State Department spokesman John Kirby: 'We don't have to accept reality'
.@apdiplowriter (Matt Lee) demolishes State Department spokesman John Kirby at last Wednesday's State Department briefing. The subject was North Korea but it could as well have been Iran or the 'Middle East peace process.'
Let's go to the videotape.
If you had any doubts that the Obama administration is living in Fantasyland, this should resolve them.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, John Kirby, Matt Lee, North Korea, nuclear weapons, realists' fantasy
Cross Jeb Bush off my list?
I may be able to cross Jeb Bush off the list of potential candidates for whom I would vote. The Wall Street Journal reports that Bush's foreign policy is more likely to be like his father's than his brother's. George W. Bush may not have been perfect (although between 2002-05 he was awfully close to it), but he was far better than his father,
George H.W. Bush, whose hostility to Israel has only been exceeded by Barack Hussein Obama and Jimmy Carter since Israel gained its independence in 1948 (Hat Tip:
Memeorandum).
One early indication suggests he is leaning toward his
father’s more pragmatic and restrained philosophy. The former Florida
governor is considering naming Meghan O’Sullivan as his top
foreign-policy aide; several people familiar with the deliberations
describe her as the front-runner for the post.
In many ways, the 45-year-old Ms. O’Sullivan, who now teaches at Harvard, bridges the two Bush worlds. She
served as deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan for
much of George W. Bush ’s second term and was heavily involved in
carrying out his Iraq policies. But she wasn’t among the neoconservative
advisers who drove the initial decision to invade Iraq, and she is more
closely aligned with—and is being promoted by—the kind of pragmatists
who dominated George H.W. Bush ’s presidency.
Daniel Larison
doesn't believe it.
If that is supposed to be a sign that Bush’s foreign policy won’t
be like his brother’s, what would be evidence that it will? Choosing
someone “heavily involved” in carrying out George W. Bush’s policy in
Iraq to be a “top foreign policy aide” is practically an endorsement of
that policy. It certainly doesn’t suggest that Bush thinks there was
very much wrong with how his brother’s administration handled things.
O’Sullivan served as an assistant to the staggeringly incompetent Paul Bremer at the CPA in the early days of the occupation. She was an early advocate
of the “surge,” which should make it clear that she isn’t as much of a
“pragmatist” as this article would lead us to believe. Short of choosing
a leading Iraq war booster, Bush could hardly be making his agreement
with his brother’s policies more obvious.
No one should be fooled when someone claims that Jeb Bush is
following in his father’s footsteps on foreign policy. George W. Bush
indulged in some rhetoric about “humility” and realism as a candidate,
too, and he relied on his father’s reputation on foreign policy to make
up for the fact that he knew nothing about it. It turned out that there
was no substance to Bush’s rhetoric, and the country endured the effects
of one of the most incompetent administrations on foreign policy in our
modern history. We have the benefit of that experience, so there is no
excuse for falling for the same con twice.
So Larison is arguing that Jeb Bush is 'as incompetent' on foreign policy as his brother? What could go wrong?
Labels: foreign policy, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Iraq, Jeb Bush, realism, realists' fantasy
Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Monday, January 7.
1) An intellectually honest editorial
Daled Amos and Israel Matzav linked to a Washington Post editorial, Overheated rhetoric on Israeli settlements:
Overall, the vast majority of the nearly 500,000 settlers in
Jerusalem and the West Bank live in areas close to Israel’s 1967
borders. Data compiled by the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East
Peace show that more than 80 percent of them could be included in Israel
if the country annexed just more than 4 percent of the West Bank — less
than the 5 percent proposed by President Bill Clinton 12 years ago.
Diplomats were most concerned by Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to allow
planning and zoning — but not yet construction — in a four-mile strip of
territory known as E-1 that lies between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim, a
settlement with a population of more than 40,000. Palestinians claim
that Israeli annexation of the land would cut off their would-be capital
in East Jerusalem from the West Bank and block a key north-south route
between West Bank towns. Israel wants the land for similar reasons, to
prevent Ma’ale Adumim — which will almost certainly be annexed to Israel
in any peace deal — from being isolated. Both sides insist that the
other can make do with a road corridor.
This is a difficult issue that should be settled at the negotiating
table, not by fiat. But Mr. Netanyahu’s zoning approval is hardly the
“almost fatal blow” to a two-state solution that U.N. Secretary General
Ban Ki-moon described.
