WarSclerotic

JPost.com | BlogCentral | Center Field | Obama’s nation – or abomination?.

A mentor of mine teaches that you always end up making three speeches – the one you plan to deliver, the one you actually deliver and the one you wish you’d delivered. Similarly, there are three presidencies – the one the candidate promises, the one that actually occurs and the one the president, partisans and historians argue about forever after. It will surprise many caught in the Israel bubble, that while Israelis have been obsessing about the Biden brouhaha, President Barack Obama was focused on pushing his health care legislation through Congress. With this historic health care bill, Obama fulfilled yet moved beyond the presidency he promised, defined his administration as liberal and secured his place in history.

Victory was costly. Obama broke the defining vow that launched him into the White House. He failed to become the post-partisan, red-and-blue together healer he hoped to be – and which Americans elected him to be. But he fulfilled his campaign promise to be a “transformational” leader. In 2008, he offended his rival Hillary Clinton by saying bluntly that “Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not, that Bill Clinton did not,” and that Reagan “put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.”

Barack Obama has bet his political future on the assumption that America is ready for the change he just shoved through Congress. With his administration staffed by former Clintonites, Obama was determined not to replicate the Clinton health care debacle. Rather than dictating from the White House down Pennsylvania Avenue to Capitol Hill, Obama let Congressional Democrats write the law. The downside is that Obama’s health care reform attracted no Republican votes in the House of Representatives.

This failure marks a dramatic fall from the bipartisan high of Election Night 2008 and deviates from the American standard for passing historic legislation. Franklin Roosevelt passed Social Security and Lyndon Johnson passed Medicare with bipartisan support. The upside is that Obama has a big win, despite having been counted out weeks ago, when the Republican unknown Scott Brown won the Massachusetts Senate seat Democrats assumed was theirs because the late Senator Ted Kennedy occupied it for so long.

Power is like a muscle – the more it is exercised, the more it grows. Obama’s victory will make him stronger, and will make America more Obama’s nation. Republicans fear that Obama’s nation is an abomination. Obama does not have enough time to prove them wrong regarding health care. Even he admits that this health care investment will take years to pay off. But Obama can win the health care debate, at least in the short term, if he applies the same determination he just demonstrated to his administration’s defining challenge – producing jobs for millions of unemployed Americans.

This week Americans learned what Israelis learned last week: Obama spent his years in Chicago wisely, mastering the political wards’ kill-or-be-killed ethos. No one could have risen so far, so fast, without a spine of steel beneath his Harvardian eloquence. And just as he blithely muscled past Republicans and bipartisan sensibilities on his way to Congressional victory, Obama brutally ambushed Bibi Netanyahu. Israel should not have walked right into Obama’s Chicagoland sucker punch, although Obama, shrewdly, had his associates administer the beating.

Unfortunately, the Middle East masses are less malleable and more violent than 535 American legislators. The Obama treatment proved incendiary, stirring Palestinian violence while calcifying Palestinian rejectionism. Obama must learn what another young president, John Kennedy, learned a few weeks into his presidency with the Bay of Pigs. Presidential action and inaction, presidential words and gestures, can kill. Especially in an area as volatile as the Middle East, given the history of Palestinian recalcitrance, and with the world piling on against Israel, exploiting a mistake to “condemn” Israel was counterproductive.

Many commentators are correct in wishing Obama would learn to be as tough on Iran and other American enemies as he is on America’s friends. Not only will George Mitchell now have to work even harder to lower the rhetorical temperature over Jerusalem, from all sides, but Obama risks looking like a substitute teacher punishing the timid A-student who whispered in class while failing to control the true troublemakers vandalizing the classroom.

