A Bad Day For (American) Politicians On TV

Two politicians, one Democratic--President Obama--and the other a Republican presidential wannabe--Rick Santorum--embarrassed themselves and, in so doing, tossed a pie in the faces of many Americans.  Of course, it is a bit unfair to equate the two as one is a member in good standing of a large but still fringe group of We the People and the other is the chief executive of a country which is still a Great Power even in its self-inflicted decline.

Santorum, in his bid for commemoration in the Hall of Exceptional Bad Taste In Politics was assisted by members of the audience present for the Fox/Google Debate in Florida.  A large portion of the audience was comprised of the same sort of self-destructive Republicans as had made noteworthy performances in two previous debates.  These people constitute the slavering red meat eaters of the intellectually challenged segment of the Party of Elephants whose most evident characteristics are a lack of good taste, a deficiency in empathy, and, most importantly a strong unconscious desire to lose elections.

The former senator from Pennsylvania and champion of the farther Right shores of the badly misnamed "social conservative" wing of the GOP was goaded into a profound demonstration of deep ignorance regarding the realities of military life particularly during wartime by a question posed by a gay soldier currently stationed in Iraq.  The question had to do with the deletion of "don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) so that homosexuals can serve openly in the US armed forces.

Needless to detail at length, Mr Santorum is against the current policy.  He would seek to turn the calender back to the years of DADT with the accompanying demand that non-heterosexuals engage in a combination of deceit and denial.  Leaving aside the political impossibility (and ignoring the boos issuing from the oral cavities of the denizens of the Very Very Right) suffice it to note that Santorum's stated desire to emulate Dr Who or Mr Peabody constituted the lesser part of his exceptional ignorance of military life.

The peak of Santorum's idiocy and lack of knowledge came when he stated, "any type of sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military."

That observation is a show stopper for sure.  As any and everyone who has spent time in any of the armed forces knows, sex is a constant and highly favored activity often bordering on obsession.  So it has been since Achilles was a private.  So it will be as long as young people are found in a military service.  Even years hence when combat is delegated to machines, it is highly probable that the people monitoring the killbots will have a hard time keeping their utilities buttoned tightly.

Not since the anti-sex campaigns of World Wars I and II when the American morality police pretended that our troops were so pure of heart and mind that they must be protected from the evils of prostitutes both amateur and professional has anyone betrayed the degree of out-to-lunchness exhibited by Mr Santorum.  If, indeed, he really does believe what he said, then he has disqualified himself from serious consideration for any office of trust and confidence under the Constitution by virtue of pure, unadulterated ignorance and irremediable stupidity (or ideological blindness.)

A far more important bit of televised damage was inflicted on the US by President Obama's speech to the UN General Assembly.  It was more than enough to make a person squirm in raw and unrelieved embarrassment as the POTUS delivered a set of remarks which could have been written by the execrable foreign minister of Israel, Avigdor Lieberman.  The kindest explanation for the presidential exhibition of seriously pathetic policy arises from the overarching Obama need to be reelected--and the crucial relation between that goal and the Israel Lobby.

As the recent by-election in New York demonstrated, there is a strong current of unhappiness with Obama's stance on Israel within the American Jewish community.  Shoring up support in this portion of the eroding Democratic base is an urgent matter.  Not surprisingly, more than a few political analysts both here and abroad have identified this as the prime mover behind the Obama position, which constituted a nearly complete reversal of policy (such as it was) a year ago.

The problem with this explanation even if it is as accurate as appears, is that international politics is a more unforgiving arena than the domestic sort.  Very real lives are at stake.  Very real countries with equally real interests are in play.  The issue of an Israel-Palestinian settlement is inherently existential in nature and does not allow for the flexibility or retakes common in domestic affairs.

The president threw away the good offices stature once enjoyed by the US.  The strident tones and relatively extreme nature of his position taken in the context of past stances undercut any possibility of Washington being seen as an honest broker seeking a fair and equitable solution to the several seemingly intractable problems besetting the Israelis and their Palestinian interlocutors.

