Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, Executive Director of "Second Thought"
The findings of the February 19, 2010 Gallup poll put President Obama at odds with the US public, when it comes to attitudes toward the Jewish State, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Arabs, Muslims and Islamic terrorism.
For example, Israel maintains its traditional spot among the five most favored nations by 67% of the US public, despite Obama's moral-equivalence and even-handedness toward the Arab-Israeli conflict, in spite of his attempts to force Israel into sweeping concessions, and in defiance of the US "elite" media and academia. On the other hand, the Palestinian Authority is ranked – along with Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan – at the bottom of the list, favored by only 20% of the US public. According to an August 10, 2009 Rasmussen poll, Israel is ranked as the third most favorable ally (70%), preceded only by Canada and Britain. The low regard toward Egypt (39%) and Saudi Arabia (23%) demonstrates that Americans remain skeptical – at least since 9/11 - of Arabs and Muslims, even when they are portrayed by the media and the Administration as supposedly moderate and pro-American. Moreover, only 21% of adult Americans expect that the US relationship with the Muslim world will improve in a year, while 25% expect that it will get worse.
Apparently, US public attitude towards Arabs and Muslims has hardly been impacted by President Obama's highly-publicized outreach to Muslims, as demonstrated by his apologetic speeches at Turkey's National Assembly ("…the Islamic faith has done so much to shape the world, including my own country…"), at Cairo University ("Islam has always been a part of America's story…") and at the UN ("America has acted unilaterally, without regard for the interests of others…").
Historically, most Americans have been suspicious of Arabs and Islam, while identifying with Judeo-Christian values, Judaism and the Jewish State, as documented by a June 3, 2009 Gallup poll. By an overwhelming 80%:13% ratio, Americans believe that Muslims are hostile toward the USA. They subscribe to Samuel Huntington's "War of Civilizations," much more that Obama's June 4, 2009 statement, made at Cairo University: "America is not – and never will be – at war with Islam." Apparently, Obama's efforts have failed to uproot the legacy of the Islamic threat since the early 19th century war against Muslim pirates, through the 1983 detonation of the US embassy and the truck bombing of the Marine Headquarters in Beirut, the 1998 bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, 9/11, the December 2009 Ft. Hood, Texas massacre and the Muslim terrorist attempt to bomb a Detroit-bound airliner.
Since, at least 9/11, most Americans have held the Palestinian Authority in disfavor, 15% support and 73% opposed, according to a March 3, 2009 Gallup poll. A definite connection has been established between the Palestinian Authority and terrorism, pro-Saddam Hussein and Bin-Laden sentiments and anti-US sentiments. In contrast, support of Israel has remained steady at 63% with only 23% opposing.
Israel's good standing has recently been reflected on Capitol Hill. For instance, 344 House Representatives (79%) signed a November 4, 2009 letter, supporting Israel and condemning the Goldstone Report. On the other hand, only 54 House Representatives (12%) signed a January 27, 2010 letter, criticizing Israel and supporting Hamas.
Unlike dictatorships, which manipulate results of public opinion polls, democracies are shaped, to a large extent, by public opinion. Public opinion is especially critical in the US democracy, which features the constituent as its centerpiece. Therefore, US legislators are more attentive to voters than are other Western legislators. They take seriously the electoral battle cry: "We shall remember in November!" Hence, the sustained support of the Jewish State on Capitol Hill, which reflects the will of the American People, in addition to the role played by shared-values, mutual-threats and joint-interests in shaping the unique covenant between the US, the Jewish People and the Jewish State.
_____________________________
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mere Rhetoric
Date: Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 5:38 AM
Mere Rhetoric
Link to Mere Rhetoric
Obama Giving Up On "Crippling" Iran Sanctions
Posted: 26 Feb 2010 07:22 AM PST
This is the second time in as many weeks that the State Department has, for reasons that are largely unfathomable, unilaterally taken an anti-Iran option off the table. Two Wednesdays ago Clinton told Al-Arabiya that military action wasn't even a consideration, which had the predictable effect of emboldening the mullahs. Now comes this announcement, which basically tells Tehran they don't have anything to fear from sanctions. Wonderful.
Remember during the election, when Obama's surrogates wouldn't shut up about "strong sticks and strong carrots"? The original liberal tagline was actually "real sticks and real carrots" but apparently "strong" focused better than "real" so that's what we got. Dennis Ross was even dispatched to reassure Jewish voters that the era of "weak sticks and weak carrots" was over. Then after the election Clinton went to the Hill and - trying to reassure Congresspeople who were nervous about Obama's appeasement - she explicitly promised to mobilize "crippling" international sanctions if outreach failed.
Nope:
The United States said on Thursday it does not aim to impose crippling sanctions on Iran but rather to pressure the Iranian government to change course on its nuclear program while protecting ordinary people. "It is not our intent to have crippling sanctions that have... a significant impact on the Iranian people," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters. "Our actual intent is... to find ways to pressure the government while protecting the people."
On the plus side, this is more honest than the last few months' of spin. Obama doesn't have the means to establish a robust international sanctions regime, even if he wanted to. The Iranians knew that and bragged about it. The pretense of credible sticks was meant for American audiences, the better to buy Obama breathing room for ever more engagement. Just because previous efforts had drawn humiliating responses didn't mean the approach was misguided. It was just that Iran's "unsettled political situation" was getting in the way!
But that only takes you so far. Eventually you need new excuses for why a crippling sanctions regime has failed to materialize. Giving up on the whole idea - that's certainly one excuse.
The other option was to continue unblinkingly asserting that Iran was still open for talks, no matter how many previous deadlines they had brazenly ignored. Again - remember "Obama says he wants progress with Iran by year's end?" If 2009 ended without a deal - the President intoned - then sanctions would be used "to ensure that Iran understands we are serious." Believable!
