And another thing David Ignatius doesn't get
In the previous post, I linked
this piece by David Ignatius in the Washington Post. It's a piece that's wrong in many, many ways. But here's one key point that Ignatius doesn't understand.
Netanyahu faces a real leadership dilemma. He has prevailed over Hamas
and its tunnels in Gaza, albeit at a terrible cost to Palestinian
civilians. But his popularity at home is dropping, with his approval
ratings down 20 points from their peak of 82 percent
when he ordered the ground invasion. Though Netanyahu may not realize
it, he needs Kerry’s diplomatic help to consolidate the gains of the
war. The question is whether the Israeli leader has the boldness to
leverage his military success in a way that brings greater lasting
security for Israelis, and reduces the Palestinian suffering in Gaza.
Netanyahu's ratings have dropped precisely because he stopped the war rather than stand up to Kerry.
Overwhelming majorities of Israelis
wanted to see Hamas destroyed. They are disappointed in the war's outcome because Netanyahu didn't go far enough. The last person who can 'help' him deal with that as Kerry, who is seen here as something between a buffoon and a villain.
Ignatius is still a shill for the Obama administration. Unlike his colleague,
Jackson Diehl, Ignatius has never taken a hard look at why the 'peace process' has failed. He continues to spout the Obama party line. That may serve him well in terms of access to the administration, but it doesn't serve the critically thinking readers of the Washington Post well at all.
Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, David Ignatius, Jackson Diehl, John Kerry, Middle East peace process, Operation Protective Edge, Washington Post
Oh my: Op-ed in London pan-Arabic daily calls Obama 'weakest American President evah'
Remember when President Hussein Obama was supposed to improve the way that the Arab-Muslim world viewed the United States? Well, that one isn't going too well.... The Arab-Muslim world is now calling Obama the '
weakest American President evah.' And they're right. This is from a MEMRI translation of an op-ed in Tuesday's edition of the London pan-Arabic daily al-Sharq al-Awswat.
Al-Zaydi wrote that Obama's handling of the Syrian crisis had
proven his failure as president, showing him as completely lacking in
leadership ability, hesitant and diffident, and overall the weakest
president in the history of the United States. He added that it is
because of these failings that Obama allowed the crisis in Syria to
escalate to the current situation, and that it is he who "caused the
wound to become deeper and the bloodshed to continue." He also stated
that Obama's hesitant and failed leadership in the Middle East, and
especially in Syria, had laid the groundwork for the development of
extremism and sectarian violence greater than those of Al-Qaeda.
This column by Al-Zaydi joins a series of recent articles in the
Saudi press that attacked America's policy on Syria following the
American-Russian agreement to hold an international conference at which a
political solution to the Syrian crisis will be sought....Baina Al-Mulhim, a columnist for the government daily Al-Riyadh,
asked whether the U.S. had "sold out the Syrian revolution," and wrote:
"The crisis of the Syrian revolution changed with the appointment of
[John] Kerry as U.S. secretary of state. Kerry is known as a friend of
Bashar Al-Assad… and now he is traveling around the world trying to save
Assad's regime and to eliminate the so-called 'Al-Qaeda in Syria'…"[2] Tariq Alhomayed, the former editor of Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, wrote that Obama's hesitancy was increasing the bloodshed and the extremism and allowing Russia to play a role in the region.[3]
The following are translated excerpts from Al-Zaydi's column: [4]
"The problem of U.S. President Barack Obama can be summed up in a
single word: hesitation. The man is short-sighted, confused and
diffident. It seems that the gist of his policy is disagreeing with
every position of his predecessor, George W. Bush, and that is
quarrelsomeness, not policy.
"This assessment of Obama's policy is not voiced only by his
Republican rivals in the U.S., or by those who hate some [aspects] of
his global [foreign] policy, but also by some proponents of his own
school of thought, like the well-known American author David Ignatius,
who recently wrote a critique of the Obama administration's policy that
was not confined to foreign [policy] affairs... Summarizing the
problematic aspects of Obama's conduct, he said that the public is more
afraid of a weak administration than a strong one!
"We are not talking [only] about harsh critics of this
administration, inside or outside the U.S. This is apparent from a
recent article by Lebanese-American writer Fuad 'Ajami, who slammed
Obama for his feebleness, his lack of leadership, and his inability to
take bold decisions under difficult circumstances, especially when it
comes to his position on the Syrian catastrophe. Nor is it only
Republicans who attack [Obama]. [Criticism is also voiced] by people who
were overjoyed by the arrival [in the White House] of a black Harvard
graduate with African and Islamic roots, the son of Hussein Obama. [They
expected him] to have a better understanding of the Islamic and Arab
societies and their nature. But eventually, as the helplessness of the
international community [to address the situation] in Syria increased
due to the [conduct of] the U.S. and Obama, it became apparent that this
man is unable to lead and that he hides his failure and ignorance
behind a lot of hypothetical talk about red, green and purple lines..."
