Prior to the November 2008 presidential elections, there were specific concerns expressed about Barack Obama in pro-Israel circles, and in Jewish vote debates and by U.S. national security advocates, more generally.
Obama was suspect based on his long-time pastor’s hostility to Israel, his political and military affairs advisers views and comments about the Jewish state and its supporters, and his own executive inexperience and far-left foreign policy ideology.
Questions were raised about Jeremiah Wright, Gen. Tony McPeak, Samantha Powers, Rashid Khalidi, Robert Malley and others.
Questions were also raised about Obama’s campaign rhetoric approving of presidential meetings with dictators, without preconditions; about taking sides in Israeli internal politics, but not between Israel and her sworn enemies; and about suggesting that the surge had failed in Iraq, and that the Patriot Act and FISA were unworkable and needed radical change.
During the campaign, Jesse Jackson pronounced to supporters of Israel that they would come to be disappointed with Obama.
Well, the early evidence is in: President Obama’s concerned pro-Israel critics were right, and his defenders, who denied all the warnings and Jackson’s promise, were wrong.
Just weeks into office, Obama has:
- * Announced the forthcoming closure of the Guantanamo Bay military facility (without an alternate location to imprison extremely dangerous battlefield detainees), and the immediate suspension of military trials, including that of Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, the mastermind of Sept. 11 and the man who admitted decapitating American Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl.
* Ordered all overseas intelligence interrogation centers closed, and withdrawn all charges against the masterminds behind the USS Cole bombing that killed 17 U.S. sailors (such as Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri).
* Threatened cuts in some American military projects and preparedness, budgeted significant cuts in Homeland Security spending, wavered on ballistic missile defense projects in Poland and the Czech Republic, and suggested weakening American leadership in space based defense programs meant to safeguard U.S. military defense and commercial satellites.
* Made his first Oval office phone call to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. An alleged one-time Holocaust denier and financier of the Munich Olympics mass murder of Israeli athletes, Fatah’s Abbas may be a lifelong terrorist, or a newly moderate leader seeking peace, but he is certainly unworthy of this honor.
* Appeared in his first White House television interview with the Saudi-funded, Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television network, where he took pride in his Muslim name and heritage (yet Obama’s campaign had rejected the discussion by others of his Muslim background).
* Expressed a new way forward for American policy toward Muslims in the Middle East. This ignores that America has for decades spent treasure (Egypt, Jordan, Palestinians) and blood (Afghanistan, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Iraq) on behalf of Muslim liberty and defense.
* Decided soon to send a new U.S. ambassador to Syria and to lift sanctions against a nation charged with aiding al-Qaida in Iraq and secretly working on a weapons of mass destruction program with North Korea.
* Appointed Susan Rice as ambassador to the United Nations, and made her post Cabinet-level. Susan Rice has a long history of Israel bashing, which she continued in her very first U.N. Security Council speech, raising the question of Israeli war crimes in Gaza. Obama has also greatly enhanced the roles of National Security Council officials Gen. James L. Jones and of close Obama confidante Samantha Powers; both have shown consistent hostility to Israel.
* Appointed Charles Freeman Jr., a former U.S. envoy to Saudi Arabia, hostile critic of Israel, and leading advocate for Araby in the Middle East conflict, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council, which coordinates the work of U.S. intelligence agencies and prepares the important National Intelligence Estimates. Freeman has been widely denounced by Jewish leaders, as well as by the human rights community deeply troubled with his support of the infamous Chinese repression at Tiananmen Square.
* Abandoned American policy, which had rejected the Orwellian named United Nations Human Rights Council (Cuba, Iran, Saudi Arabia, et al.), with suggestions that the United States join it.
* Legitimized the anti-Israel Durban II conference (touted as an international forum to confront racism, which savaged Israel in 2001, causing the United States to walk out). The Bush administration accorded it pariah status. The Obama administration first suggested that the conference had redeeming value, then failed to block numerous problematic canards against Israel, and then finally quit the conference altogether for apparent political reasons, without a moral pronouncement.
* Announced plans to provide some $900 million to help rebuild Gaza, still under the control of Hamas, which would inevitably pilfer some of the reconstruction aid and claim credit for any improvement in Gaza’s infrastructure. The administration promises the money won’t end up with Hamas, but we shall see.
* Named as Mideast envoy, Arab-American George Mitchell, who expressed support for Egyptian efforts to forge a Palestinian national unity government, indicating that America was taking a dramatically new approach to Hamas. The White House has also leaked concerns of a looming confrontation with the new Israeli administration over “settlements,” and new Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has reportedly picked a fight with Israel on the Palestinian front as well.
Since Obama’s inauguration, and perhaps in response to this change in American foreign policy, there has been some swift international activity.
Yemen released 170 al-Qaida suspects. Pakistan released from house arrest notorious nuclear proliferator Abdul Qadeer Khan, and signed a deal with the Taliban which ensures Shariah law abuse of women in the Swat region. And Iran successfully launched its first satellite into orbit, on the 30th anniversary of the Islamic revolution, a step hailed by Iran’s president as a “source of pride” for the Islamic republic. And North Korea has promised a missile launch. And Venezuelans passed a referendum to keep Chavez in power.
Have we begun an age of appeasement? Obama had the bust of Sir Winston Churchill, a gift from Britain after Sept. 11, removed from the Oval Office and shipped back to the British e
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