Showing posts with label Jordan’s King. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jordan’s King. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Joel C. Rosenberg's Blog - As Jordan’s King warns of “civil war” inside Islam & says Jordan has reached “the boiling point.”

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Joel C. Rosenberg's Blog

As Jordan’s King warns of “civil war” inside Islam & says Jordan has reached “the boiling point.” President Obama finally makes time to meet with him. Here’s the latest.

by joelcrosenberg
(Jerusalem, Israel) -- For months now, Jordan's King Abdullah II has been urgently warning Western leaders in blunt and stark language that the tidal wave of Syrian refugees into his country and the barbaric violence of the Islamic State poses a clear and present danger to his kingdom. He needs significantly more military and financial assistance than he is currently getting, and he needs it quickly.
ISIS is engaged in “a third world war” against the West and moderate Sunni Arab governments like his own, says the 54 year old monarch.
Jordan has reached “the boiling point,” he adds. “Jordanians are suffering….and sooner or later I think the dam is going to burst.”
“We need the rest of the world to work with us,” the King insists. “This is why I say it [must be] Muslims, Christians, Jews, other religions, all of us fighting this global fight together. It is a war inside of Islam, it is our civil war, but we cannot do it by ourselves.”
The King has taken his message to U.S. and European reporters, news anchors and conferences of world leaders. So far, he hasn't seen much response. And the stakes couldn't be higher.
Jordan has welcomed in more than 1.3 million Syrian refugees. Its spending a quarter of its annual budget on people who aren't Jordanian citizens. They are at the breaking point. Yet last year, the international community provided only about 35% of the financial aid they had promised to the Hashemite Kingdom. What's more, thus far the U.S. and international military effort against ISIS has been half-hearted. Today, the influence of ISIS is steadily growing. Its leaders are emboldened. And they are looking to hit new targets, like Jordan.
Adding insult to injury, in January -- as readers of this column will recall -- President Obama said he was too busy to meet when the King went to Washington on official business. In the end, the President carved out five minutes for the West's most faithful Sunni Arab ally. That was shameful.
Fortunately, the President made more time for Jordan's King last week -- finally. The two leaders met at the White House on Wednesday for an extended discussion of the current state of the fight against the Islamic State, the state of the Syrian civil war, the enormous financial pressures Jordan is facing, and other critical regional issues.
The meeting seemed to go well. The President praised the monarch as "one of our most stalwart allies in the world" and rightly noted that "Jordan is a country that punches above its weight when it comes to the fight against ISIL." 
The King, in return, graciously thanked the President, Congress and the American people for their generous military and financial aid to his kingdom. "We are so grateful for the support that you've shown me and our people, our country," he said. "Truly, no country other than the United States has given us so much support -- whether it’s to the economy so that we can take the challenge of refugees to our country, but also to the military and security so that we can defend our borders, but also secure our people."
"I’m actually leaving Washington very optimistic about the level of support from the United States," the King added.
I'm glad the meeting happened. I'm glad the President has increased U.S. aid to Jordan in recent years. But I am not as optimistic as the king about the future. I believe Jordan is in grave danger from ISIS terrorism -- including chemical attacks -- and from the mass of Syrian refugees who I fear could be incited to launch an uprising in the hopes of trying to topple the kingdom. Thus, I believe the U.S. should be doing far more to help our Jordanian friends.
We need to pull out all the stops in our campaign to defeat ISIS, starting with liberating Mosul and all of northern Iraq from the ISIS scourge. At the same time we should be pressing our European allies and the rich Sunni Arab states to provide more financial aid to Jordan. And we should be working far more closely to build a strong alliance between Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states not just against ISIS but against the threat of a nuclear Iran, as well.
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joelcrosenberg | March 2, 2016 at 12:37 pm | Categories: Uncategorized | URL:http://wp.me/piWZ7-4lr

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Joel C. Rosenberg: “The state of the Middle East is a catastrophe.” - My interview with CBN on the State of the Union, the presidential front-runners & the visit by Jordan’s King to Washington

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Joel C. Rosenberg's Blog

“The state of the Middle East is a catastrophe.” My interview with CBN on the State of the Union, the presidential front-runners & the visit by Jordan’s King to Washington.

by joelcrosenberg
(Virginia Beach, Virginia) -- This morning, on the day President Obama was scheduled to deliver his final State of the Union address tonight before a Joint Session of Congress, I was interviewed on the Christian Broadcasting Network.
We discussed President Obama's performance in the Middle East, the President's stunning refusal to meet this week with Jordan's King Abdullah II who is on an official visit to Washington, and whether the two presidential front-runners are better prepared than Mr. Obama to deal with the rising threats in the Middle East.
"The state of the Middle East right now is a catastrophe," I explained. "President Obama's policies in the Middle East have been an utter failure because he has chosen, ideologically, to withdraw all U.S. forces and influence from the region....The region is on fire."
"Syria is in a total meltdown -- we're watching the implosion of a modern Arab state and an absolute human catastrophe," and the President has offered no plan to turn things around.
What's more, in 2015, Mr. Obama signed off on an insane nuclear deal that I noted will give Iran "two pathways to The Bomb" -- one if Iran cheats on the deal, and the other if Iran keeps the deal, waits ten years until all the restrictions are removed, and then races to build a whole arsenal of nuclear warheads.
Meanwhile, the President is making Israeli leaders and Sunni Arab leaders feel that he has abandoned them while emboldening their worst enemy, Iran, and doing precious little to defeat the forces of the Islamic State.
"What is the President doing?" I asked. "The President today is refusing to meet with Jordan's King Abdullah, who is in Washington this week, because he's too busy. Too busy for our most faithful Sunni Arab ally?"
[Let me add: This stunning decision by Mr. Obama to snub the King of Jordan is as nonsensical as it is offensive. Jordan is in a hot war with the Islamic State. The King, a Muslim -- indeed a descendent of Muhammad -- is doing a heroic job confronting this barbaric enemy. How in the world could the President not make time to meet with him, listen to his perspective, and talk about how to work even more closely together. The President took time to meet with Matt Lauer of the TODAY Show this morning. I watched that interview. To refuse to meet with an ally in wartime in disgraceful.]
"The Saudis feel like the President of the United States has cut and run [from our allies]," I added during the interview. "The Jordanians feel this way. So do the Egyptians. The Israelis have the worst relationship with this President in the history of the country. So the region feels scared by two existential threats -- Iran, ISIS, and their Apocalyptic Islam."
"This has been a catastrophic year in U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. If the President of the United States comes out tonight and says that the state of the union is strong and the state of our foreign policy, nobody in the region -- much less in our country -- will believe him."
"You cannot defeat an enemy you refuse to define. And I'm saying the President still won't call Radical Islam by its name. But Apocalyptic Islam is much worse. Why? Because Radical Islam wants to attack us, to drive us out of the holy lands and the holy places. But Apocalyptic Islam doesn't simply want to attack us, it wants to annihilate us and bring about genocide, in order to usher in the coming of their messiah."
"The novels -- The Third Target, and now The First Hostage -- take you, through the eyes of a reporter [J.B. Collins], inside this story to understand what might happen, worst case scenarios, if our leaders don't understand the threats that we face. The President doesn't understand it. But I'm also concerned that the two front-runners in the presidential campaign, Secretary Clinton and Mr. Trump , that neither of them understand Apocalyptic Islam or are prepared to deal with it."
NOTE: We will post the full transcript soon.
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joelcrosenberg | January 12, 2016 at 8:39 pm | Categories: Uncategorized | URL:http://wp.me/piWZ7-3RU