The stress test Obama imposed on Israel highlighted many faults in Israel’s political culture, too. The foolish claim that Obama is an anti-Semite because he criticized Israel demeaned all Zionists – and undermined those of who fight against the real threat of anti-Semitism. Just as our enemies must be taught not to jump from every disagreement about Israeli policy to negating Israel itself, some Israelis must learn that not every disagreement is a call to destroy Israel, or anti-Semitic. No one should call anyone a bigot so casually, let alone the leader of Israel’s staunchest ally. It is untrue – and counterproductive. Just as we should condemn the hooligans who threatened to disrupt Rahm Emanuel’s son’s bar mitzvah when rumors suggested the Emanuel family was considering an Israeli venue, we should repudiate the verbal bullies who prefer to cast aspersions rather than debate policies.

Obama’s aggressiveness also imposed a stress test on American Jewry – and the jury is out regarding the results there. Obama’s team is calculating that if Jews could not bring themselves to vote for George W. Bush even when he stood up for Israel, few Jews will abandon Obama for pushing Israel around. American Jews remain more committed to liberalism than Zionism. No presidential election has ever been determined by a president’s Middle East record.

Yet foreign policy failures have doomed presidencies. As Obama rests on his laurels, as he pushes for more jobs, he should remember that his great threat comes not from Bibi Netanyahu but from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. To be another American president who watched Jewish neighborhoods be built in areas of Jerusalem, the Jewish people’s historic capital, that were previously uninhabited is no great shame. To be the first American president who watched Iran go nuclear – could be disastrous.

Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University and a Shalom Hartman Research Fellow  in Jerusalem. He is the author of Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today. His latest book The Reagan Revolution:  A Very Short Introduction was recently published by Oxford University Press.

Obama hosts Netanyahu after week of bilateral tensions – Haaretz – Israel News.

By Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz Service and News Agencies

President and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testing Netanyahu’s will for peace, U.S. source says.

U.S. President Barack Obama held a one-on-one meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Tuesday as Israel sought to smooth over a diplomatic spat sparked by the announcement of Israeli construction in east Jerusalem. Efforts to restore ties may have hit a roadblock, however, with the approval Tuesday of a further 20 east Jerusalem homes beyond the Green Line at the site of the former Shepherd Hotel. In spite of attempts on both the Israeli and American sides to bring the crisis to an end, there is still lingering tension and lack of trust within the Obama administration toward Netanyahu. An American source close to the administration said that Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have decided to “test” Netanyahu and see whether he will carry out his promised gestures of good will toward the Palestinians. According to an Israeli source who has discussed the matter with senior U.S. officials, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the president are dissatisfied with a letter given to them by Netanyahu, in which he detailed steps he is willing to take to restore American confidence in his government. The prime minister and his aides said that a meeting with Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden on Monday, which served as a preamble to the meeting with Obama, was conducted in excellent spirits. Israel had angered Biden by announcing plans for 1,600 new Jewish homes in east Jerusalem during his visit to the country two weeks ago. An Israeli source noted that both Biden and Clinton used strong language and made it clear to Netanyahu that he would need to make further concessions to American demands in their meeting if trust is to be restored. The same source said that the Americans are convinced that the answers Netanyahu had given them are insufficient. Washington officials have also been irritated by Netanyahu’s attempts to draw equivalency between building inside Israel’s internationally recognized borders and in east Jerusalem. “I think at one point the prime minister added that he did not see a distinction necessarily between building in Jerusalem and building in Tel Aviv. We disagree with that,” a White House spokesman said ahead of the meeting. In a sign of White House concerns about lingering tensions, press coverage of the Oval Office talks was barred and no public statements were planned. Before seeing Obama, Netanyahu told U.S. lawmakers he feared peace talks may be delayed for another year unless Palestinians drop their demand for a full freeze on Jewish building beyond the Green Line, including in east Jerusalem. “We must not be trapped by an illogical and unreasonable demand,” Netanyahu said during his meeting with House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other congressional leaders, according to his spokesman. “It could put the peace negotiations on hold for another year,” he said of the talks, suspended since December 2008.

US warns citizens against travel to Iran.

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The Obama administration has warned Americans against travelling to Iran.

The Obama administration warned Americans on Tuesday against travelling to Iran, citing the risk of hostility, harassment or arrest.

The State Department warning singled out US-Iranian dual nationals, noting that Iranian authorities have prevented several Iranian-Americans from leaving the country since 2009, sometimes for several months.

