By Ted Belman
Yesterday Tim Pawlenty, Republican presidential nominee hopeful, gave a very important speech to the Council on Foreign Relations.
He disagreed stongly with Obama’s approach to Israel and the peace process.
And in the middle of all this, is Israel.
Israel is unique in the region because of what it stands for and what it has accomplished. And it is unique in the threat it faces—the threat of annihilation. It has long been a bastion of democracy in a region of tyranny and violence. And it is by far our closest ally in that part of the world.
Despite wars and terrorists attacks, Israel offers all its citizens, men and women, Jews, Christians, Muslims and, others including 1.5 million Arabs, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the right to vote, access to independent courts and all other democratic rights.
Nowhere has President Obama’s lack of judgment been more stunning than in his dealings with Israel.
It breaks my heart that President Obama treats Israel, our great friend, as a problem, rather than as an ally. The President seems to genuinely believe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict lies at the heart of every problem in the Middle East. He said it Cairo in 2009 and again this year.
President Obama could not be more wrong.
The uprisings in Tunis, Cairo, Tripoli and elsewhere are not about Israelis and Palestinians. They’re about oppressed people yearning for freedom and prosperity. Whether those countries become prosperous and free is not about how many apartments Israel builds in Jerusalem.
Today the president doesn’t really have a policy toward the peace process. He has an attitude. And let’s be frank about what that attitude is: he thinks Israel is the problem. And he thinks the answer is always more pressure on Israel.
I reject that anti-Israel attitude. I reject it because Israel is a close and reliable democratic ally. And I reject it because I know the people of Israel want peace.
Israeli – Palestinian peace is further away now than the day Barack Obama came to office. But that does not have to be a permanent situation.
We must recognize that peace will only come if everyone in the region perceives clearly that America stands strongly with Israel.
I would take a new approach.
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First, I would never undermine Israel’s negotiating position, nor pressure it to accept borders which jeopardize security and its ability to defend itself.
Second, I would not pressure Israel to negotiate with Hamas or a Palestinian government that includes Hamas, unless Hamas renounces terror, accepts Israel’s right to exist, and honors the previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements. In short, Hamas needs to cease being a terrorist group in both word and deed as a first step towards global legitimacy.
Third, I would ensure our assistance to the Palestinians immediately ends if the teaching of hatred in Palestinian classrooms and airwaves continues. That incitement must end now.
Fourth, I would recommend cultivating and empowering moderate forces in Palestinian society.
When the Palestinians have leaders who are honest and capable, who appreciate the rule of law, who understand that war against Israel has doomed generations of Palestinians to lives of bitterness, violence, and poverty – then peace will come.
He also came out in favour of supporting the quest for freedom
Now is not the time to retreat from freedom’s rise.
Yet at the same time, we know these revolutions can bring to power forces that are neither democratic nor forward-looking. Just as the people of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria and elsewhere see a chance for a better life of genuine freedom, the leaders of radical Islam see a chance to ride political turmoil into power.
The United States has a vital stake in the future of this region. We have been presented with a challenge as great as any we have faced in recent decades. And we must get it right. The question is, are we up to the challenge?
My answer is, of course we are. If we are clear about our interests and guided by our principles, we can help steer events in the right direction. Our nation has done this in the past — at the end of World War II, in the last decade of the Cold War, and in the more recent war on terror … and we can do it again.
So he is throwing in with the forces of change hoping to steer them. Thus he supports the overthrow of Mubarak and Gadaffi but also of Assad and Achmadinajd presumably.
But President Obama has failed to formulate and carry out an effective and coherent strategy in response to these events. He has been timid, slow, and too often without a clear understanding of our interests or a clear commitment to our principles.
And parts of the Republican Party now seem to be trying to out-bid the Democrats in appealing to isolationist sentiments. This is no time for uncertain leadership in either party. The stakes are simply too high, and the opportunity is simply too great.
He then goes on to deal more broadly but is against cozying up to dictators. Never mind if they are our friends.
The Middle East is changing before our eyes—but our government has not kept up. It abandoned the promotion of democracy just as Arabs were about to seize it. It sought to cozy up to dictators just as their own people rose against them. It downplayed our principles and distanced us from key allies.
All this was wrong, and these policies have failed. The Administration has abandoned them, and at the price of American leadership. A region that since World War II has looked to us for security and progress now wonders where we are and what we’re up to.