I won't pretend to agree with some of the criticism of Israel in the
editorial, but this is a very important point. Nothing Israel is doing
endangers the peace process.
In praising this editorial, Barry Rubin explains two ways in which the settlement blame game is wrong:
First: the day after the Israel-PLO agreement was signed in 1993,
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin made it clear that Israel’s interpretation
was that it permitted continued construction on existing settlements.
The Palestinian Authority did not object, and that policy did not
prevent it from negotiating over the next seven years.
Misrepresentations — deliberately? — often make people think that Israel
is establishing new settlements or expanding the size of existing ones.
Both claims are untrue.
Second: if the Palestinian side wants an end to settlements, that should
be an incentive for reaching a peace agreement faster and thus getting
rid of all settlements on the territory of the new state of Palestine.
Notice that Israel — under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, no less —
demolished all of the settlements in the Gaza Strip as, among other
things, a sign of what could be gained by a peace deal.
Yet the Palestinian side has been in no hurry to make a deal. In theory,
when it complains about settlements, the response should be: “So why
don’t you compromise for peace and get rid of them, rather than having
them become ‘larger?’”
This is important. It means that those who complain that settlements are
destroying the peace process are really the ones who are preventing
peace. They are providing cover for the Palestinians, who refuse to
negotiate in good faith with Israel. If Abbas knew that elite world
opinion thought he was the obstructionist, he might be inclined to
negotiate. Since he knows that the "settlements" excuse exists he can
drag his feet, feigning outrage and pay no price - diplomatic or
political - for his obstinacy and get Israel blamed in the bargain, he
has no incentive to negotiate.
The editorial is extraordinary for another reason. Shortly after
Binyamin Netanyahu formed a new government in 2009, The Washington Post
ran an editorial, Israel's new Government and Palestinian Statehood, that concluded:
The problem with that course is that it could deliver a fatal blow to
the two-state solution, which most Israelis recognize as the only way
to preserve a democratic Jewish state. As outgoing Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert understood, the time for that solution may be running out. It is
vital that the United States and European governments insist on Israeli
acceptance of it -- just as they have done with Palestinian governments
-- and that they publicly oppose actions that could undermine it, such
as settlement expansion. If that creates tension between the United
States and Israel in the short run, the result may be productive.
Israelis -- starting with Mr. Netanyahu -- need to get the message that
acceptance of a two-state solution has become a prerequisite for normal
relations with the United States.
Four years ago the Washington Post viewed the newly elected Prime
Minister Netanyahu the primary obstacle to peace in the Middle East.
What's changed?
A few months later, a member of the of the editorial board (and former
Jerusalem correspondent for the paper) Jackson Diehl wrote Abbas's waiting game on peace with Israel:
Yet on Wednesday afternoon, as he prepared for the White House
meeting in a suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Pentagon City, Abbas insisted
that his only role was to wait. He will wait for Hamas to capitulate to
his demand that any Palestinian unity government recognize Israel and
swear off violence. And he will wait for the Obama administration to
force a recalcitrant Netanyahu to freeze Israeli settlement construction
and publicly accept the two-state formula.
...
What's interesting about Abbas's hardline position, however, is what it
says about the message that Obama's first Middle East steps have sent
to Palestinians and Arab governments. From its first days the Bush
administration made it clear that the onus for change in the Middle East
was on the Palestinians: Until they put an end to terrorism,
established a democratic government and accepted the basic parameters
for a settlement, the United States was not going to expect major
concessions from Israel.
Obama, in contrast, has repeatedly and publicly stressed the need for a
West Bank settlement freeze, with no exceptions. In so doing he has
shifted the focus to Israel. He has revived a long-dormant Palestinian
fantasy: that the United States will simply force Israel to make
critical concessions, whether or not its democratic government agrees,
while Arabs passively watch and applaud. "The Americans are the leaders
of the world," Abbas told me and Post Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt.
"They can use their weight with anyone around the world. Two years ago
they used their weight on us. Now they should tell the Israelis, 'You
have to comply with the conditions.' "
Last year, in Mahmoud Abbas's unhappy anniversary, Diehl wrote:
Abbas’s defenders will claim that Netanyahu’s right-wing government,
and the Obama administration’s inability to influence it, left him with
few options. That’s a canard. In fact, Abbas has never seriously tested
the Israeli leader. He could have done that by fully committing to the
negotiations the Obama administration tried to organize or to those
sponsored by Jordan’s King Abdullah this year. That would have forced
Netanyahu to reveal his terms for Palestinian statehood — and brought
real pressure to bear on him if they were unreasonable.
