My first YouTube vid
Tense and nervous, bad piano, even worse sound quality. "Willow Weep for Me," jazz standard.
Tense and nervous, bad piano, even worse sound quality. "Willow Weep for Me," jazz standard.
Daniel Pipes notes that the U.S. rudely dictates policy to Israel on settlements, treating Israel as a "vassal state"; yet in recent days, Biden, Kelly of the State Department, and--yes--Obama have all cited Israel's prerogative as a sovereign state to decide its own security policy, up to and including a possible strike on Iran's nuclear program. "Displeased as I am over the 'settlement' issue, I prefer this situation to the reverse--Israelis free to build bedrooms but not to deal with Iran."
"It's naïve for us to think . . . that we can grow our nuclear stockpiles and that in that environment we're going to be able to pressure countries like Iran and North Korea not to pursue nuclear weapons themselves," said President Obama, as noted in this Wall Street Journal op-ed on his START talks in Russia. This is horrific and horrendous. It means "countries like Iran and North Korea" are following a moral calculus and would be willing to stop their nuke programs if they saw other countries--emphatically including the United States--set a better example. This is pure flower-child stuff--let's throw away our weapons and we'll have a better world. And this is the president of the United States, not some wacked-out professor. He can't distinguish between pathologically aggressive governments and peace-desiring democracies, and it's why he hasn't lifted a finger to help the Iranian revolt that provided such an opportunity--squandered--to start weakening and pressuring the world's most dangerous regime. It's why he saw Zelaya's removal in Honduras as a "coup" by bad guys and didn't see Zelaya's foreign backers and Zelaya himself as the bad guys. The vicious regimes in the world are just waiting for the United States to apologize and behave better, and by now we can see that he really believes this. This is the stuff of disaster.
In a powerful, trenchant article Daniel Pipes says it's a good thing U.S. troops are leaving Iraqi cities and their presence there was always futile and a waste. Unfortunately, I tend to agree with him. Iraq will not be redeemed into a democratic beacon by six years of U.S. presence and the entrenched patterns of corruption, inefficiency, and sectarian viciousness will continue.
Back when the U.S. invaded six years ago, I was more hopeful. The human rights horrors occurring in the nondemocratic parts of the world, emphatically including the Arab world, are a source of distress and there's a wish that democracy could wash over and transform them like a healing balm. But the deep-seated pathologies are much more resistant than that, and the horrors will continue; this is the world, this is reality.
Pipes cites Obama's election, resulting from the fractiousness caused in America by Bush's Iraq policy, as the worst ultimate outcome of that policy. But he could have added the way the U.S. got bogged down in Iraq and so, by Bush's second term, decided not to deal with Iran, which was always a far greater threat than Iraq (except just before Israel destroyed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981).
We now have Iran marching toward nukes plus Obama in office--a potentially catastrophic situation. Only Biden's statement on Sunday that Israel has a right to attack Iran if it wishes--appearing to be an Obama-administration threat to Tehran that even its patience is not ultimate--gives more hope. It has rightly been objected that Israel should not have to be the hit-man against a nuclear program that gravely jeopardizes the world and not just Israel. Still, Biden's statement seemed, hopefully an improvement and not just a gaffe, indicating some dawning of reality in the mind of the man in the Oval Office with his radical past.
Egypt has allowed one of Israel's Dolphin subs to make its way through the Suez Canal. Ron Ben-Yishai explains the great significance. More Arab-Israeli realpolitik-strategic cooperation against the common threat.
My take on these issues on Frontpage today.
Aluf Benn in a concise, pellucid analysis says Biden's bombshell (perhaps an exaggerated characterization, but it has an impact) came in recompense for Bibi's concession on two-states-for-two-peoples. Although a U.S. learning curve about the nature of the Tehran regime seems also to play a part, Benn's point is important. Talk of an Arab state between the Jordan and the Mediterranean is always lamentable and dangerous; it would be a recipe for problems, and a Palestinian state already exists anyway across the Jordan. Note, though, that the Obama administration was willing to use the Iranian issue, particularly the existential threat to Israel, as blackmail power to get Bibi to bend on the Palestinian state. In turn, some on the Right in Israel don't understand that Bibi likely had no alternative but to give in, increasing the still-hypothetical threat of a west-of-the-Jordan Arab state in return for greater U.S. "understanding" on the Iranian-nukes issue, a much more real, imminent, and grave threat.
The mullahs have successfully put down the rebellion, and the regime is secure for the time being. Obama still believes in engagement. Iran will not negotiate with him in good faith, and even if Obama then goes for sanctions, they'll be hopelessly inadequate to stopping Iran's nuke program. Beyond that, Obama has signaled that he's willing to live with Iranian nukes, rationally speaking an unacceptably dangerous gamble. Thus, the only option left is an Israeli attack on the nuke facilities--and the sooner the better, since the situation re. Iran's progress toward nukes is always getting worse. Thus John Bolton in Thursday's Washington Post.
Thanks for the comment to "Arens: Hang tough, Bibi"--and in reply: It's not a question of Netanyahu having spine and backbone; he has it. But he has very tough choices to make. Buckling to Obama entails dangers; standing up to him does, too. Israel is very much the junior partner in this relationship. Netanyahu, relatively speaking, is trying to make a stand on the settlements while having already made a big verbal concession on the Palestinian state. Netanyahu now has the toughest job in the world and has to choose between lesser evils.
And I'm reviewing the brouhaha on Pajamas Media. Sarkozy has a backlog of mouthing off at democratic officials, cozying up to brutal tyrants.
