Obama XXI: Kenyan Muslins are ruining this country!

[Kepler]

Re: Obama XXI: Kenyan Muslins are ruining this country!

Yeah, now it's set by AIPAC.

Yes, but that's not an anomaly.

 

[Rover]

Re: Obama XXI: Kenyan Muslins are ruining this country!

The US needs to start handing out ultimatums over the Israel-Palestine issue. First is a three party state. The notion that you can have a functioning country with each side sitting on opposite ends of Isreal is unrealistic. Insist on a split, cut a deal with the more moderate West Bank faction and then let Gaza either come around eventually or stay occupied. Next, tell Isreal either they negotiate a permanent border in good faith or aide starts getting dramatically reduced. One other poster said it well. Israel's a grown up country now with a very good ability to defend itself. That 10B a year we send them can be better utilized in the US. If both sides refuse to come to agreement within a year, the US completely withdraws from involvement in the conflict. It sends no aide, it holds no peace conferences.

Regarding the rest of the Arab world, the US is doing what it should be which is staying the hell out of it (Libya excepted) beyond the obvious promise to stand by democratically elected governments. Its not up to the US to get rid of Assad, its up to the Syrian people. Same thing with Bahrain, Yemen, etc.

I do get a kick though about how quick conservative righteous indignation has been exposed as being fraudulent. Where were all these complaints about returning to 1967 borders plus even land swaps when Bush endorsed them????

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Obama XXI: Kenyan Muslins are ruining this country!

Of course it's should be recalled that in 2000, Israel offered 95 percent of the West Bank and sovereignty over East Jerusalem to Yasser Arafat, and Arafat not only turned it down, but wouldn't even make a couteroffer. Hard to negotiate when one side of the table doesn't. To quote the Israeli Foreign Minister at the time, when asked whether the Palestinians made a counteroffer: ""No. And that is the heart of the matter. Never, in the negotiations between us and the Palestinians, was there a Palestinian counterproposal."

 

[XYZ]

Re: Obama XXI: Kenyan Muslins are ruining this country!

Yes, but that's not an anomaly.

Good point.

As far as the talk about pushing for democracy all over the place, why do we always do so under an assumption that if democracy is what is actually established in some locales, the democratic results will be favorable to our interests? Do we ever look past that and at the various subsequent steps that the first will require? It seems that at least since the Eisenhower days we rarely do which is an inexcusable course to take.

Or is the use of "establishing democracy" not really what we mean, but rather it just happens to sounds better than "installing a bunch of people we think are US lackeys but who will ultimately prove otherwise"?

 

[Rover]

Re: Obama XXI: Kenyan Muslins are ruining this country!

Of course it's should be recalled that in 2000, Israel offered 95 percent of the West Bank and sovereignty over East Jerusalem to Yasser Arafat, and Arafat not only turned it down, but wouldn't even make a couteroffer. Hard to negotiate when one side of the table doesn't. To quote the Israeli Foreign Minister at the time, when asked whether the Palestinians made a counteroffer: ""No. And that is the heart of the matter. Never, in the negotiations between us and the Palestinians, was there a Palestinian counterproposal."

Bob, Arafat's dead. Has been for awhile now. Not sure if you got the word. Regardless, what he did and didn't accept is irrelevant to the current situation.

 

[Handyman]

Re: Obama XXI: Kenyan Muslins are ruining this country!

I find it funny that America doesnt negotiate with terrorists but they always expect Israel to do so....

 

[XYZ]

Re: Obama XXI: Kenyan Muslins are ruining this country!

I find it funny that America doesnt negotiate with terrorists but they always expect Israel to do so....

If America were Massachusetts and the "terrorists" were the rest of the Eastern United States...America wouldn't have a choice.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Obama XXI: Kenyan Muslins are ruining this country!

I find it funny that America doesnt negotiate with terrorists but they always expect Israel to do so....

Considering the pre-state history of Israel, this is very, very funny.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Obama XXI: Kenyan Muslins are ruining this country!

Bob, Arafat's dead. Has been for awhile now. Not sure if you got the word. Regardless, what he did and didn't accept is irrelevant to the current situation.

Of course he's dead. Thank you Captain Obvious. What he did and didn't do is certainly relevant. I don't think circumstances have changed dramatically from when he was at least to some extent representing Palestinian interests. To think his failure to accept or negotiate with Israel after they made a generous initial offer is not relevant shows you simply don't know much about the situation. If nothing else, many on the Israeli side remember when they made a daring move ten years ago to try to resolve very difficult issues, only to have it thrown back in their faces, and it helps shape how they view things now.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Obama XXI: Kenyan Muslins are ruining this country!

Considering the pre-state history of Israel, this is very, very funny.

pre-state history of Israel is a much broader and more complex subject than this one link indicates.

 

[XYZ]

Re: Obama XXI: Kenyan Muslins are ruining this country!

pre-state history of Israel is a much broader and more complex subject than this one link indicates.