Instead, Abbas has repeatedly backed away from serious diplomacy, citing
as an excuse Israeli settlement construction in Jerusalem and the West
Bank — something that did not stop him from participating in
negotiations with previous Israeli governments. He embarked on his
unity-U.N.-intifada strategy on the premise that it would bring about
Palestinian statehood without the need for negotiations with Netanyahu.
And, not for the first time, Mahmoud Abbas succeeded only in delaying Palestinian statehood — and weakening his own cause.
I believe that Jackson Diehl was the mover behind last week's editorial,
as he was watched Mahmoud Abbas closely over the past four years. This
is the way journalism should work. opinions and reporting should be
based on observations not unsupported allegations. As the editors of the
New York Times becomes even more unhinged when discussing Israel, it's
encouraging that another important paper can discuss Israel soberly.
Postscript: On Twitter two of those to criticize the editorial were M. J. Rosenberg and Lara Friedman. Rosenberg a known anti-Zionist accused editorial page editor (and Diehl's boss) Fred Hiatt of being an "Israel firster." Friedman a leader of the supposedly pro-Israel group, Americans for Peace Now, cited anti-Zionist Matt Duss. See item #2 below.
2) Zealots, the truth and polls
Recently, a campaign to support the flagging nomination of Sen. Chuck
Hagel as Secretary of Defense began. Part of that campaign were two
op-eds in the New York Times casting opponents of Hagel as extremists.
One by longtime political correspondent James Besser asserted:
There is also a lesson here for American Jewish leaders, who
increasingly tremble in the face of a small minority of zealots, whose
vision of Israel’s future diverges from that of the majority of American
Jews and clashes with core American values of freedom and democracy.
The other by regular columnist Thomas Friedman argued:
The only thing standing between Israel and national suicide any more
is America and its willingness to tell Israel the truth. But most U.S.
senators, policy makers and Jews prefer to stick their heads in the
sand, because confronting Israel is so unpleasant and politically
dangerous.
In different ways both argued that mainstream support for Israel is
driven by fanatics who are divorced from reality and that support for
Hagel, came from thoughtful people free from ideological blinders. It's
interesting to revisit these arguments in light of a recent poll of American views towards the Middle East. (via Daily Alert)
There continue to be stark partisan differences in Middle East
sympathies. Conservative Republicans maintain strong support for Israel
with fully 75% saying they sympathize with Israel compared with just 2%
who sympathize with the Palestinians. By contrast, liberal Democrats are
much more divided: 33% sympathize more with Israel, 22% with the
Palestinians. Independents sympathize more with Israel by a 47% to 13%
margin.
There were two other categories, but the only group that didn't have a
preference for Israel over the Palestinians by at least 3 to 1 was those
self-identified as "liberal Democrats."
Friedman and Besser comfortably fit in the liberal Democrat, the least
pro-Israel, grouping. Each, in his own way, from that perspective,
accuses the mainstream pro-Israel organizations of being out of touch
and in agreement with extremists.
I pointed this out to Barry Rubin who summarized the phenomenon like this:
Option 1: Israel is at fault for losing the Obama cult crowd
and a small but vocal increasingly left-wing sector of Americans (many
of whom aren’t that thrilled with the United States either).
Option 2: Given an increasingly left-wing ideology that’s based on
faulty assumptions and neglects the dangerous radicalism of Islamist
forces and other enemies of America, it is the dominant worldview in the
mass media, academia, and ruling circles in America that is to blame
for turning away from Israel.
Understand this well: Option 1 requires Israel to change; Option 2
requires the people voicing such complaints about Israel to change.
Well, these people don’t want to examine their assumptions and change
their views. They’d end up suffering for their support of Israel, they’d
be out of step with the mob; they might have to—shudder!—step away from
what’s popular and “in.” My goodness, they might even have to question
Obama’s brilliance and policies!
No contest.
So it’s not surprising that Option 1 wins out. Hey, do what you have to
do to avoid admitting your wrong and paying some price for telling the
truth. But don’t blame us.
When J-Street was founded, its supporters claimed that it represented
the true consensus of pro-Israel Americans. More specifically they
claimed that there needed to be an alternative to AIPAC,
which was too "right wing." Now, more than four years later, AIPAC is
still the main pro-Israel lobby and J-Street remains marginal. The
market for J-Street's pro-Israel views is rather limited.