This leaves the task to such as the European Union or the Quartet with the US playing a marginal role at best. Mr Obama's "approved by AIPAC" speech also eroded to the point of nonexistence any influence Washington might have had with the Palestinian Authority or its Mideast state supporters.  Worse, the president appeared to put the US squarely in opposition to the majority of the "Arab Spring" movers and shakers.

This last consideration is arguably the most critical of all.  While the US would see its influence reduced in any event as the groups espousing austere, politically oriented Islam will be the power either in or behind the throne in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and elsewhere, there was and remains no need to reduce influence all the more.  The status of the Palestinians ranks high as a motivator on much of the "Arab street."  While it is more than a bit hypocritical that this was not the case in the ancient days when Jordan "occupied" the West Bank and Egyptian troops held the supreme hand in the Gaza Strip, it is a reality today which must be recognized and addressed by American policymakers.

Obama's Mideast policy (to use the term generically only) has been and remains an area deserving of the attentions and ministrations of FEMA.  He and his "team" have done the seemingly impossible--gotten each and every aspect wrong for more than two and a half years.  Far more than even George W. Bush, the Nice Young Man From Chicago has managed to alienate every stakeholder in each and every Arab state as well as non-Arab countries such as Turkey.  The UNGA address was the final nail in the coffin of American presence in the Mideast.

Santorum (with the able aid of the boo happy bunch) humiliated the Republican Party in the eyes of all but the most avid of elephants.  Mr Obama did much more.  The president managed--without assistance--to put the US firmly behind the eight ball throughout the rapidly changing Mideast.

No American president has done that before.  No American president in search of reelection has ever degraded the influence of his country in pursuit of votes.  Finally, Mr Obama has something real to apologize for.

There Are Some Loose Screws In The Israeli Government

The Geek often has a favorable view of Israel in comparison to its Arab neighbors, particularly those paragons of intransigence in the Palestinian Authority and the Government of Killers running Gaza.  There are occasions, however, when the Geek becomes convinced that the political leadership of Israel has lost all grip on reality.

This is one of those times.  Before continuing, the Geek has to express frustration.  Frustration with the utterly asinine acts of the Netanyahu administration as well as other, lesser elements of the government.  Frustration at the implications of their actions which necessitate comment at the expense of considering other, lesser known and fascinating subjects such as the continued downward trajectory in the North Caucasus or the slow motion disintegration of Tajikistan under the weight of armed political Islam.

Or the stupidity of the Royal Navy's high command which is reportedly willing to cut its "fleet" to as few as a dozen surface combatants so that the new aircraft carriers might be afforded.  This sort of decision making boggles the mind, particularly considering that Argentina is feeling its oats once more over the Falkland Islands.

And so to Israel.  The most shocking of the self-destructive acts of the Netanyahu crew is the new loyalty bill which would require all new, non-Jewish citizens to swear loyalty to "the Jewish and democratic state of Israel."  This measure has been a pet of the ultra-ultra right Yisrael Beiteinu party--the party headed by the Israeli version of Joe Biden, ForMin Avigador Lieberman.

Adoption of this measure by the Knesset would destroy the final vestige of the liberal, democratic, and socialist vision of Israel which gained the country so much sympathy and support among the goyim of the US a half century and more ago.  The Israel of those days was seen widely by Americans as being an outpost of the best of European or Western culture, values, norms, and institutions taking root in the hostile soil of authoritarian, often feudal, and occasionally communist Mideast.  In a real sense many of We the People saw the Israelis as being "just like us," open, tolerant, expressive, even boisterous.  Being "like us" it was easy to support the embattled country even when American national interests would have been better served by doing otherwise.

Loyalty oaths are a feature of both authoritarian regimes and societies under stress from forces abroad and hidden in the domestic population.  In the US during the Fifties and Sixties, during the era of the Great Anti-Communist Crusade, loyalty oaths for public employees and others were all the rage.  (Even the Geek as a fifteen year old swimming instructor in a Saturday morning program at the local high school had to sign a loyalty oath before he could get his paycheck, minuscule as it was.)

