Obama wrote a long letter to President Bush Tuesday urging him to press forward with the peace process now. It is two pages long and speaks of our unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security and says that Israel’s security has been hurt by U.S. “policy choices.” Not sure what that means. The letter is filled with imprecations about Hamas and pressure on the Arab states. There is not a word about the ever-expanding Israeli colonies in the West Bank. Even Yahoo was featuring this great story from McClatchy yesterday on Israel’s defiant settlements policy. I assume Obama’s cravenness has to do with his wooing of Hillary’s donors. Our politics are broken.
(Thanks to Chris Varley for the heads-up.)
Related posts:
- Saudi king said Mr. Peace Process is all talk, no action
- ‘JPost’ memo to Obama: Israel doesn’t keep its word on settlements
- Matthews Is a Mensch, Scarborough Is a 7-Letter Word Beginning With ‘A’
- The Obama admin is selling the peace process, but the press is not buying it.
- Avnery invokes Obama in urging Israelis to recognize the Nakba
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Phil, your choice for president is proving to be nothing more than more of the same. He cowered on the fisa bill, and so we americans are now one step closer to the promised police state that the intentions of the statist betray. These patriot type laws will enable the state to keep the sheep from bleeting too loudly less they be accused of being unpatriotic. We're only one inconceivable event away once the laws are safely in place.
The it cant happen here mentality will fade away like the morning dew…americans seem willing to surrender their rights for a little bit of presumed safety.
The press certainly is collaborating with the enemy until it discovers that it also is trapped in the matrix like those it helped to entrap. There are no insiders there are only useful pawns.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/06/26/olbermann/index.html
Leave aside the fact that Jonathan Alter, desperate to defend Obama, doesn't have the slightest idea of what he's talking about. How can a bill which increases the President's authority to eavesdrop with no warrants over the current FISA law possibly be described as a restoration of the Fourth Amendment? That would be like describing a new law banning anti-war speech as a restoration of the First Amendment.
As Jim Dempsey and Marty Lederman both note, not even the nation's most foremost FISA experts really know the full extent to which this bill allows new warrantless spying. Obviously, Jonathan Alter has no idea what he's saying, but nonetheless decrees that this bill — now that Obama supports it — restores the Fourth Amendment. Those are the Orwellian lengths to which people like Olbermann and Alter are apparently willing to go in order to offer their blind devotion to Barack Obama.
Moreover, Alter's own explanation is self-contradictory. In the course of praising Obama's FISA stance, he says that a politician looks "weak if you're flip-flopping" and "you look weak if you don't fight back against your political adversaries." But that's exactly what Obama is doing here — completely reversing himself on telecom amnesty and warrantless eavesdropping, all in order to give the right-wing of the GOP everything it wants on national security issues in order to avoid a fight. By Alter's own reasoning, what Obama's doing is "weak" in the extreme, yet Alter bizarrely praises Obama for showing "strength."
All of the decades-old, conventional Beltway mythologies are trotted out here to praise Obama. Democrats move to the "center" by embracing hard-core right-wing policies. Democrats will look "weak" unless they turn themselves into Republican clones on national security. A President becomes "strong" when he tramples on the Constitution and the rule of law in the name of keeping us safe. Democrats must embrace the Right and repudiate the base of their own party, and they must support Dick Cheney's policies while "standing up to the ACLU."
Let's not kid ourselves. Even if Obama took a hard stance against Israel, no US congressman would vote to cut aid or take other actions against Israel that would make a difference.
A two-state solution is becoming more and more of a fantasy. We will either have a single-state or the Palestinians will be forced into smaller and smaller territories until they are squeezed out altogether.
Obama's stance is appropriate, laudable.
Your litmus test of what he should or should not include in platform is an imposition onto his campaign.
He's not "politically correct" enough for you?
Vote for nobody instead, and get "less than nobody" for president in fact.
Yeah, Richard, we know that Barack Obama has a suitable commitment to zionism for your tastes.
It's just that the state still hasn't MANDATED that we all be zionists and some of us are still exercising our right of dissent.
Should we have a zionist amendment to the Constitution perhaps, to prevent this kind of thing?
You don't like his positions?
Then vote for McCain, or Barr, or Nader, or a write-in, or "nobody".
I'd rather vote FOR Obama.
Richard, are you aware of how groveling Obama has been? Sometimes, when you speak in generalities, I agree with you. But when you get down to specifics you often disappoint me.
Obama has been embarrassingly obsequious to Israel–he is quite forthright about the evils of Palestinian and Hezbollah terrorism, which is fair enough, but he never says anything remotely as harsh when Israel kills civilians. Doesn't this bother you at all?
Why should it bother Witty?
He thinks he's the little Jew in Bad Boys, starring Penn.
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