Modern Israel is a much broader and more complex subject than most any link will indicate, too.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Obama XXI: Kenyan Muslins are ruining this country!

pre-state history of Israel is a much broader and more complex subject than this one link indicates.

Of course it is, I'm just saying if the argument is you can never negotiate with anybody who has had dalliance with terrorists, Israel's SOL. As is the US and every other country, ethnicity, or religion. Except maybe the Zen Buddhists*.

That particular bright line gets very fuzzy when you really look at it.

(*Crap. They may be screwed, too)

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Obama XXI: Kenyan Muslins are ruining this country!

Of course it is, I'm just saying if the argument is you can never negotiate with anybody who has had dalliance with terrorists, Israel's SOL. As is the US and every other country, ethnicity, or religion. Except maybe the Zen Buddhists.

That particular bright line gets very fuzzy when you really look at it.

The line can get somewhat fuzzy at times, but to do the flipside, pretend that there are no meaningful lines to be drawn, is just as ridiculous, if not more.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Obama XXI: Kenyan Muslins are ruining this country!

Modern Israel is a much broader and more complex subject than most any link will indicate, too.

Very true.

 

[pirate]

Re: Obama XXI: Kenyan Muslins are ruining this country!

Of course it is, I'm just saying if the argument is you can never negotiate with anybody who has had dalliance with terrorists, Israel's SOL. As is the US and every other country, ethnicity, or religion. Except maybe the Zen Buddhists*.

That particular bright line gets very fuzzy when you really look at it.

(*Crap. They may be screwed, too)

I think terrorists would be excluded as well, so terrorists could negotiate with terrorists. Terrorists, Zen Buddhists and this paddleball, that's it....oh, and this chair.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Obama XXI: Kenyan Muslins are ruining this country!

The line can get somewhat fuzzy at times, but to do the flipside, pretend that there are no meaningful lines to be drawn, is just as ridiculous, if not more.

That's a rebuttal in search of a statement. Nobody was trying to do that, but some have "false equivalency" on a hair trigger. The statement that kicked all of this off was the misleading rhetoric that asking Israel to negotiate with Palestinians is asking them to negotiate with "terrorists." The Corner at NRO can get away with slipshod demagoguery like that, but for the rest of us that's as silly as saying the Palestinians shouldn't negotiate with Israel because Menachem Begin liked murdering Brits.

The major bone of contention now is the settlements, which were created to make a peace settlement difficult. At best it comes down to "we stole it fair and square," which probably doesn't impress the people who think it's their land. The Palestinians certainly have set themselves way back over the years by giving support to terrorist organizations, but that's pretty much what happens when a large population feels like it's been disenfranchised. If the Sioux had IEDs, they would have used them.

Nice summary, by a conservative, of how the game is played.

When I listened to Obama’s speech delivered at the State Department earlier today in preparation for my next column, I didn’t find anything terribly interesting about the section on Israel and Palestine. Indeed, what little news there was in that section consisted of confirmations that the administration flatly opposes the Palestinian bid for statehood recognition at the U.N., which in itself is hardly shocking. So I was more than a little surprised that there would be such a flood of manufactured outrage over one of the least remarkable parts of the speech. At most, what Obama said represents the tiniest of incremental changes, which for some reason some administration supporters want to applaud as “bold” and “daring” and many critics want to denounce as treacherous. It isn’t bold, and it isn’t treacherous.

This is very much like the outrage over the demand for a settlement freeze in the past two years. Opposition to settlements has been standard U.S. policy for decades, but Obama created some waves by making an issue out of it. The key to his opponents’ success on settlements was pretending that something completely unremarkable and entirely reasonable was an unspeakably monstrous idea, which then lead to Obama quickly backpedaling away from doing anything to advance his unremarkable consensus position. That seems to be the pattern. First, Obama re-states the rather bland U.S. policy consensus. Next, his critics treat this as a dramatic and radical change to current policy when it isn’t anything of the sort, and the Israeli government pretends that the consensus view is some new, horrible imposition that cannot be tolerated. At the same time, Obama’s political foes declare that he has betrayed Israel, which ought to reveal them as buffoons but instead somehow makes them seem more “credible” on foreign policy. After all of this, Obama backs down and stops saying anything about the uncontroversial position that caused the phony controversy.

 

[Rover]

Re: Obama XXI: Kenyan Muslins are ruining this country!

Of course he's dead. Thank you Captain Obvious. What he did and didn't do is certainly relevant. I don't think circumstances have changed dramatically from when he was at least to some extent representing Palestinian interests. To think his failure to accept or negotiate with Israel after they made a generous initial offer is not relevant shows you simply don't know much about the situation. If nothing else, many on the Israeli side remember when they made a daring move ten years ago to try to resolve very difficult issues, only to have it thrown back in their faces, and it helps shape how they view things now.