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, David Ignatius, Iran, Syrian uprising
Look who's advising Obama
How does writing a book that has sold
about 2,800 copies when I last checked qualify someone to be
an adviser to the White House?
Shortly after announcing his newfound support for the legalization of gay marriage yesterday, President Barack Obama walked into an off-the-record foreign policy meeting with nine editors and columnists to discuss Afghanistan, Israel, NATO and the forthcoming G8 Summit at Camp David, sources present at the meeting tell me.
The nine: The New Yorker's David Remnick and Jane Mayer, Time Magazine's Joe Klein, Newsweek's Peter Beinart, The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, The New York Times's Carla Robbins, The Wall Street Journal's Gerald Seib, The Los Angeles Times's Doyle McManus, and David Ignatius of the Washington Post.
While some of these writers -- most notably Ignatius, one of the most respected and influential columnists in Washington's foreign policy circles today -- are familiar faces at the White House, the group as a whole marks a notable shift away from the Tom Friedmans and the David Brooks toward younger voices and fresh perspectives.
The group is also notable for the inclusion of writers with radically different views on the Israel debate -- most notably Beinart, who has become a lightning rod among Jews for his hyper-dovish stance, and Goldberg, who despite falling left of center and supporting a two-state solution is significantly to the right of the rest of this crowd. (See one heated Beinart-Goldberg debate here.)
Sources would not discuss the specific details of the conversation, as it was off the record, but did indicate that Obama looked to the group to help improve messaging* on the aforementioned foreign policy matters in the run-up to the 2012 election.
UPDATE: White House National Security Council spokesperson Tommy Vietor emails to clarify that last point: “The President didn’t ask for messaging advice. He simply politely noted that before writing that we haven’t offered enough ‘specifics’ on a given issue, that we’d appreciate it if they called over and gave us the opportunity to provide more information.”
*An earlier version of this post suggested Obama looked to the group for "messaging advice." The post has been updated for the sake of clarity, following Vietor's comments.
I respect Jeffrey Goldberg as a writer but if he's the 'right' here, this panel is heavily tilted left. Why not Jackson Diehl instead of Ignatius? Why Beinart - a fringe character if there ever was one - at all? This is what an Obama second term is going to look like, God forbid....
What could go wrong?
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, David Ignatius, Jackson Diehl, Jeffrey Goldberg, Peter Beinart
Just how badly Obama blew it
There's nothing really new in David Ignatius' Washington Post column on the part of Condoleeza Rice's book that deals with the 'peace process.' After all, the narrative was essentially disclosed by
Jackson Diehl of the same newspaper in an article I have linked dozens of times. But it's fascinating to see just how badly Obama messed up whatever opportunity was there by his insistence on being
the anti-Bush.
And what happened to this miraculous package? Because it’s the Middle East, you know the answer: It died, with the United States on the sidelines hoping and praying but Olmert and Abbas too weak politically to take the leap.
The collapse came the moment it seemed to become real. In September 2008, Olmert showed Abbas a map charting the boundaries of the new state. According to Rice, he asked Abbas to sign the deal on the spot, but the Palestinian leader balked and asked to consult his experts first. Olmert wouldn’t let him take a copy of the map, and the follow-up meeting never happened.
President Bush tried to revive the deal when the leaders separately visited Washington in November and December, but by then Olmert was under investigation for corruption charges, and Abbas apparently decided he could get a better deal with a Democratic president. “The conditions were almost ripe for a deal on our watch, but not quite,” writes Rice.
What followed this near-miss? That’s the most depressing part of the story. Rice kept mum, but she gave the new administration details of Olmert’s offer, including a State Department version of the map. She hoped the United States would use Olmert’s plan as a building block for negotiations — and perhaps even submit it to the U.N. Security Council.
But in one of President Obama’s biggest mistakes, he decided to start negotiations all over — and to demand an Israeli settlement freeze as a test of wills. What a mistake. He was outfoxed by Benjamin Netanyahu, the new Israeli prime minister. Three years later, the peace process is a lifeless corpse.
I don't think it's fair to say that Obama was 'outfoxed' by Netanyahu. He demanded (and
continues to demand) something that no Israeli Prime Minister - not Olmert or Livni either - could ever give him. Netanyahu did the only thing he could have done under the circumstances - fight Obama off.
Moreover, I don't believe that Rice is correct that the deal could have gone through. Even if the parties could have reached an agreement, Olmert did not have the political standing to sell a deal to the public. He was desperate to stay in office and out of jail and everyone here knew it. That's why he was willing to go so far to make a deal. And that's why the public would not have accepted it.
Turning it over to the UN also would not have worked - it would have been a betrayal of Israel. The deal with the 'peace process' since Day One has been "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed." Taking a partial deal like that and demanding that further negotiations start from there violates that rule.
But read the whole thing.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Condoleeza Rice, David Ignatius, Ehud K. Olmert, George W. Bush, Jackson Diehl
