italianhonestreporting : Messaggio: Obama Gearing Up To Present Ultimatum To Israel, Detonate US-Israel Alliance

Obama Gearing Up To Present Ultimatum To Israel,
Detonate US-Israel Alliance

You don't need to be all that smart to be an effective populist thug
(Chavez, Ahmadinejad, etc). You really only need two instincts. You have to
be able to smell weakness, just in general so you have a sense for what's
possible. And you have to be able to pick out internal and external
scapegoats that other people are willing to sacrifice, either in the name of
unity or in the hope of quiet.

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:

(1) It's based on faux sophistication and wishful thinking. Iran obviously
has global aspirations. Iranian leaders have never been shy about exporting
the Islamic Revolution, ergo their proxies throughout the Middle East trying
to export the Islamic Revolution.

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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