Look you're getting a bit long in the tooth so I wasn't sure if you're memory had abandoned you.

You do however epitomize a problem that some people have living in the past. If nothing else, the Israelis shouldn't be basing their current position on a negotiation with a guy who's been a corpse for years. That's stupid, but fortunately I kinda doubt they're doing so. It would be akin to having the US be wary of negotiations with Spain because they had a bad experience with Gen Franco back in the day. At some point you need to join the here and now. In Arafat's day his stature was such that he was the sole ruler of the Palestinians. Now they're factionalized between Hamas and the PA. That's a fundamental difference that has to be dealt with (in my scenario by a 3 state solution).

Kep - interesting post. More reason why I say the US should give a drop dead date for walking away completely. I don't blame any of the Presidents for not solving this issue because both parties don't seem to want to solved. However at some point the US needs to say "we're done here. Sort it out amongst yourselves".

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Obama XXI: Kenyan Muslins are ruining this country!

Look you're getting a bit long in the tooth so I wasn't sure if you're memory had abandoned you.

You do however epitomize a problem that some people have living in the past. If nothing else, the Israelis shouldn't be basing their current position on a negotiation with a guy who's been a corpse for years. That's stupid, but fortunately I kinda doubt they're doing so. It would be akin to having the US be wary of negotiations with Spain because they had a bad experience with Gen Franco back in the day. At some point you need to join the here and now. In Arafat's day his stature was such that he was the sole ruler of the Palestinians. Now they're factionalized between Hamas and the PA. That's a fundamental difference that has to be dealt with (in my scenario by a 3 state solution).

Kep - interesting post. More reason why I say the US should give a drop dead date for walking away completely. I don't blame any of the Presidents for not solving this issue because both parties don't seem to want to solved. However at some point the US needs to say "we're done here. Sort it out amongst yourselves".

Ok. So you just don't understand that there is a past and that it's important in how it forms peoples' views and that learning from the past can help in moving forward into the future. Here's a rather famous quote from Winston Churchill that I'm sure you've never heard:
"Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it"

Rover, you sound like you're doomed.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Obama XXI: Kenyan Muslins are ruining this country!

Ok. So you just don't understand that there is a past and that it's important in how it forms peoples' views and that learning from the past can help in moving forward into the future. Here's a rather famous quote from Winston Churchill that I'm sure you've never heard:
"Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it"

I'm pretty sure that was Santayana.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Obama XXI: Kenyan Muslins are ruining this country!

That's a rebuttal in search of a statement. Nobody was trying to do that, but some have "false equivalency" on a hair trigger. The statement that kicked all of this off was the misleading rhetoric that asking Israel to negotiate with Palestinians is asking them to negotiate with "terrorists." The Corner at NRO can get away with slipshod demagoguery like that, but for the rest of us that's as silly as saying the Palestinians shouldn't negotiate with Israel because Menachem Begin liked murdering Brits.

The major bone of contention now is the settlements, which were created to make a peace settlement difficult. At best it comes down to "we stole it fair and square," which probably doesn't impress the people who think it's their land. The Palestinians certainly have set themselves way back over the years by giving support to terrorist organizations, but that's pretty much what happens when a large population feels like it's been disenfranchised. If the Sioux had IEDs, they would have used them.

Nice summary, by a conservative, of how the game is played.

False equivalency is rampant these days, so if calling a spade a spade is equated with a hair trigger, then so be it. You know very well that there are those who conveniently want Isreal to treat the Palestinians as if they can trust them as much as they could negotiating a treaty with the Swedes or someone else with a much more solid track record. It's a fundamental problem in the Middle East for Israel that many of the folks they have to deal with have terroristic traits to one extent or another, whether it's the Palestinians who support Hamas and the PLO and all their history of at least many times supporting terrorism of various shades. Or you have Lebanon, which now has Hezbollah ensconsced in a very powerful position within the Lebanese government, having veto power over Lebanese policies. And Assad in Syria, etc. Look at Egypt, where there was real concern (and is still some), that a government following Mubarek's fall may not honor the peace treaty and other agreements with Israel.

But, many use language like you to explain away things to varying extents, saying things like how you just said that, well, yah, the Palestinians have killed lots of innocent folks (Leon Klinghoefer, Israeli athletes at Munich, etc.) over time, but anyone in their spot would do that. Which of course isn't true, and is a long step down the road in saying it's really ok for Hamas to launch rockets from Gaza into southern Israel, set off suicide bombs, etc., while condemning Israel for retaliating. I'm not saying there's no blame for making things worse on the Israelis, which there certainly is, but I'll cut them a little slack when they live daily in the same area a sea of people who want to see them exterminated. I wonder just how much Israel would be pilloried if they went around saying they wanted to exterminate the Palestinians? They'd be utterly clobbered, while the Palestinians can do that with just a minor shrug here and there from most of the world.