“Americans of Iranian origin should consider the risk of being targeted by authorities before planning travel to Iran,” it said, noting Iranian-Americans have been detained in the Islamic republic on such charges as espionage and posing a threat to national security.

“Iranian authorities deny access to the US Interests Section in Tehran to dual nationals because Iranian authorities consider them to be solely Iranian citizens.”

Iran does not recognise dual citizenship.

The document, which updates a travel warning issued on July 1, 2009, said “US citizens who travel to Iran should exercise caution” in light of the tense political climate, including outbreaks of violence, that has prevailed since last June’s contested presidential elections.

US President Barack Obama’s administration is at loggerheads with Tehran, which denies Western and Israeli claims it is developing nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear energy program. The United States is also leading the charge to slap a fourth round of UN sanctions on Iran.

The US government does not have diplomatic or consular relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Israeli leader gets warmer welcome in Congress – News – Politics – bnd.com.

AP Diplomatic Writer Barry Schweid contributed to this report.

Read more: http://www.bnd.com/2010/03/22/1185002/clinton-accuses-israel-of-hurting.html#ixzz0j2qm6Ydo

History News Network.

[Moshe Dann, a former assistant professor of history, is a writer and journalist living in Jerusalem.]

President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s attack on Israel is failing spectacularly.

Most Israelis — especially those in the center and left — have rallied around Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. Judging by the media — especially television talk shows — Netanyahu’s popularity has soared following the rebuke from Hillary Clinton. Even those who usually berate him have come to his defense. American Jewish leaders and Congress are also pushing back against Clinton’s hysteria and Obama’s stern reprimands.

After all, the issue of sovereignty in Jerusalem, and therefore who sets the rules, is hardly something that Israelis are prepared to consider. Everyone has understood this for forty years. Since Camp David, in 1978, every American president has accepted that Jerusalem is a final status issue. So why would the Obama administration bring it up now?

To then call Jewish neighborhoods — in Jerusalem — “settlements,” to dispute the right of Israel to renovate a synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, to scold Israel for wanting to enforce building codes and demolish illegal Arab buildings built in an historic, archeological park, is beyond appalling. To use Hillary’s word, it’s “humiliating.” And to paraphrase her again, it is a deliberate attempt to humiliate the Jewish people.

Obama’s ambush seems to have been a trap waiting to be enacted. The question everyone is asking: why? Let’s look at the administration’s strategy regarding five policy areas:

Iran: Obama’s policy of using sanctions to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear capability has failed. Israel represents the only military option. Pushing Israel around on minor issues may prevent a surprise attack on Iran.

Afghanistan and Pakistan: Vice President Joe Biden foolishly suggested that Israel’s difficulties with the Palestinians were affecting America’s struggles to the east.

Jerusalem and settlements: Obama and his administration have made it clear that they do not accept an Israeli presence in areas which it acquired in the Six Day War (1967). This is not a new position, nor is it different from that of most countries in the world. But most have refrained from making this an issue, especially because Arab terrorism is still a problem.

The Palestinian Authority: In its struggle with Hamas, Fatah needs to show that it is powerful. For all the talk about a two-state solution, however, according to Dr. Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Research, the Palestinian street still believes that only through violence will they achieve their aims.

Siding with the Palestinians on Jerusalem, Obama’s strategy seems intended to preempt Israeli sovereignty. The result quickly followed Vice President Joe Biden’s departure: Arab rioters engaged in pitched battles with police as Arab Palestinian leaders called for a renewal of the uprising (“intifada”) that swept the country after Arafat reject the offers at Camp David in 2000.

The potential for Arab violence is always there; it only needs a trigger. But previous attempts to ignite the kind of widespread terrorism and homicide bombings that frequented Israel have failed. Calls by Palestinian leaders for Muslims to engage in violence to protect the al-Aqsa mosque because of archeological excavations, or rebuilding a synagogue, have attracted little support.

