Name: Liberal warnings about Trump's Middle East policy have proven embarrassingly wrong
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Liberal warnings about Trump's Middle East policy have proven embarrassingly wrong

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President Trump took a dramatically different approach to the Middle East than his predecessor, and at every step, former Obama-Biden foreign policy officials and their allies repeatedly warned of catastrophic results. Yet not only have the dire warnings failed to pass, but there have been historic breakthroughs for peace in the region.The Democratic Alliance Initiative, a new conservative foreign policy group, has published a looking at several high-profile decisions Trump has made and examining statements made at the time by former Obama-Biden officials, ambassadors, and think tank experts. The results are not pretty.When Trump made the correct decision to withdraw from the disastrous Iran deal, Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund (a key outside supporter of the deal), predicted, “We are truly on a path toward war in the Middle East.” Colin Kahl, who was Joe Biden’s national security adviser when he was vice president, declared that “war drums" were "already sounding.”When Trump ordered the killing of Iranian terrorist mastermind Qassem Soleimani, it was also supposed to bring war. Sen. Tim Kaine, the 2016 Democratic vice presidential candidate, claimed the killing “has brought us to the brink of another war in the Middle East.” Sen. Chris Murphy said that Trump may have set off a “potential massive regional war.” And Susan Rice, the former National Security Council adviser to Barack Obama rumored to have been on Biden’s shortlist for running mate, predicted a series of escalations, concluding, “It’s hard to envision how this ends short of war.”The bombastic declarations also extended to Trump’s actions in support of Israel.When Trump was first discussing moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, Nicholas Burns, now an adviser to the Biden campaign, claimed the move would “inflame passions in [the] Moslem World” and “be a historic mistake," saying, "All of his predecessors understood what it would cost the U.S. in influence/ credibity with the Palestinians+Arab World.” Former Obama-Biden administration Secretary of State John Kerry went so far as to say, “You’d have an explosion, an absolute explosion in the region, not just in the West Bank, and perhaps even in Israel itself, but throughout the region.”The reaction was similar when Trump recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Ilan Goldenberg, who was an Obama-Biden Middle East adviser, observed that the move “puts the Arab states even further on the defensive and makes it harder for them to support the US without being called out by Iran.”Of course, in reality, none of these predictions or hysterical warnings came true. Tough actions against Iran did not lead to war, the region did not light up in flames over the United States moving the embassy to Jerusalem, and Trump’s pro-Israel moves did not damage U.S. credibility with the Arab world.Instead, Trump was able to broker historic deals that opened relations between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain.Instead of becoming more torn apart by Trump’s actions, Arab countries have realized that in Israel, they have a reliable ally against the common enemy of Iran — the same evil regime that the Obama-Biden administration coddled for eight years.Looking back at these statements, and plenty of similar ones, makes for some humorous reading.But the misguided commentary of the liberal foreign policy elites is a much more serious matter. That’s because these people, who have been extraordinarily wrong about foreign policy again and again, are the same type of people who will be helping Joe Biden shape his policy agenda were he to be elected president.

President Trump took a dramatically different approach to the Middle East than his predecessor, and at every step, former Obama-Biden foreign policy officials and their allies repeatedly warned of catastrophic results. Yet not only have the dire warnings failed to pass, but there have been historic breakthroughs for peace in the region.The Democratic Alliance Initiative, a new conservative foreign policy group, has published a looking at several high-profile decisions Trump has made and examining statements made at the time by former Obama-Biden officials, ambassadors, and think tank...

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The Washington Examiner is an American conservative news website and weekly magazine based in Washington, D.C. It is owned by MediaDC, a subsidiary of Clarity Media Group, which is owned by Philip Anschutz. From 2005 to mid-2013, the Examiner published a daily tabloid-sized newspaper, distributed throughout the Washington, D.C., metro area. The newspaper focused on local news and political commentary. The local newspaper ceased publication on June 14, 2013, whereupon its content began to focus almost exclusively on national politics, switching its print edition from a daily newspaper to a weekly magazine format.

Liberal warnings about Trump's Middle East policy have proven embarrassingly wrong

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