Actually, he’s not a dolt. He’s a pretty smart guy. He just lets his ambitions and political instincts lead him to doltish positions so as to pander to whichever set of voters he’s out to try to suck into his inevitable presidential bid.
Thus, “Obama Turns His Back On Israel.”
I mean, with a title like that, you’d think that the Obama administration is cutting taxpayer funded arms deals to Israel, or shelling its coast line, or entering a mutual defense pact with Hezbollah, or sending money to support Iran’s nuclear program.
What’s Obama done that’s such a harsh and utter rejection of Israel?
The Obama administration has been seeking a way to avoid vetoing a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel. It has floated the idea of meeting Israel’s critics halfway with a U.N. “presidential statement” calling Israeli settlements “illegitimate.”
Yes, Obama has had the nerve, the gall, the short-sighted appalling lack of judgment signal the least amount of official displeasure possible at Israel’s ongoing settlement program on the West Bank. Never mind that nearly every single observer considers Israel’s slow-motion invasion of what’s been previously promised as land for a Palestinian state (especially to the east of Jerusalem) to be the biggest provocation by Israel and the greatest barrier to any negotiations, let alone lasting peace. The fact that Obama’s not out there with a shovel breaking ground on the next settlement is, to Romney (or to the audience he’s writing to) the greatest sin imaginable.
Whether or not such a statement is actually issued, the very idea is a mistake. Indeed, we have here in this single idea a display of multiple foreign-policy failures of this presidency. Let us count the ways the administration’s proposed action has already injured Israel and the United States.
For one thing, the U.N. condemnation put forward by the president puts Israel, our closest ally in the region, in an untenable position.
Israel is already in an untenable position. It cannot survive without US aid. It faces population pressures from the Palestinian and from its own internal Arab population The states around it are, at best, unfriendly neutrals and, at worst, sworn enemies (leaving aside that Israel makes a great whipping boy for many of those regimes). It also faces continued and growing condemnation for its actions towards the Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza — actions that deserve condemnation (even if they are by no means unprovoked).
In the face of this, Israel has been more than willing to wink and smile and then slap the US in the face through its actions around Middle East peace talks.
In exchange for peace, previous Israeli governments offered radical border concessions, surrendering most of the West Bank and even portions of Jerusalem. In 2005, the government of Ariel Sharon withdrew from the Gaza Strip, uprooting thousands of its own citizens. Yet all such proposals and steps toward peace have been met by Palestinian rejection, by intifadas, by suicide bombings, and by Qassam rocket fire.
Those previous Israeli governments have also rejected radical concessions from the Palestinians, built security barriers and locked down border crossings regardless of personal or economic impact on the Palestinians, responded to rocket fire with massively deadly shellings, committed war crimes, broken promises … and, steadily, unrepentantly, and intentionally allowed and encouraged its most radical religious patriots to invade, one settlement at a time, territory it had otherwise promised or conceded to the Palestinians, or at least had pledged to negotiate over.
Many of these actions have had, as I said, provocations (we’ll leave aside the whole cycle of violence tragedy in Israeli history). The Palestinian leadership and radicals are hardly white hats in this arena. But Israel has leveraged its greater wealth and defense technology (mostly courtesy of the US) to respond far more forcefully and brutally than anything the Palestinians have done. In some actions, they may not have had an easy or winnable choice, but in the matter of settlements, there is nothing save internal political pressure to explain their actions.
And Romney is not a blind enough dolt to actually not know that.
Isolated more than ever in the region, Israel must now contend with the fact that its principal backer in the world, the United States, is seeking to ingratiate itself with Arab opinion at its expense.
As opposed to ingratiating itself with Israeli opinion at its expense.
Will an increasingly tenuous relationship with the U.S., at the very moment when it is becoming more vulnerable, encourage Israel to be as flexible as it has in the past, or the reverse? The answer is clear.
Israeli flexibility has never shown any discernible pattern based on US actions — largely because US policy since Israel’s founding — regardless of who’s in the White House, has been reflexive support for anything Israel does, and vetoes of any criticism of its actions in the UN. Oh, and still more military aid.
For another thing, even on its own terms of supposedly promoting the Arab-Israeli peace process, this is not a step forward but a step back. By taking up and embracing a core Palestinian demand, as the president has done repeatedly on this issue over the past two years, the United States is removing incentives for the Palestinians to parley with Israel at all. They are induced to believe that they can simply wait until their demands are handed to them on a silver platter by Washington. The administration’s contemplated compromise in the U.N. thus would punish Israel and reward Palestinian intransigence.
Israel has, at times, slowed settlement growth, in particular areas, but has never, despite repeated pledges, ever frozen if or cut it back significantly. And this is hardly a new or whimsical demand by the Palestinians — they have pressed for it for decades, and Israel has alternated between shrugs of indifference and promises to do something about it Real Soon Now. And the US has sat by and clucked with shallow disapproval, at worse (American policy has always officially been to disapprove of these settlements; the Obama administration is the first to take that disapproval and pay a slight bit more lip service to it).