And, unlike the situation ten years ago when a handful of policemen faced mobs of many hundreds, thousands of Israeli police were sent to Jerusalem to ensure calm. It worked.

America: Has Obama written off the Jewish vote in favor of Muslims? His outreach to the Muslim world and his direct appeal to American Muslims indicate a shift in political calculations. Facing an uphill battle in midterm elections, Obama may hope that he can salvage what seems to be a losing battle at home and abroad by knuckling Israel.

With a few Jewish advisors to protect him from charges of anti-Semitism, he may try for a brass ring in the Middle East merry-go-round. That would assume that voters are stupid. Many may be, but not enough.

A well-known columnist recently accused Israel of drunk-driving behavior. The drunk-with-power driver, however, is sitting in the White House.

Alan M. Dershowitz: Obama’s Legacy and the Iranian Bomb – WSJ.com.

Neville Chamberlain was remembered for appeasing Germany, not his progressive social programs.

ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ

The gravest threat faced by the world today is a nuclear-armed Iran. Of all the nations capable of producing nuclear weapons, Iran is the only one that might use them to attack an enemy.

There are several ways in which Iran could use nuclear weapons. The first is by dropping an atomic bomb on Israel, as its leaders have repeatedly threatened to do. Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president of Iran, boasted in 2004 that an Iranian attack would kill as many as five million Jews. Mr. Rafsanjani estimated that even if Israel retaliated with its own nuclear bombs, Iran would probably lose about 15 million people, which he said would be a small “sacrifice” of the billion Muslims in the world.

The second way in which Iran could use nuclear weapons would be to hand them off to its surrogates, Hezbollah or Hamas. A third way would be for a terrorist group, such as al Qaeda, to get its hands on Iranian nuclear material. It could do so with the consent of Iran or by working with rogue elements within the Iranian regime.

Finally, Iran could use its nuclear weapons without ever detonating a bomb. By constantly threatening Israel with nuclear annihilation, it could engender so much fear among Israelis as to incite mass immigration, a brain drain, or a significant decline in people moving to Israel.

These are the specific ways in which Iran could use nuclear weapons, primarily against the Jewish state. But there are other ways in which a nuclear-armed Iran would endanger the world. First, it would cause an arms race in which every nation in the Middle East would seek to obtain nuclear weapons.

Second, it would almost certainly provoke Israel into engaging in either a pre-emptive or retaliatory attack, thus inflaming the entire region or inciting further attacks against Israel by Hezbollah and Hamas.

Third, it would provide Iran with a nuclear umbrella under which it could accelerate its efforts at regional hegemony. Had Iraq operated under a nuclear umbrella when it invaded Kuwait in 1990, Saddam Hussein’s forces would still be in Kuwait.

Fourth, it would embolden the most radical elements in the Middle East to continue their war of words and deeds against the United States and its allies.

And finally, it would inevitably unleash the law of unintended consequences: Simply put, nobody knows the extent of the harm a nuclear-armed Iran could produce.

In these respects, allowing Iran to obtain nuclear weapons is somewhat analogous to the decision by the victors of World War I to allow Nazi Germany to rearm during the 1930s. Even the Nazis were surprised at this complacency. Joseph Goebbels expected the French and British to prevent the Nazis from rebuilding Germany’s war machine.

In 1940, Goebbels told a group of German journalists that if he had been the French premier when Hitler came to power he would have said, “The new Reich Chancellor is the man who wrote Mein Kampf, which says this and that. This man cannot be tolerated in our vicinity. Either he disappears or we march!”

But, Goebbels continued, “they didn’t do it. They left us alone and let us slip through the risky zone, and we were able to sail around all dangerous reefs. And when we were done, and well armed, better than they, then they started the war!”

Most people today are not aware that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain helped restore Great Britain’s financial stability during the Great Depression and also passed legislation to extend unemployment benefits, pay pensions to retired workers and otherwise help those hit hard by the slumping economy. But history does remember his failure to confront Hitler. That is Chamberlain’s enduring legacy.

