Obama’s Multiplying Foreign Policy Failures
On April 23, 2007, then-Senator and future presidential candidate Barack Obama gave a speech in which he said this:
- Until we change our approach in Iraq, it will be increasingly difficult to refocus our efforts on the challenges in the wider region – on the conflict in the Middle East, where Hamas and Hezbollah feel emboldened and Israel’s prospects for a secure peace seem uncertain; on Iran, which has been strengthened by the war in Iraq; and on Afghanistan, where more American forces are needed to battle al Qaeda, track down Osama bin Laden, and stop that country from backsliding toward instability… Now it’s our moment to lead – our generation’s time to tell another great American story. So someday we can tell our children that this was the time when we helped forge peace in the Middle East.
It hasn’t quite turned out that way, has it?
Israel and the Golan Heights
On June 11, 2013 Austria began withdrawing some of its 377-member contingent of the five-country United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) from the demilitarized zone on the cease-fire line between Israel and Syria in the Golan Heights. The withdrawal was occasioned by the injury of two of the contingent caused by rebels who were fighting against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and briefly captured the town of Quneitra, the major crossing point between Syria and Israel in the zone. Austria felt the risk to its other soldiers was too great since the civil war had made the Golan a target area for both Assad’s forces and the rebels.
(Read more…)
(Read more…)
The View from the West Bank
Syria spirals out of control. Iran marches toward nuclear Islamageddon. So, naturally, Secretary of State John Kerry schedules yet another trip to “solve” the region’s relatively stable, if not ideal, Israel-Palestinian dispute.
Like so many in foreign policy circles, Kerry and the Obama administration know — absolutely know — the key to peace in Israel’s neighborhood: Israel’s withdrawal, with perhaps minor adjustments, from all West Bank territory conquered in 1967.
Yet, history indicates that withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines, absent major changes, is arguably the single most counterproductive act imaginable for long-lasting peace. There is no greater obstacle to peace than the perpetual temptation to launch another war against Israel from such lopsided lines.
(Read more…)
(Read more…)
Scowling face of the state – Lowest Lerner
Comment by James E. Horn
The case against it is that Barack Obama, and every single person in his Obamanation including Lowest Learner and Hillbillary Clinton, spell terrorism T-E-A–P-A-R-T-Y not, as they should, I-S-L-A-M. Lowest Learner has not merely contributed to distrust of government, she has proved, beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty, that the entire Obama administration and every single one of its regulatory agencies and every single one of its regulatory agents, are Enemies of the State; and should be dealt with accordingly when power shifts back to where it belongs (and it will; soon; legally; politically; at the ballot box.
As soon as the Constitution permitted him to run for Congress, Al Salvi did. In 1986, just 26 and fresh from the University of Illinois law school, he sank $1,000 of his own money, which was most of his money, into his campaign to unseat an incumbent Democratic congressman.
He lost. Today, however, he should be invited to Congress to testify about what happened 10 years later, when he was a prosperous lawyer and won the Republican Senate nomination to run against a Democratic congressman named Dick Durbin.
(Read more…)
(Read more…)
International law discriminates against Israeli settlers
By Ted Belman
On June 5, 2013, The Law Faculty of Bar Ilan U held a conference on International Law and Israel. It was the first conference of a series of annual conferences aimed atexploring the growing gap between international law as it is often applied to Israel vs. how it is understood in the rest of the world.
Prof.Stephen Plaut reported on a paper presented by Eugene Kotorovich which showed that the so called law applied to settlers in Judea and Samaria was not the law applied to other settlers around the world. Kontorovich, I might add is making aliyah this summer with his wife and four childrens.
Eugene Kantorovich is one dang interesting academic! He is professor of constitutional law at Northwestern University. He is a blogger for the “Volokh Conspiracy.” And he often writes about international law and Israel.
(Read more…)
Ted Belman
Jerusalem, Israel
Posts