If groups claiming to be "pro-peace" don't have much traction in the pro-Israel community, who are their allies?
This leads to another phenomenon. Last week, Haviv Rettig Gur wrote How the Hagel nomination battle became a fight over the Israel lobby. Part of Gur's argument is:
And opposition has even come from gay rights groups, including the
Human Rights Campaign. Though Hagel has apologized for comments made in
the 1990s that seemed to denigrate gays, the criticism has continued
from some quarters of the gay rights movement, especially on the right.
In the latest critique, published in a full-page ad in the New York
Times on Thursday, the pro-gay rights Republican group Log Cabin
Republicans urged supporters to “tell President Obama that Chuck Hagel
is wrong for Defense Secretary” and expressed support for “a stronger
and more inclusive Republican Party.”
Hagel’s supporters have responded vigorously to the agitation of the
Israel lobby, and in the process perhaps sought to crowd out opposition
to Hagel that can’t be as easily dismissed as illegitimate and –
Zbigniew Brzezinski said it outright – disloyal.
What's shocking isn't that there is strong support for Israel in
America, but that a significant minority of the political elite are
willing to disparage this support in such crude terms.
While Besser or Friedman might claim that they are pro-Israel or looking
out for Israel's best interests, what's undeniable is that they find
themselves closer to those who would suggest that Israel's supporters
are guilty of dual loyalty than to mainstream pro-Israel opinion. They
don't realize how far they have migrated.
Richard Baehr has related thoughts about American public opinion regarding Israel.
3) The "realist" paradox
Jackson Diehl, in an essay today, The Middle East Morass writes:
In Washington, some of the loudest calls for Obama’s reengagement
come from the “realist” foreign policy camp, populated by figures such
as former national security advisers Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent
Scowcroft — and former senator Chuck Hagel, whom Obama is considering
for defense secretary. These folks opposed the war in Iraq, and they
reject U.S. intervention in Syria or military action against Iran’s
nuclear program. They have been arguing for years that it is time for
the United States to recognize limits to its power.
When it comes to Israel, however, the realists assume boundless U.S.
strength. If only he chooses to do so, they argue, Obama could join with
U.S. allies or the U.N Security Council in imposing a two-state
solution on the Israelis and Palestinians, like it or not. The
supposition seems to be that a United States too weak to force Bashar
al-Assad out of Syria can compel Israel’s advanced democracy and the
leaderless Palestinians to accept compromises they have resisted for
decades.
I don't buy everything in this essay. I'm not convinced of the good
intentions of Brent Scowcroft or Zbigniew Brzezinski. However this is an
important point.
Instapundit points to a paradox in Senator Hagel's expected nomination.
Labels: American support for Israel, Chuck Hagel, E-1, East Jerusalem, Jackson Diehl, Judea and Samaria construction, Middle East Media Sampler, Middle East peace process, realists' fantasy, Soccer Dad, Washington Post
Obsession
In the Washington Post, Jackson Diehl makes some good points about the futility of the
obsession of the Obama administration - and of several of its new appointees - with bringing about 'peace' between Israel and the 'Palestinians.'
In Washington, some of the loudest calls for Obama’s reengagement
come from the “realist” foreign policy camp, populated by figures such
as former national security advisers Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent
Scowcroft — and former senator Chuck Hagel,
whom Obama is considering for defense secretary. These folks opposed
the war in Iraq, and they reject U.S. intervention in Syria or military action against Iran’s nuclear program. They have been arguing for years that it is time for the United States to recognize limits to its power.
When
it comes to Israel, however, the realists assume boundless U.S.
strength. If only he chooses to do so, they argue, Obama could join with
U.S. allies or the U.N Security Council in imposing a two-state solution
on the Israelis and Palestinians, like it or not. The supposition seems
to be that a United States too weak to force Bashar al-Assad out of
Syria can compel Israel’s advanced democracy and the leaderless Palestinians to accept compromises they have resisted for decades.
There’s nothing wrong with the realists’ goal. Though often accused of being anti-Israel, Brzezinski and Scowcroft have proposed parameters for a Palestinian state
close to those embraced by previous Israeli governments. Their solution
is eminently logical; it’s the means of getting there that beggar
belief. Obama’s first term was proof: The president proved unable even
to force Israel to freeze settlements, or oblige the Palestinian
Authority to negotiate — much less dictate a deal.