So too will Iran’s construction of nuclear weapons, if it manages to do so in the next few years, become President Barack Obama’s enduring legacy. Regardless of his passage of health-care reform and regardless of whether he restores jobs and helps the economy recover, Mr. Obama will be remembered for allowing Iran to obtain nuclear weapons. History will not treat kindly any leader who allows so much power to be accumulated by the world’s first suicide nation—a nation whose leaders have not only expressed but, during the Iran-Iraq war, demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice millions of their own people to an apocalyptic mission of destruction.

If Iran were to become a nuclear power, there would be plenty of blame to go around. A National Intelligence Report, issued on President George W. Bush’s watch, distorted the truth by suggestion that Iran had ended its quest for nuclear weapons. It also withheld the fact that U.S. intelligence had discovered a nuclear facility near Qum, Iran, that could be used only for the production of nuclear weapons. Chamberlain, too, was not entirely to blame for Hitler’s initial triumphs. He became prime minister after his predecessors allowed Germany to rearm. Nevertheless, it is Chamberlain who has come to symbolize the failure to prevent Hitler’s ascendancy. So too will Mr. Obama come to symbolize the failure of the West if Iran acquires nuclear weapons on his watch.

Mr. Dershowitz is a law professor at Harvard. His latest book is “The Case for Moral Clarity” (Camera, 2009).

WASHINGTON — Middle East peace envoy Tony Blair warned Iran on Monday the world will do “whatever it takes” to stop it acquiring a nuclear weapon.

“Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons capability. Iran must know that we will do whatever it takes to stop them getting it,” Blair told the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC.

“The danger is if they suspect for a moment we might allow such a thing,” he told delegates on the last day of the three-day annual policy conference of AIPAC, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee.

“We cannot and we will not. This is not simply an issue of Israel’s security. This is a matter of global security, mine yours, all of us,” the former British prime minister said.

“Iran’s regime is the biggest destabilizing influence in the region,” he said, adding that both Israelis and Arabs know this.

He was alluding to Iran’s support for anti-Israeli Muslim militant groups in Lebanon and in the Palestinian territories as well as to Shiite militants in Iraq, which was formerly led by Sunnis, the majority group in the Arab world.

Yemen has also accused Shiite northern rebels of taking money from Iranians and of plotting to create a Shiite zone along the Saudi borders.

During the AIPAC policy conference, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Seccretary of State Hillary Clinton raised alarms about the perceived nuclear threat from Iran.

Clinton said it was worth taking the time needed for the United Nations Security Council to adopt new sanctions “that bite” against Iran.

Israel, which sees the threat more urgently, has raised the threat of a pre-emptive military strike against Iran’s nuclear sites.

The United States, Israel and others fear that Iran’s uranium enrichment program masks a drive for a nuclear bomb. Tehran denies the charge, saying it is for peaceful nuclear energy.

via AFP: World will stop Iran getting nuclear arms: Blair.

IDF chief of staff: Iran nuclear threat rising – Haaretz – Israel News.

Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi on Tuesday briefed the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on the security situation along Israel’s border, as well as the Iranian threat and the increase in Qassam rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.

Addressing the Iranian nuclear threat, Ashkenazi said that “the Iranians are pressing ahead with their nuclear program. I hope that the trilateral sanctions will prove effective.”

Ashkenazi added that it would be a mistake to rely on the opposition within Iran to neutralize the program’s progress, as “the [Iranian] regime is strong and effective.”

Ashkenazi also discussed the situation along Israel’s northern border, saying it is quiet “but that could change.”

“Hezbollah is deploying more forces north of the Litani River,” he added.

Turning to the issue of the recent escalation in Qassam rocket attacks launched at Israel from Gaza, Ashkenazi told the committee that Hamas is not directly behind the attacks.

“Hamas is not interested in losing control of the situation – but it could do more to stop the rocket fire,” he said, explaining that “the IDF retaliates against Hamas targets because we regard them as the sovereign group [in the Strip].”

An Israeli diplomat expelled? But look who the British government won’t get rid of… – Telegraph Blogs.

MEMRI – Middle East Media Research Institute.