Israel is under stress to say the least.  The stress has an internal dimension given that a fifth of the population is non-Jewish, primarily Muslim Arabs.  It has not helped that the PA and its Arab supporters have refused to acknowledge officially a fact that is all too self-evident in reality--Israel was established to be and exists as a Jewish state.  Even though a congress of three Jews might provide at least five differing definitions of what the term "Jewish state" means, the foundational reality remains that Israel is precisely what it was founded to be--a nation-state for Jews.

Admittedly the Israelis have made attempts to render their land free of all non-Jews.  The Wars of Independence were ethically scarred by the forced removal of Arab populations--both Muslim and Christian. True, the major responsibility for the ethnic cleansing rests with the Arab states whose leaders promised the temporarily displaced locals would come back home in triumph riding Arab tanks.  That does not relieve the Israelis of that far gone day from their culpability which extended to murder.

So too were Arabs displaced forcibly during and in the immediate aftermath of the Six Day War.  Israelis got a bad case of the "victory disease," showing its worst symptoms in their treatment of the occupied territory and its residents.  Muscular expansionism, a sort of Old Testament based "manifest destiny" ruled the public mood with results which fester to the present.  To put it not unkindly but accurately, it was the attitude exhibited by the Israeli public which started the corrosive process of myth destruction which has also continued to the present with the deligitimatization campaign so odiously evident in the West generally.

The climate of stress and concomitant fear helps explain the strong need by the nationalists in government and public alike to embrace the loyalty oath.  Be that as it may, the global impact of the oath will be negative.  It will reinforce the notion which has taken a pernicious hold on many in Europe and the US that Israel is a "racist" society and polity.  It will strengthen the hand of those who argue "Israel equals Apartheid."  It will also make the Arabs both inside and without Israel more irredentist.  It will feed the needs of the extremes on both sides.

There have been some other recent actions by lesser components of the government which serve to potentate the evil effects of the oath bill.  In one the Israeli Defense Ministry has blocked the construction of an ambitious middle class oriented planned community on land which has been granted to the PA.  At issue is a stretch of two miles needed to build an access road for the town.  Two miles is in question.  The Defense Ministry with the full-throated support of "settlers" in a nearby new Israeli town has dragged its feet to the point the entire project is threatened.

This is stupidity on the level of pointing a pistol at ones own gonads--and pulling the trigger.  The PA needs a vibrant middle class and the economic consequences of having one in order to have even a faint chance of stability over time.  It needs sound stakeholders to counter the ever advancing potency of the advocates of violent political Islam.  Israel should be bending backwards to facilitate the construction of this new Arab town and not dragging up sham issues (like sewage and trash handling plans) in order to slow, perhaps stop it.  Even the "settlers" should have brains enough to realize that an increased prosperity along with the inherently more conservative mood of those who "have arrived" is their best protection against terror attacks, the drive by shootings they allege will occur if the road and town are built.

Then there is the matter of breaching the wall around the Old City of Jerusalem.  Reportedly the municipal council (Israeli of course) has floated a plan to build a new gate in the old wall so as to provide entrance to a parking lot and multi-purpose building near the Western Wall.  It has been 112 years since the wall was last breached so that Kaiser Willem II could ride in style into the Old City.  The new breach has outraged Palestinian opinion and given the PA another excuse (as if it needed one more) to postpone, stall, or stop the on-and-off talks.

Even though the Western Wall will remain under Israeli control in any final settlement, there is no reason to bring up even a remote possibility of taking down more bricks in the wall.  The Old City is a running sore of animosity as has been demonstrated when even a tunnel near the West Wall resulted in riots and killing just over a decade ago.  One has to wonder if the Jerusalem municipal council was off its collective meds at the time of making this decision or simply indifferent to reality.

The Israelis may be convinced that the threat of the UN Security Council creating a Palestinian state is unlikely to happen, but recent statements by the French ForMin bring that conviction into question.  Similarly the Israeli government is certain the PA will make no request of the Security Council to short circuit the negotiation process.  It is true that a similar proposal by the then foreign affairs chief of the European Union gained no traction either in Europe or in Washington, but a lot has happened since then--none of it to the advantage of Israel.