Suggesting that is removing Palestinian incentives to parley is like suggesting the US recognition of Israel’s right to exist is removing Israel’s incentives to parley.
The harm wrought by the Obama administration’s diplomatic decisionmaking is doubly driven home by the fact that it is taking place in that chamber of double-standards, the United Nations. For decades the U.N. has been the epicenter of the worldwide campaign to delegitimize Israel, a campaign that has often devolved into naked anti-Semitism. Democratic and Republican administrations alike have long resisted this vicious business. It was Daniel Patrick Moynihan who in 1975 denounced the U.N.’s “Zionism Equals Racism” resolution as an obscenity, and it was Pres. George H. W. Bush who in 1991 won its repeal. The Obama administration is abysmally remiss in departing from our proud tradition of standing by a democratic ally when the world’s most unsavory regimes gang up on it.
There is certainly anti-Israeli sentiment in the UN, some of it anti-Semitic in nature, some of a byblow of anti-American sentiment, some of it a matter of other regional and geo-politics, and some of it a result of Israel’s own actions.
Is there rightfully, though, any circumstance in which Romney thinks it would be appropriate to criticize Israel in the UN? If so, then argue this on the merits, not on the venue. If not, then it’s Romney that’s adding to the problem of the UN being “the chamber of double-standards.”
Finally, the episode reveals a strategic failure that transcends mishandling of the Israeli-Palestinian problem alone. For its first two years, the Obama administration downplayed the importance of promoting democracy around the world. Reflexively shunning the foreign-policy approach of its predecessor, it sought to engage adversaries like Iran and North Korea, coddle autocratic allies, and distance itself from democratic friends.
Because, of course, “promoting democracy” in Iraq and Afghanistan were such signal successes of the Bush Administration, and Bush clearly did so much to engage with and strengthen our relationships with all our democratic friends in, say, Europe. And certainly Bush (along with every other president) has never coddled “autocratic allies” (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan …), and dealt decisively and effectively in eliminating the threat of Iran and North Korea.
True, over the last few days the administration has belatedly recognized that, in the wake of the revolutions sweeping the Arab world, supporting aspirations for human freedom might be important.
Unlike so many on the Right who considered those revolutions to be the start of a new caliphate movement and a triumph of radicals against long-term allies. Did we hear Romney condemning that particular branch of his own party?
It has finally, for example, issued strong statements condemning the Iranian ayatollahs for their violent suppression of the democratic opposition.
The low opinion of the Obama administration toward the Iranian government’s “suppression of democratic opposition” has always been clear. On the other hand, for a variety of reasons (not least of which the actions of his own predecessor), Obama has needed to tread carefully to make sure that American support of the democracy movement in Iran doesn’t actually injure its support within the country or give the “ayatollahs” an excuse to crack down further. Believe it or not, some folks consider the United States as something a bit less than the arbiter of morality and international goodness.
But one step forward, two steps backward. President Obama’s decision to lean hard on Israel has the U.S. once again currying favor with dictators and distancing itself from democrats.
I ask again, Mitt, is there ever a circumstance, or anything that Israel could do, that would warrant “leaning hard” on Israel (as if a UN resolution is “leaning hard” on a country)? If not, then what’s the point of favoring democrats vs dictators?
Putting forward a misbegotten U.N. statement as a compromise was a tactical, strategic, and moral mistake.
I think you’ve hardly proven any of those adjectives, Mitt (in fact, aside from posturing, haven’t even established a case for them).
The administration may conceive of its action as a low cost, split-the-difference gesture, …
We some times call that “compromise,” Mitt. It’s unheard of amongst the GOP these days, I understand, but it has a lot of value to it.
… but it has harmed an ally, …
Since when has a UN resolution (or statement) ever harmed (or deterred, or shamed) Israel?
… sent a dangerous signal of inconstancy to allies and adversaries alike, …
One of the dangers of democracy, Mitt, is that you end up with a different president every now and then. That means inconsistency. And, frankly, I welcome the disconnect in the tone and manner of this president’s foreign policy vs. the previous one.
… and betrayed basic American principles.
In some unestablished but very scary-sounding fashion. Which principles were those again, Mitt?
That’s three mistakes in one. I hope in the end the U.S. vetoes the anti-Israel resolution, but significant damage has already been done.
Only if your position is that Israel can do no wrong, the United States must always support it no matter what, and any straying from those positions is a significantly damaging mistake that betrays “basic American principles.”
There’s a lot to like and admire about Israel, and I support its continued existence and flourishing. But that doesn’t mean Israel doesn’t make mistakes, or even intentionally pursue (for decades) policies that are destructive and immoral. Mitt — who, again, is a lot smarter than he sounds — comes off with that 4-year-old unwavering loyalty for a parent that one usually only sees with the “America, Love It or Leave It” crowd, only in this case it’s directed toward unquestioning loyalty toward Israel … and is clearly an effort to garner electoral support from folks who think Middle Eastern politics are exactly that black and white.
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