The Obama administration’s foreign policy in the Middle East has been a “disaster” as it has relied on “very radical and dangerous forces” to push its agenda, says a former US senate foreign policy analyst.
James George Jatras made the comments in response to a commentary by Senator Marco Rubio in which he blamed “the vacuum” created by President Barack Obama's “disengagement” from the Middle East for the growing instability and unrest in the region.
In his commentary for The Washington Post published on Friday, the Florida Republican cited the fall of the Iraqi city of Ramadi to ISIL and recent gains by the terrorist group in Syria as the latest signs that Obama’s strategy to defeat the terror network is failing.
"But the problem is far bigger than that. The president’s entire approach to the Middle East has backfired," Sen. Rubio, a presidential candidate, said.
“The trouble is that Mr. Rubio, like many of the Republicans, faults the Obama administration, falsely in my opinion, for having withdrawn from the world, and withdrawn from the Middle East, and not having intervened sufficiently or with sufficient strength,” Jatras said in an interview with Press TV on Friday.
The rise of terrorist groups, including ISIL, in Iraq and Syria is largely the result of US support for extremist elements in Syria in an effort to overthrow the government of President Bashar al-Assad, he noted.
That policy has “backfired,” Jatras said. “That is the fault of something that we have done that many of the Republicans have been pushing even harder for.”
“What we need to do is take a step back and stop trying to support these very radical, dangerous forces in the region in hope that we can use them for our own purposes, when that clearly does backfire on us,” the analyst argued.
The US plans to finish the training of 3,000 militants in Syria by the end of 2015 and an additional 5,000 by next April, according to the Pentagon.
On February 19, Washington and Ankara inked an agreement to train and arm “moderate” militants in Syria to counter ISIL terrorists.
An American official said this week that the US military had launched the training program in Turkey.
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