost him his life when he was assassinated by the radical Muslim Brotherhood in 1981.

Barack Hussein Obama came close to undermining the great achievement of Carter, Begin and Sadat. Obama supported every radical Muslim regime during the so-called Arab Spring uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa. He turned his back on the democratic uprising in Iran that was brutally suppressed by the Iranian thugs in 2009 but supported the radical Muslim movements elsewhere. He was ecstatic when the radical Muslim Mohamed Morsi overthrew Egyptian president Mubarak. Yet he was infuriated when the Egyptian people in their wisdom overthrew Morsi and replaced him with the more moderate Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, Obama was not a happy camper. I believe that if Morsi had not been deposed he would have eventually pulled out of the 1978 Camp David agreement and the Middle East would once again have devolved into an endless cycle of Middle Eastern wars. 

Although Carter's 1978 Camp David accords were a brilliant move on his part his handling of the 1979 Iranian revolution was very shortsighted and had very negative unintended consequences. Carter had a so-called human rights foreign policy. He did not feel like America should get heavily involved in the internal affairs of other countries. He stood by and allowed the Shah of Iran to be overthrown by a radical Islamic regime. Granted, the Shah was not a nice fellow but his regime was a Boy Scout picnic compared to the tyranny, terror and subsequent loss of life caused by the radical Muslim regime in Iran since 1979. His non-involvement led to the overthrow and capture of our American embassy personnel that were held hostage for a year. Carters ineptness toward Iran would be a big factor in his defeat by Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential election. The success of the Iranian Revolution gave hope to radical Muslims everywhere. It caused a ground swell of support for radical Islam. Although I loved Ronald Reagan, his support of the radical mujahideen resistance fighters to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan also had unintended consequences. It fostered the idea that radical Muslims could bring down an infidel super power and this idea would eventually lead to our own September 11th terror attack. 

Reagan's Afghanistan policy combined with our military build-up and the economic isolation of the Soviet Union would lead to it's eventual collapse in 1991. I heard a quote attributed to V.I. Lenin that he once said that as long as there was a capitalist around there would be a Soviet Union. I interpret that to mean that capitalists are always out to make a buck and they will trade with anyone, even a Communist state. The Soviet Union was always struggling to keep it's people supplied with food and the necessities of life while at the same time maintaining the military hardware of a superpower. The Nixon administration policy of Detente had good intentions because it was designed to lessen tensions between east and west but it involved sweetheart wheat deals between the U.S. and the Soviet Union that enabled the Communist regime to feed their people. This enabled the Communists to build and maintain their military without having to make the hard choices. The Soviet Union was only able to maintain control over their people by the threat of force and the people were growing tired of food shortages.. Reagan hated the policy of Detente employed by Nixon and later by Jimmy Carter. His primary goal was to end Detente and to put the Soviet Union out of business. Our original foreign policy toward the Soviet Union, employed by Harry Truman in the late 1940's, was containment. In other words we would seek to contain the spread of Communism to the entire world. Reagan realized that if we built our military and cut off wheat shipments and other trade to the Soviet Union they would not be able to keep up with us and provide for their people at the same time. This new policy would cause the ultimate collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union and the eastern bloc nations.

Trump is isolating Iran in a similar fashion to Reagan's foreign policy toward Russia. He knows that Iran is only held together by sheer force and like the people of the old Soviet Union Iranians are growing tired of it. If not for Obama's nuclear appeasement deal Iran's government might have already been toppled. Obama's deal pumped economic life into the tyrannical Iranian regime and the billions of dollars that he shipped into Iran on pallets was used to pay for terror across the Middle East and the world. Obama rewarded our enemies and penalized our friends. Trump' is isolating Iran economically and through recent peace treaties with Muslim regimes in the Middle East and in the Balkans. He realizes that most Arab states hate Iran and look at them as more of a threat than Israel. Trump is capitalizing on that fear and hatred of Iran by ironing out peace agreements. If Trump is re-elected, who knows, the Iranians may finally say enough is enough, as the Russia people did, and the tyrannical Iranian regime will be no more.