JEWS ARE FREE AT LAST AND INDEPENDENT. WHY DO WE ENSLAVE OURSELVES AND GROVEL BEFORE THE NATIONS
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Obama Gearing Up To Present Ultimatum To Israel,
Detonate US-Israel Alliance
by Ruth S. King
Ahmadinejad has all but ensured that Iran will become a nuclear power. First he did it by exposing the West as a paper tiger. Along the way he put the destruction of Israel back on the spectrum of public debate. Every brazen call for genocide created a drip drip drip effect that eroded public discourse and shifted the center of debate. Open "anti-Zionism" - which is really the call to destroy a democratic nation-state - is now just one of the things that people say.
The ostensible "middle ground" that liberal foreign policy elites chose was to insist that pressuring Israel will somehow fix Iran, presumably because Ahmadinejad seems really sincere when he says that Israel is the source of regional instability. The Obama White House being what it is, that linkage fetish is now official policy.
Which brings us to this article by Rick Richman:
Asked if EU diplomat Javier Solana was correct about the U.S. "announc[ing] its vision for peace in the Middle East before the end of July," Mitchell responded as follows... The noteworthy part of the response is Mitchell did not deny that an American peace plan is coming - soon. Obama appears to be following the five-year old advice of Rob Malley (his erstwhile foreign policy adviser), who in 2004 dismissed reliance on a step-by-step process and argued for a plan defining upfront "the shape of a permanent peace" to be pushed on the parties. Malley proposed that: "[T]he process ought to be turned on its head, with the U.S. seeking to describe the endgame at the outset and with the parties agreeing on the means of getting there afterward..." ...
In his brief period in office, Obama has refused to answer whether the U.S. is bound by the April 14, 2004 letter given to induce Israel to turn over Gaza to the Palestinians, and has reneged on five years of understandings about "natural growth" of existing settlements. His response to Israeli objections has effectively been "sue me" -- the understandings are not "enforceable." It is not an approach inspiring confidence in him as a reliable or principled ally.
The thing I like about this is how it's an elegant example of all the especially moronic parts of Obama's policymaking:
Very few people still pretend that Israel has a Palestinian peace partner. Palestinian leaders never gave up wanting to destroy the Jewish State, which is why they're now a full generation into cradle-to-grave brainwashing. There are plenty of places in the Middle East where it might make sense to say "the public doesn't really believe their leaders' anti-Israel conspiracy nonsense." Gaza and the West Bank, not so much.
But if we just based policy on what's obvious, the academics and think tank experts who get commissioned to write State Department white papers wouldn't have jobs. So liberal foreign policy elites have spent multiple decades and thousands of hours creating reasons why maybe possibly the opposite might be true. Shockingly that hasn't worked out.
(2) It's based on faux sophistication and wishful thinking that even if they made sense when they were spun no longer make any sense. Rick's article points out that not even Malley thinks his "do it all at once" approach would work today. But why let trifling things like "argument" and "coherence" get in the way of policymaking?
Liberal elites insisted for decades that we needed universal health care. Sure, the basis for those recommendations included economic conditions that no longer exist and market assumptions that have been conclusively proven false. But whatever. Ditto for Iran, where engagement was always based on the idea that we could peel hardliners away from Khamenei. Sure the election proved that either Khamenei is an ideological messianic or that the Republican Guard is powerful enough to make him act like one. But whatever.
So there's at least reason to doubt that this new plan to pressure Israel will work. What's actually going to happen is that Netanyahu will call Obama's bluff. Then Obama will reraise and detonate the US-Israeli relationship. But no worries. There are literally thousands of peer-reviewed journal articles and thinktank-vetted reports that say selling out Israel will be sweet for the US's regional position.
References:
* State Dept. Banning Pro-Israel Obama Officials From Speaking Out [MR]
* The Coming U.S. Peace Plan [Rick Richman]
* Liberal Foreign Policy Experts: This Ahmadinejad Reelection Was Just So Unpredictable! [MR]
* New Poll: Only 26% Consider Health Reform A Success In Massachusetts [MR]
* The WH's Eight-Step Plan For Detonating The US-Israel Relationship [MR]
Previously:
* Obama Now Just Making Up Previous Statements About Iran
* Obama Looking Past That Messy "Hariri Murder" Thing, Sending Ambassador Back To Syria
* Obama WH: Of Course We're Still Desperate To Suck Up To Iran
Omri | June 30, 2009 11:52 AM | TrackBacks (0)
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