The opinion molding elites of Western Europe and the US have not become any more tolerant of Israeli practices or more doubting of the sin-free nature of the PA.  The current administration has not only invested all too much diplomatic capital in the present talks, it has been given an ultimatum by the Arab League.  The previous unforced errors of Mr Obama--most notably the demand for a total halt to settlement construction of an open ended nature--have provided the PA with the belief the US will do the heavy lifting on its behalf.  The Arab League ultimatum--the US has one month, no more, to get the talks back on track or something unspecified but horrid will happen--greatly increases the pressure on Obama to put pressure on Israel.

The oath bill and the lesser damaging measures show the Israeli push back on the pressures to date.  This implies that there is little more in the way of coercion available to the administration.  At the same time the inducements offered in the alleged Obama letter have no value as they are inherently non-credible given the administration's previous refusal to honor commitments made in a letter from George W. Bush.

The oath bill and the rest have hardened the PA and its supporters in demanding that the US cut the knot and bring Palestine into existence.  The questioned measures have also given fuel to the let-the-Security-Council-do-it movement currently orchestrated by the French ForMin.  Finally, they have demonstrated the limits of American coercion.

The oath bill in particular demonstrates the political will of the nationalistic right in Israel.  Even when the self-destructive potential of the bill is so evident, the force of nationalism under attack--even from presumed and previous allies--cannot be denied.  Reasoned considerations of national interest, stability, and international repute are no match for the forces of fear.

Will Hilary Win Her Bones?

Hilary Clinton is a person with great determination, resilience and, never to be underestimated, a capacity for steep learning curves. She will need all of these and more as she takes on the most intractable problem in international politics these past thirty years--trapping the seemingly mythical beast known as Mideast Peace.

An important caveat is needed here. Even if the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority come to an agreement, that is only the first step of constructing a comprehensive Mideast peace.

If the president has decided to leave the negotiations, the making of deals which are both acceptable to parties long estranged by the forces of blood and ambition and enforcible over time to others in his administration and will limit his participation both on and off camera to ceremonial occasions, Ms Clinton has a slight chance of succeeding where so many of her predecessors have failed, some miserably. Admittedly the "if" is a very big "if."

Ms Clinton has established a mixed record as Secretary of State. Her stewardship at Foggy Bottom is seen with a liberal degree of cynical hope in Israel. The cynicism results from her role in executing the Obama dictated program of coercion. The hope springs from the realization that Ms Clinton has invested a great deal in the "peace process" and doesn't want it to go bust as if it were one more Whitewater but writ much larger.

Having faithfully complied with Mr Obama's blundering of reaching out to the unreachable while stomping on a government long noted for stomping back, it is to be hoped (and reasonably expected) that the Secretary of State will be allowed to play a free hand in her personal diplomacy over the next days, and, perhaps, weeks or even months as the direct bilateral talks lurch along. The Nice Young Man From Chicago should realize by now that as a statesman he is a fine tuba player.

The Israeli government knows that Ms Clinton had no realistic alternative to carrying the president's water in the past months. The prime movers in Jerusalem, most importantly PM Netanyhu, will cut her an appropriate amount of slack, will see her as offering genuine good offices as a facilitator and mediator. If not undercut by the Arabists in her own department, the role of woman-in-the-middle suits her well given her political and diplomatic skills.

As Secretary of State she has performed well, better than might have been expected twenty months ago. While she has been on the wrong side of some issues--Honduras, the Falkland Islands dispute, the decision to rejoin the UN Human Rights Cabal (to say nothing of the Universal Periodic Review)--other policy actions, most importantly the calling of China out despite Beijing's huffing and puffing over the disputed islands in the South China Sea, have been impressive.

