Obama got Osama, but lost the Middle East.

Professor Jacobson makes a point worth repeating. As Obama dances in the end zone for his one military success, the Middle East is sliding into Islamofascism.

As they say in Bridge, let's review the bidding.

The short range purpose of invading Iraq was to insure that Saddam did not pass out WMDs to Islamic extremists like OBL. Mission accomplished and although we did not capture lots of WMDs after toppling Saddam, with him gone that option was closed.

The long-range purpose of going into Iraq, in my opinion, was to create a large military presence in a stable country so that the surrounding Muslim dictatorships would not come under the domination of Iran, and to provide a model for the Mid-eastern people to follow on the path to representative government.

Unfortunately, Obama happened.

The idea of Iraq as an American protectorate was abhorrent to him, so he made arrangements to dismantle our presence in Iraq. At the same time he sent some of our best troops to perform “Viet Nam – the Sequel” in Afghanistan, a war fought primarily for domestic political purposes; to prove that he really did believe IT was the “good war.” What is the strategic reason for fighting in Afghanistan? Does anyone remember?

Back to Iraq, that militarily naked country has become an Iranian protectorate. Once the region became unstable, the seeds were planted for regional revolution. Lacking an American presence, and more importantly an American President who doesn’t like the idea of American power, the most committed revolutionaries are winning out. And those revolutionaries are not idealistic college students and small shopkeepers who want a better life, but Islamic ideologues who are essentially 2, 3 many Osama bin Ladens.

While the MSM was having orgasms over the Arab Spring, I predicted the outcome. Hope vs. Experience. Don’t blame Obama, he’s only the President. The ‘Arab Spring’ is a Horror Show

There is no pleasure in this “I told you so.” Given the cast of characters, any Conservative could have foreseen this. For the same reason, Liberals could not.

UPDATE:  Better late than never, some in the Lamestream Media are catching on. 

David Ignatius in the Washington Post:

What we’re seeing now in Egypt is something that might be called electoral bin Ladenism. Take the group Gamaa Islamiya, which under its spiritual leader, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, made the first unsuccessful attempt to destroy the World Trade Center in 1993. Today, the organization has formed a Salafist political party with the benign name Building and Development Party. This organization, which like al-Qaeda traces its roots to the Islamist theorist Sayyid Qutb, has 13 seats in the new Egyptian parliament.

Hat tip to The Other McCain

UPDATE 2:  Barry Rubin discusses: Experts Agree: Anti-American Repressive Radicals Taking Power in the Middle East Makes the World A Better Place taking apart Michael Hirsh.

“At least today it should be clear that a group capable of taking over a country with millions of people and running it for decades (the Brotherhood, Hamas, and Hizballah) is a greater threat than a group that can stage a few terror attacks each year. But it still isn't even on the radar of the Western mainstream debate or the Obama Administration's strategy.”

UPDATE 3:  The Saudis closed their embassy in Cairo yesterday after demonstrations and attempts to storm the embassy by mobs. This follows the conviction of an Arab lawyer of insulting the Saudi king.

The problem for Egypt is that the country depends on the charity of its neighbors because it imports most of its food and is fast running out of money.

So when supplies get low, who’s going out handing out rations? You can bet the mortgage on your house that the Muslim Brotherhood is stocking up.

David Goldman:

In short, if the Saudis don’t underwrite the IMF loan, the whole house of cards will collapse, and Egypt will run out of cash to buy food. Its cash reserves have fallen by two-thirds since Hosni Mubarak was ousted and barely cover two months’ worth of imports. That’s not good for a country that imports half its caloric consumption. The difference between Egypt and a banana republic is, no bananas. Guess who will ration bread at street level? The Muslim Brotherhood. That’s how Leninists or Nazis take power.

While Barack Hussein Obama is joking with the White House Press Corpse [spelling deliberate], the Arab Spring is bearing evil fruit.