I have to believe that there is going to be popular backlash against the panderfest we saw last night. At the National Interest, Dimitri Simes, a Cold War realist who later broke with the neocons, issued an appeal to Romney yesterday to ditch his neocon advisers; or he will lose (the debate and presumably the election too). Romney didn’t follow the advice. But Simes’s piece is yet another sign of the great discomfort with the hardline Israel lobby, that even Jane Harman has expressed lately:
[T]o prevail, [Romney] will need to disregard the suggestions of some of his neoconservative foreign-policy advisers, who are out of touch not only with international realities but also with the realities of American politics….
criticizing Obama for “throwing Israel under the bus” and promising to avoid an inch of daylight between Washington and Tel Aviv does not convey tough-minded American patriotism. A commitment to outsource decisions on war and peace to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu may appeal to a small segment of Jewish and evangelical voters, but it is bound to alienate many others in the process.
In the Middle East, President Obama gave false hope to the Palestinians with a dramatic speech in Cairo, but he failed to follow through. The administration now has a credibility problem on both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Once Obama demanded an end to new Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority could settle for no less. Peace talks collapsed as a result.
If the Obama administration threw anyone under a bus, it was not Israel but the friendly Mubarak government in Egypt. Mubarak was an imperfect ally and an even more imperfect democrat. But in the context of regional politics, he was trying hard to maintain ties with the United States and keep the peace treaty with Israel. In fact, his commitment to the treaty and his security policies contributed to the popular backlash that triggered his repressive response.
Mitt’s gonna win Phil. Third parties are expected to get up to 7% and they’re all anti-war, the libertarians and left anti-war folks have a place to go this time – O’s gonna lose those votes this time around. I gotta think Mitt is the favorite at this point, neocons and all. I love how the neocons are only mentioned when it comes to Romney, especially in this the third term of W’s foreign policy. We’re the Indispensable Nation, Phil, jump on board for the Big Win.
Obama held off as long as feasible from adding to the weight against the 30 year domestic tyrant Mubarak. He was smart enough to finally guess that the Arab Spring was not a flash in the pan and the hay day of discount pricing of Arab dictators were over. The question is, will Obama, if reelected, toss Israel off the bus also as an even greater anchor on US interests, and a much more costly anchor than Egypt was or is. Mitt will simply defer to Bibi N, with total US congress support. I listened to 3 hours of call-ins to CSPAN Washington Journal this morning re the 3rd debate. Most were oblivious of the Israel elephant, but some were annoyed at equation of Israel’s interests with USA’s, and others stood for Israel no matter what because, they said, it was a biblical mandate.
Do most Americans even know that all this “daylight” talk (if they even hear it) is about war with Iran at Israel’s request? Doubt it. And do they or anyone recognize this Iran-talk out of Israel as a smoke-screen to cover the very fast (no longer at all gradual) take-over of West Bank?
It was kinda a kick to hear Obama say the American military budget was equal to the next ten combined, which in another mouth could have been a request for a smaller military. Might get ordinary Americans wondering who all these enemies are that we have but Canada and UK and France and Germany don’t have to arm to the teeth to protect against but we do. Don’t they burn oil too, global warming be damned, just as we do?
I guess it’s positive, in a sense, that Simes is offering this advice to Romney, but his defense of Mubarak is grotesque. An “imperfect democrat”? Right, like I’m an imperfect Hindu.