The context in which she will be operating while being woman-in-the-middle has several favorable features. Iran looms largest in the fears of Israel with the security threats posed by a Palestinian state on the West Bank trailing as a distant second. Indeed the potential Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons has so sobered the Arab states to the degree that they can throw significant weight behind a treaty between the PA and Israel which does not meet the ambitious level of the Arab League proposal (aka the Abdullah Plan.)

The real game changer in the Mideast over the past two years has been Iran. More specifically, it has been the combination of Iran's quest for the "Mahdi Bomb" coupled with the all too obvious Iranian backing of regime change throughout the region.

Ms Clinton will be able to take advantage of the fears generated by Tehran's way too lofty ambitions. She will also be able to leverage the increasingly anti-Israel sentiments and behaviors of Europe into a useful tool to assure a degree of realism in the government of Israel.

The Palestinian Authority, most particularly the Fatah dominated government of Mahmoud Abbas, needs the support and assistance of the West led by the US if it is going to survive let alone prosper. A viable state on the West Bank needs, no, requires, investment by and trade with the West as well as direct assistance. Abbas understands this and his understanding is no doubt shared by the non-zany senior leadership of the PA. This gives Ms Clinton a potent way of gaining genuine PA cooperation.

The context also includes several important and very negative features. Some are sufficient kill-the-peace conversations before the month is over.

Topping the list is the continuation of the moratorium on "settlement" construction. The ten month halt will end on 26 September. This means the balloon can go up on the 27th.

The PA has made the settlement freeze the Absolute Line In The Sand. When Abbas and his cohorts say "no" on this matter they mean "NO." No expansions. No "natural increases." Not a single brick, a single plank, a single drop of concrete. Or else the PA is out of the talks. End of discussion.

The Netanyahu government imposed the total stoppage under great pressure from Washington and has resented every second the stop work order has been in effect. This resentment has been shared by a large and growing segment of the Israeli population generally. With the exception of the most pro-peace elements of society, the majority of Israelis have supported construction to meet the needs of natural increases.

No one in Israel has resented the halt more than Avigdor Lieberman, who is foreign minister and capo of the Yisrael Beitenu party. The YB is both very right wing and crucial to the continuation of the Netanyahu government. Leiberman has stated without any ambiguity that his party will pull out of the governing coalition if the moratorium is extended. YB is the second largest party in the Knesset following Netanyahu's Likud party, so the threat is both real and credible.

Even if the political crisis over settlement construction is avoided, Lieberman will remain a very tall speed bump in the "peace process." To put it bluntly--as Lieberman always does--the ForMin does not believe there is any possibility of a genuine peace agreement arising this year or even in the current generation. This world view has a pronounced tendency to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Another deal breaker is the requirement by Israel that any final (or interim) agreement explicitly characterize Israel as a "Jewish State." Netanyahu along with the majority of Israelis support this requirement without reservation. The Arabs oppose it. Whenever asked about this refusal, Abbas weasel words around something fierce. His non-answer answers are carefully crafted to deny the reality that Israel is--and was established as--a Jewish state.

The position of the PA is echoed (without any resort to the rhetoric of weasels) by Arab states generally. The Egyptian ForMin Aboul Gheit took the standard line for rejecting the proposition that Israel should be termed a "Jewish state." Gheit averred deep concern for the status of Arab citizens of Israel implying that they would be deprived of human and civil rights should Israel be considered a Jewish state. The touchingly tender regard for Arab civil and human rights expressed by Gheit and his peers throughout the region ignores completely that Arabs are and have been citizens of Israel for generations. Arabs have the same rights as Jews in Israel including the right to elect members of the Knesset.

The irony of Arab Muslim states which proudly define themselves as "Islamic" suddenly being frightened by the notion of a Jewish as opposed to secular Israel is easily explained. It is the hope (or expectation) that Arabs will win the "breeding war" between themselves and the Jewish population of Israel at some date in the future. The possibility of ending the "Zionist entity" in this way would, they fear, be ended should Israel be defined as a specifically "Jewish state."

These basic contextual matters must be addressed before the myriad of "details." Some of these "details" rise almost to the level of contextual. Among these is the question of what would constitute sufficient guarantees that the Palestinian state would not become the Gaza Strip on steroids? Certainly any guarantees must be more than those of the paper sort as the horrible experience of post-withdrawal Gaza has made clear.