European
governments mostly realized long ago that no U.S. administration would
or could strong-arm the two sides. Yet they cling to another dogma, one
that I suspect is shared by Secretary of State-to-be John Kerry:
that an Israeli-Palestinian settlement is the key to stabilizing the
broader Middle East, from Morocco to Iraq. It’s an idea nourished by old
and new Arab rulers across the region, from Egypt’s new Islamist
president to the kings of Saudi Arabia and Jordan, who are eager to
divert U.S. attention from their own troubles.
If Palestinian
statehood is so crucial, then it must be at the center of U.S. foreign
policy, regardless of whether the time is ripe. But is it? As Egypt
polarizes between secular and Islamist camps, and Syria’s vicious war
pits Sunni Muslims against Alawites and their Shiite allies, it seems
clear that the region’s biggest conflicts are those of Arabs against
Arabs. But Western governments are at a loss over what to do about these
battles. For the Israelis and Palestinians there is, at least, a
well-known formula: conferences to be arranged, shuttles between
capitals, dickering over conditions and pre-conditions.
I'm not sure he's right about the Europeans 'getting it,' but the rest of that excerpt is correct. So why the obsession? Does the US share the Arab goal of extirpating the Jewish state? (I believe that the Obama administration shares that goal, but I don't believe the American people support it).
Then we have Diehl's prescription:
But what’s needed is a concerted but low-key policy, one that aims at
creating conditions for a long-term solution but does not pretend that
it can be delivered in the next year or two. Obama should encourage
Israel’s new government to take palliative steps to ease movement and
promote development in the West Bank; he should press Egypt’s ruling
Islamists to exert a moderating influence over Hamas. Above all, he
should accept the lesson of his first term: that making Middle East
peace a presidential priority will not make it happen.
This hints at what is probably the biggest weakness of the entire 'peace process.' From the beginning, every negotiation between Israel and the 'Palestinians' has had a deadline. Deadlines in negotiations don't work unless each side has something to be permanently lost if the deadline is missed. Sadly, the 'Palestinians' don't have the feeling that they will ever permanently lose the opportunity to gain a 'state.' So the deadlines won't work. But so long as the deadlines are there, they will be used as a hammer to beat up on Israel.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Jackson Diehl, Middle East peace process, Palestinian state RIGHT NOW syndrome, realists' fantasy
'Realism' exposed as fantasy
Jonah Goldberg
draws inspiration from his first trip to Israel.
In Egypt, the popular uprising unfolding is not about Israel but about autocratic brutality, economic stagnation and skyrocketing prices. The same goes for Tunisia as well as the popular protests brutally crushed by Iran's mullahs in 2009. Turkey is not Islamifying because of the Palestinians. Al Qaeda surely hates Israel, but its roots lay in hatred of the Saudi royal family and the Islamist ambitions of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
And yet the "realist" fantasy that an Arabs-first (or Muslims-first) foreign policy will yield rich rewards endures. The French have followed that advice for generations. They nurtured the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in exile. They give special preference to their former colonies. They pander to Arab sensibilities. And what has it gotten them? A lot of burning cars but few lucrative oil deals.
As we've recently been reminded, Israel is the only truly democratic regime in the region, and therefore the most stable. But, we are told, if we were only more conciliatory to corrupt dictatorial regimes and more sympathetic to the "Arab street," the region would be more stable. (Ironically, this is very close to Israel's own position, no doubt because it will take any peace it can get.)
No doubt this is what the solons of American foreign policy hear from their Arab and Muslim interlocutors. And it is certainly what the autocrats in the Middle East want everyone to believe, starting with their own subjects. Tyrants always want to focus on scapegoats, insults to national honor and shadowy enemies. Why apologize for skyrocketing bread prices when you can demonize the "Zionist entity"?
Addressing the real problems in the region is just too hard, particularly when any effort to take attention off the Palestinians is greeted with outrage from an anti-Israel industry that cravenly singles out Israel as the worst human rights abuser in the neighborhood. Israel puts Arab critics in the Knesset. Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia put them in jail or in an unmarked grave.
All of this would be just as true if Israel retreated to the 1949 armistice lines tomorrow.
Indeed, it would be just as true. But a week or a month or a year or five years afterward, there would be no Israel, or there would be a lot of dead Jews (God forbid). And that, my friends, is what this is really about.
Welcome to Israel, Jonah.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Egypt, Israel is a Jewish state, Israel is my home, Palestinians, realists' fantasy, Tunisia, Turkish obsession with Israel
