Mohammad of Vancouver writes:
We all agree that Joe Biden
was is in Munich for an international security conference. We all agree
that he spoke about the new direction in US foreign policy. But that's
all USA and the rest of the world
can agree on because opinions about the content of his speech vary depending on who is reporting it. Let's compare the headlines:
Guardian: Obama administration offers olive branch to Russia and Iran
Al-Jazeera: US softens foreign policy stance
Press TV/Iran: The US vice president: US will integrate 'change' with its foreign policy
Voice of America: Biden: US Willing to Talk to Iran
Yahoo News: Biden vows break with Bush era foreign policy
This is how the world interprets Biden's policy speech in Munich. Now let's turn to the US's paper of record, the New York Times: Laying Out Foreign Policy Agenda, Biden Takes a Hard Line
What are the parameters of this contrast in understanding the same speech? here are some possible suggestions:
1- American media delusions: New York Times is not listening to Biden, because they hear what they like to hear.
2-
American public delusion: Americans, however inaccurately, need to
think that their new government is as bold as the previous one.
3- American Zionists' delusion: We can soften our stance, but to keep a hardline image lest pro-Israel Americans freak out.
To be fair, I have included the actual speech, so you can decide for yourself whether he was softening his stance, or hardening it. Munich speech in Washington Post P.S. Times has now given its story a softer headline. Not much, but softer.
"MAD"–the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction seems to have been validated by the decades long US-Soviet standoff. The cost of a conflict between the nuclear powers was just too high and war was no longer an option.
The most revealing fact I can think of regarding Iran is that people who go there tend to come back surprised by the difference between the reality of iran and their expectations.
MAD worked. Having the rogue state without borders the only state in the region with nukes is a recipe for continued horror. G-d save
the USA from Israel's insanity. So far it looks pretty Deist to me.
Iran would make a great special relationship with the USA. We'd get a real ally. And Iran wouldn't even ask for an annual welfare dole.
Iran is in economic trouble. It sponsored terrorism at the expense of its own people. They need money badly.
Allying with Iran is the same as allying with Hitler.
But Citizen would have done that in 1941.
Unlike Israel, Iran pays for itself. It's not on the dole.
I would say there are a lot more factual similarities between Israel and NAZI Germany than as between Iran and NAZI Germany. Regulars on this blog know all of them. You new hasbara employees who have only come to this blog recently need to review
the last couple of years of this blog. You need to get up to speed.
Everybody that criticizes Israel is Hitler. You need to wind up your dusty stopped clock.
You would say that, but you're an idiot, so you're saying it, isn't proving much.
The Islamic Fascist regime of Iran is quickly becoming the Nazi Germany of the region.
hMM, says here Biden said: "We will be willing to talk to Iran, and to offer a very clear choice: continue down your current course and there will be pressure and isolation; abandon the illicit nuclear programme and your support for terrorism and there will be meaningful incentives."
Now what's new about that? It's still basically, "do as we say and we'll go easy on you". The illicit nuclear programme is legal, and the terrorism referred to is not – heaven forbid – that which is funded by our allies Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, but rather Hezbullah and Hamas, popular movements and enemies of you-know-who. So it's still the strategy of what Bush called (and the media replays as if it is perfectly reasonable) "sticks and carrots", a technique applied to donkeys which Iran obviously will not accept.
Eventually, a sobre President Obama will announce "with heaviness in my heart, but with a deep and abiding sense of the justice of our cause and of the great danger we face, that Iran is manifestly unwilling to join the international community, to accept the carrots, er, outstretched hand…"
However, to flip it on its side, we could also say, "Biden's address chillingly recalled Hitler's ultimatum to Czechoslovakia, made 70 years before in the same city…"
Obviously, the world believes it is not legal. And the outcome of this little illegal program, is a nuclear weapon.
Of course, we could allow Iran to have their Hitlerian carrot, say give them what they want in the hopes they will not develope the bomb… But what did we learn when we did that for Hitler?
No fair guessing.
obviously. The only thing obvious is Israel's arsenal of 200 nukes that possibly are not just targeting Arab capitals. Berlin, Paris, Rome and London beware.
Re Iran's nukes, Is the problem that it's Iran, or that it's Ahmadinejad? I've never meant an Iranian, of any political stripe, who doesn't think Iran has the right to develop nuclear weapons. They have, after all, already been introduced into the region.
Iran needs nukes to stabilize the neighbourhood. The sooner they get them, the better.
Sam Orwell, is it?