The next president must do better. Today, in our own Republican Party, some look back and conclude our projection of strength and defense of freedom was a product of different times and different challenges. While times have changed, the nature of the challenge has not. [..]
It is not wrong for Republicans to question the conduct of President Obama’s military leadership in Libya. There is much to question. And it is not wrong for Republicans to debate the timing of our military drawdown in Afghanistan— though my belief is that General Petraeus’ voice ought to carry the most weight on that question.
What is wrong, is for the Republican Party to shrink from the challenges of American leadership in the world. History repeatedly warns us that in the long run, weakness in foreign policy costs us and our children much more than we’ll save in a budget line item.
America already has one political party devoted to decline, retrenchment, and withdrawal. It does not need a second one.
Our enemies in the War on Terror, just like our opponents in the Cold War, respect and respond to strength. Sometimes strength means military intervention. Sometimes it means diplomatic pressure. It always means moral clarity in word and deed.
Tim Pawlenty is my ex-governor from Minnesota. He did some things that were stupid when he first took office. He appointed an elderly woman as head of the state health department. Shortly thereafter there appeared an article on our state’s website that said something like abortion will cause your hand to fall off. Maybe not exactly that, but something as stupid. Minnesotans howled and the site was taken down. Next came news that the state health department had failed to inform citizens that there was a cancer cluster of patients up on the Iron Range until five months after the fact. The old lady was replaced. That was all it took for me to reject Pawlenty forever after.
Most Minnesotans are of Scandinavian and German descent, at least until recently. Scandinavians are known for having a live and let live attitude, a fondness for jokes and schnaps, a winter-hardy constitution and amazement that anyone would try to pull the wool over our eyes. Tim went over like a lead balloon, and there have now been enough Republicans move here that we are divided about equally between Democrats and Republicans. Nerts to that!
THEY ALL HANG OUT AT THE GLOBALIST, divide Israel at all costs, one-world making, CFR.
There is no difference in substance between any of them.
And this is relevant how?
Obama is our first Colored President. That’s it. He isn’t even Black, but half white and half black.
The Democrats always make that claim about their nominees who become President.
They said it of Clinton
and they said it of Carter.
But then, they need to believe that sort of thing.
EVERYTHING about this guy smacks of Affirmative Action:
Occidental.
Columbia.
Harvard Law.
Harvard Law Review.
President of Harvard Law Review.
State Senator of Illinois.
US Senator from Illinois.
Democratic Party nominee.
President of USA.
Arguably he is the First US Affirmative Action President.
The operative word here: “supposedly.”
No hard evidence of such an ‘offer’ has ever been adduced; all there is is the hearsay of sycophantic types who were contacted to that effect after he became the Demo nominee.
How nice.
But Pawlenty shows little likelihood of being nominated by the Republican Party for next year’s US presidential election. And as Israel Rising reminds us, Pawlenty hangs around with the Council on Foreign Relations. Which is akin to one of the gang-busters having been invited to the 1957 Apalchin conference of the major Cosa Nostra chieftains.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
If you consider how he has done as a failure, that would make him a genius.
How you like me now?!
Is Obama a genius?
Obama was billed as a genius by his fanatic liberal supporters in 2008. We have had almost three years to see his genius at work. I don’t see any. Does anyone, except the Israel-hating New York Times?
Obama has an interesting academic record. He started out at Occidental College, but graduated from the Ivy League (Columbia). He went to Harvard Law and graduated magna cum laude (but not summa). He was elected head of the Harvard Law Review, at a time when the bylaws had been changed so that grades did not factor as much.
He passed the bar on his first try. He was given a position at the University of Chicago Law School (which lasted twelve years). There appears to be some element of affirmative action involved. He worked part-time as a “senior lecturer”, and part-time in politics.
Supposedly, he was offered tenure at that Law School (despite never publishing anything), and turned it down.
He has never published any peer-reviewed work; not at Harvard Law, and not in twelve years at U of Chicago Law. He has never allowed a single transcript of his, from any institution, to be released to the public. These are the actions of a dedicated professional politician.
If “you know the tree by the fruit it bears”, then Obama’s reputation as a genius appears to be fraudulent hype. My own evaluation of his performance has risen a bit in three years: it started out as “terrible”; now I think he is “poor to mediocre”.
Problem is that he spoke at the CFR…that is a warning sign!