You are subscribed to email updates from Mere Rhetoric
To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610
_____________________________________________________
GEE770@aol.com
show details 6:15 PM (17 hours ago)
people with titles and college degrees setting the truth on its head. you may as well get your news and opinion from the local palm reading salon. and,barry wraps up his rant with rudyard kipling
RubinReports
When It Comes to Analyzing the Middle East, We Live in the Age of Idiocy
Posted: 21 Feb 2010 03:41 PM PST Please subscribe and don't miss a single issue. By Barry Rubin
After more than 30 years of watching people write dumb things about the Middle East, I believe that in the last month I've seen more nonsense than at any previous time. The problem arises from ignorance, lack of understanding of the region by those presented as experts; plus arrogance, treating the region and the lives of people as a game (Hey, let’s try this and see what happens!), fostered by the failure of such control mechanisms as a balanced debate and editing that rejects simplistic bias or stupidity; as well as a simple lack of logic. To put it another way, I am reading material that simultaneously has no connection with the real world, is full of internal contradictions, and often seems deliberately tailored to misrepresent events in order to prove a false thesis.
Fortunately, this stuff has not done actual damage in the real world--much of it has not been implemented in policy--yet but may in future. As examples:
--The former director of for Gulf and South Asia affairs at President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council writes that al-Qaida will go away if a Palestinian state is created. (This article is so astonishingly bad in reshaping the facts and leaving out anything that proves the contrary point I kept thinking it was a forgery meant to discredit him. Alas, in these days people actually do write in this intellectually dishonest style all too often.)
--The most famous American columnist writing on the Middle East says the United States is responsible for radicalization in Saudi Arabia and Europe is to blame for Iran’s Islamist revolution;
--The New York Times publishes an op-ed by a U.S. Air Force analyst arguing that Iran getting nuclear weapons will be good for the U.S. position in the Middle East.
--France’s foreign minister in an interview explains that Israel's allegedly killing a Hamas terrorist in Dubai proves there must be a Palestinian state as fast as possible, regardless of whether Israel agrees, a bilateral peace treaty is made, or even that state’s boundaries are defined. Charmingly, he adds that he might be wrong, which suggests that if such a policy resulted in total disaster and a massive number of deaths he’d just give a Gallic shrug of the shoulders and say, “Tant pis.” (Too bad.)
--Numerous people who should know better, ranging from the president’s advisor on terrorism to the former senior director for transnational threats at the National Security Council, say Hizballah is now moderate even though it has not changed in any real way.
--A prestigious foreign policy blog carries an article from a professor at a Washington, DC, university calling for an end to any restrictions on imports by the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip despite its openly declared intention of commiting genocide, repression of its own people, and clear goal of returning to war as soon as possible because this will supposedly strengthen the hand of the Palestinian Authority government which Hamas is trying to overthrow.
What are the main themes being constantly purveyed? Blame America, blame Israel, blame the West, say that radicals are moderates, insist that making concessions and holding dialogues with ideologically-directed extremists will work, blocking serious discussion of the Islamist threat, refusing to recognize the unalterably aggressive intentions of the Iran-Syria bloc, arguing that radical states and movements will act in a "rational" manner by following Western conceptions of what is in their true interest rather than their own world view.
What themes are there no room for in the prestigious foreign affairs journals and newspapers, with rare exceptions?
--The strategic disaster for Western influence that would ensue if Iran got nuclear weapons even if it never fires them.
--Revolutionary Islamism doesn't exist mainly to get revenge on the West but to seize state power and transform their own societies.
--The fact that the Palestinian Authority neither desires nor is capable of making a comprehensive peace with Israel no matter what the West does.
--The specific things that Israel wants in a peace agreement and why it needs them.
--That Syria, for very solid interests of its own, will never break its alliance with Iran.
--The situation of Arab governments which want the United States to be tough against Iran, Syria, and the Islamists, and are rapidly losing faith that it will protect them.
--The steering of Turkey toward as much of an Islamist state as possible plus as close an alignment with Iran and Syria as posible by the regime there which pretends to be moderate but clearly is engaged in transforming the country..
--Most bad ideas, crises, radical movements, and conflicts in the Middle East are locally generated and not just reflections of wrong Western policies or misdeeds.
--The West can do only a very limited amount to solve the problems of the Middle East.
Coming up with some clever gimmick, flattery, apology, concession, appeasement, or higher level of understanding isn't going to do it.
Should I link to each of the above-mentioned articles and refute them point by point? I’m not sure. On one hand, that would be intellectually and emotionally satisfying, but would it be worthwhile? I don’t like spending time and space talking about how someone else is so silly, how we are deluged with far more people speaking stupidity from power than speaking truth to it.
I can’t help but feel that it is better to use the chance to explain what's really going on and perhaps develop some accurate or useful ideas. But it is necessary to talk about some of the insanity just to give a sense of its all-encompassing scope. Only events will teach these people anything, like the completely ignorant New York Times writer who had no experience in the Middle East whatsoever, became an apologist for the Iranian regime, and then was forced by the stolen election and subsequent repression to rethink his position.
Rudyard Kipling wrote (is it still acceptable to quote Kipling?): IF you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you…. If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated, don't give way to hating…., Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son! Kipling’s son of course was killed in World War One, which shows that no matter how well we perform we aren’t immune for suffering from the mistakes of others.
I rewrote it to suit modern circumstances: IF you can be accurate be when everyone with power writes nonsense and blames conflicts just on you…. You rarely will be quoted or be published, For speaking truth’s a foolish thing to do. What’s most important are the views in fashion, Repeating them makes certain your career. Just hope that history justifies your passion, The sole reward you’ll get, that’s what I fear.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books.
No comments:
Post a Comment