Joe Biden tells Munich conference: 'US will talk to Iran and ally with Russia against terror
"We will be willing to talk to Iran, and to offer a very clear choice: continue down your current course and there will be pressure and isolation; abandon the illicit nuclear program and your support for terrorism and there will be meaningful incentives."
He proposed a shared fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban with Russia as part of an era of improved relations between Washington and Moscow.
"The last few years have seen a dangerous drift in relations between Russia and the members of our [Nato] alliance," he said. "It's time, to paraphrase President Obama, to press the reset button and to revisit the many areas where we can and should work together."
But he offered Moscow little at this stage beyond mood music, insisting that the US "will not recognise any nation having a sphere of influence" – a clear reference to Russia's view that the former Soviet Union is its political and diplomatic backyard.
He also said that the US would not recognise the sovereignty of the breakaway pro-Moscow Georgian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, where tensions last year took Russia and American ally Georgia briefly to war.
And perhaps most significantly, he indicated that the US would press ahead with plans for a missile defence project based in Poland and the Czech Republic, while adding riders about the cost and effectiveness of the programme. Moscow was enfuriated when the Bush administration announced the scheme, although the Kremlin has taken a more conciliatory approach since Mr Obama entered the White House.
Mr Biden called on America's Nato allies for greater assistance, pointedly asking European states to help the Obama administration to close the Guantanamo Bay camp by accepting some of the remaining detainees.
The vice-president has also been lobbying in behind-door meetings for other Nato states to send more troops or military resources to Afghanistan – a number one priority for the Obama White House. So far, only Britain has indicated a willingness to send extra forces.
"America will do more. That's the good news," he said. "The bad news is that America will ask for more from our partners as well."
Emphasising a change on mood and approach, he told the audience: "I come to Europe on behalf of a new administration, an administration that is determined to set a new tone not only in Washington, but in America's relations around the world. That new tone is rooted in a strong bipartisanship to meet these common challenges. And we recognise that meeting these challenges is not a luxury but an absolute necessity."
Key elements of Mr Biden's speech were aimed at conveying this new tone. "We believe that international alliances and organizations do not diminish America's power," he said. "We believe they help us advance our collective security, economic interests and our values. So we'll engage. We'll listen. We'll consult."
Three days ahead of Israeli elections, he emphasised US commitment to a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. And to the Muslim world, he said: "America will extend a hand, as the President has said, to those who unclench their fists.
"In the Muslim world, a small and I believe very small, number of terrorists are beyond the call of reason. We will and we must defeat them. But hundreds of millions of hearts and minds in the Muslim world share the values we hold dear. We must reach them."
But he also sought to make clear that the US would not back away from the use of force where necessary. "As America renews our emphasis on diplomacy, development, democracy and preserving our planet, we will ask our allies to rethink some of their own approaches – including their willingness to use force when all else fails."
Joe Biden tells Munich conference: 'US will talk to Iran and ally with Russia against terror
What can we conclude from the disparate press coverage of Biden's speech? I wasn't surprised, remembering the coverage of Obama's visit to his dying grandmother. Back then I wrote:
Last week while the gravely ill grandmother he routinely credits with having made him what he is, was dying, Obama managed to take a mere 22 hours from his campaign to visit her in Hawaii. He told the press she might not live to November 4th and he wanted to be with her while she was still "lucid." So much for his lucidity. And so much for his priorities. He left her to die with only his half sister by her side. Obama routinely insists that his grandmother always stood by him. Clearly he didn't stand by her. He had more important things on his mind: his presidential ambitions.
But the content of his character didn't inhibit the New York Times from running two articles on his bedside visit, the one titled "Obama Makes Visit to a Most Beloved Supporter," and the second, "Obama Takes Time for a Woman Dear to Him." And TIME carried a similar expression of misplaced sympathy for him titled "Obama's Hawaii Trip: Family Comes First."
I keep returning to the late great poet Walt Whitman. Using architecture as metaphor in "Leaves of Grass," he wrote, "All architecture is what you do when you look upon it. Did you think it was in the white or gray stone?" So is all history. So is all we see and hear and read–and write.
Sam is right, of course. Iran needs a nuclear weapon to make sure Israel (that is, the U.S.) never attacks it, and to stabilize its control of its own resources
That just means that Israel destroys the bomb while it is in Iran.
God save the Iranian people from the foolishness of its leaders and the stupidity of people like David Green.
First of all we don;t know if god exist.
Accordinng to the philosopher, thinker and theorist Slavoj Zizek, we need to Give Iran Bomb a Chance!
But we won't. And it is foolish to even think we might.