Ms Clinton has a record of believing the UN is real. She would incline to turn the matter of credible guarantees, particularly those backed by a force on the ground, to the UN. She could (and probably will) point to UNIFIL as an example of efficient and effective UN peacekeeping.

The Israelis would see the matter in a completely different light. Their experience with the UN has been less than positive. More importantly, the growth of anti-Israel sentiments (which they fear with reason would not be lessened by any agreement between Israel and the PA) render the UN a less and less legitimate body.

The PA or at least its president reputedly insinuated that any US or other foreign force stationed on its soil could not include any Jewish troops. Perhaps President Abbas really does believe that an American, or British or whatever other soldier who happened to be Jewish would cheerfully betray his obligation to his country to somehow further some presumably dark Israeli design. Or, perhaps he is simply being more or less honestly antisemitic.

The religious/cultural prejudice shoe can fit on the Israeli foot. How comfortable would the government or citizens of Israel be if a peacekeeping force on the border with the PA territory included troops from Pakistan, Iran, or any member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference? Would this be mere "Islamophobia" or a legitimate apprehension based on the nature and character of both faith and culture?

The list of contextual and near contextual quality conundrums facing Hilary Clinton could be lengthened but that isn't necessary to establish the degree of difficulty facing her. Neither is the multi-page roster of lesser political or merely technical problems.

Our Secretary of State is taking on a diplomatic challenge before which even Talleyrand, Metternich, or Bismarck would have quailed. Even if she succeeds where so many others have either failed or failed to try, the irony remains. It is nothing but ironical that the signing of an agreement between the PA and Israel will not mean peace in the Mideast or even, necessarily the beginnings of comprehensive peace, but only the ending of one, politically irritating skirmish.

ForMin Lieberman Sez "Go To Hell, Syria!"

The Geek has posted a number of times regarding the cruciality of the Golan Heights to a comprehensive Mideast peace. For Syria there is only one real requirement for peace with Israel. That is the return of the Golan to Syria.

Syrian president Bashar Assad made that requirement clear again last Friday in an Army Day Speech. He implied that other matters could be negotiated, but not the status of the Golan.

The embattled, very hardline Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, rejected the Syrian position with a strangely worded statement today. He said that Israel was willing to start negotiations with Syria "without preconditions." Then he went on to add, perversely, that in "any agreement," the Golan Heights "must remain under Israeli control."

Whether the Israeli ForMin was speaking in English or Hebrew, the Geek knowest not. But in either language, the second part of the statement renders the first part (in the words of Nixon's Press Secretary, Ron Zeigler) "inoperative." The overly muscular (in the cranium at least) Lieberman might just as well have said, "Give peace a chance? No way!"

If the Obama administration had the sense necessary to get out of the rain it would be putting pressure on Israel to abandon its Golan land grab rather than insist on a zero expansion in the "settlements" on the disputed West Bank territory. The Palestinians--and the Arabs generally--will not accept a settlement halt as a reason for reciprocal movements. No, they will simply have another set of requirements which must be fulfilled before responding in kind.

Bashar Assad and the Syrian government are, in comparison, rational. Get the Golan back and peace is just jake with them. It would probably be enough to convince the Syrian regime to go ahead with a real peace treaty rather than the Egyptian style "cold peace."

Lieberman has promised to resign if he is indicted for his various alleged mal- and mis-feasances. Those who want to see more of a semblance of peace in the Mideast must be hoping that the Israeli Attorney General will do so without delay. Then, perhaps, just maybe, the US can lean on the Netenyahu government to start working on a deal which sees the Golan back under Syrian control even if that implies some sort of dual authority to protect in the near- and mid-term the interests of both Arabs and Jews living in the region and an equitable sharing of the water resources of the place.

At the moment all that can be said of the Israeli ForMin is that his views on the Golan are (in the fine phrase of George Kennan,) "primitive and unconstructive." To put it mildly.