Samantha Power, Obama and that word again.. hope


Here is an article about an interview with one of Obama's foreign policy advisers, Samantha Power, who "With her long, straight auburn hair, blue eyes and freckles, Samantha Power looks as though she has stepped out of a photograph of the Kennedy clan. She was born in Ireland, lives in Massachusetts and shares the admiration of America’s royal family for the candidate they regard as the new JFK. .... (Interesting introduction: she is not a Kennedy but she could easily be mistaken for one which is a good enough reason to include her in the same circle of "royalty")

Power shocked some friends by opposing the invasion of Iraq. “Some people said, ‘How could you write about genocide and not support the war?’ It felt like one was sentencing the Iraqi people to life imprisonment under a brutal regime.”

She decided, however, that there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein was planning a new round of slaughter and the costs and benefits of war were not worth the risk. Now she admits the question is: “If we leave, could it get worse?”

Power believes that Obama would do all he could to prevent large-scale civilian deaths by a meticulously planned withdrawal from Iraq. “If a systematic campaign of genocide were to unfold, he would try to get other countries to join the US to go back in order to stave it off. What you are talking about is a massive crime against humanity and the hope would be that humanity would step forward.”

How can this be considered even remotely well-thought out and responsible planning for the future of the Iraqi people? So Obama takes out the troops, the country collapses into the most ferocious civil war imaginable. At which point, America will turn to "humanity" ask them to intervene and stop the mutual slaughter? What precedent is there that "humanity" has ever stepped up to the plate to stop a genocide?

What is that Obama-sanctified word "hope" based on, except for sheer instinct to steer away from centres of troubles?

Hope is not a principle of policy. Hope does not change lived reality. Hope narcotizes when one should be most alert and in possession of one's faculties. Hope makes you feel good when you have no reason to feel good. Hope makes you forget that you need to do something, constructively, deliberately, to solve an urgent problem. "Hope" is not something I would wish to hear from world leaders when people are mass slaughtered, persecuted, bullied, terrorized.

Bob from Brockley, whose opinion I value, wrote this about Samantha Power:

(More hopefully, Obama is also advised by Samantha Power, whose fantastic "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide is a powerful resource for cosmopolitanism and against realism. Power, incidentally, has been cruelly and inaccurately described as an adherent of the Walt-Mearsheimer thesis by right-wing anti-Obama-ites like Paul Mirengoff and Noah Pollock.)

I hope that when he comes back from the short hiatus he took, he will find a moment to address my misgivings about this woman. She strikes me as thrilled with her own success and her new position as adviser to would-be-kings, too shallow and careless in her vision of the future. A person of genuine gravitas and deep commitment to the improvement of this world does not dispense so easily such comforting panaceas like "hope" and trust in "humanity".

Obama Watch:

Zbig goes to Damascus:

A foreign policy adviser to Senator Obama is scheduled to arrive in Syria today as the leader of a RAND Corp. delegation.

Zbigniew Brzezinski will travel to Damascus for meetings as part of a trip Syria's official Cham News agency described as an "important sign that the end of official dialogue between Washington and Damascus has not prevented dialogue with important American intellectuals and politicians."

An assistant to Mr. Brzezinski, Trudy Werner, told The New York Sun yesterday: "He is leading a delegation for RAND and they will be in Damascus. It is a high-level delegation and they are meeting with some high-level people in the region. There is no shortage of issues in the Middle East to discuss as I'm sure you know."

Mr. Brzezinski's visit to Syria... is in many ways in keeping with a theme of the Obama campaign.

... the former Carter administration official addressed Democratic lawmakers last month at a retreat at Williamsburg, Va., on America's policy toward Iran. "I remember thinking, 'Why are we listening to him?' He was the national security adviser for Jimmy Carter 30 years ago. He proceeded to talk to us about Iran, and I said, 'Let me see, didn't the ayatollahs come to power, didn't we have this problem when you were in the White House?'"

Marty Peretz on Zbig's visit:

It's no surprise that Zbig Brzezinski is visiting Damascus. First of all, Bashar Assad would be delighted to see him, as he has seen other marginal players in U.S. foreign policy. Secondly, Zbig is a fan of Assad's, as is the ex-president for whom he pondered heavy matters, Jimmy Carter, a really big fan. Visiting America's enemies is, in any case, a good way to get attention at home. ...The visitors may say they are pushing along the "getting to yes" process. But what they're usually doing is fomenting mischief.

... Zbig ...is now 80 and is a danger to no one, except Barack Obama whose foreign policy advisory board he co-chairs. Zbig went to Damascus without thinking that, in these circumstances, his travels to Assad's palace might affect the fortunes of his candidate. Or maybe he just said to himself, "fuck it." He didn't tell anybody in the Barack circle, and the campaign knew nothing about his tourism until Eli Lake of the New York Sun raised questions about its adviser's travels. And reported the telling story.

.... In any case, I don't believe that Zbig is visiting just Assad. I believe -- in fact, I think I know -- that he is going to meet with Khaled Maashal, the most vicious of the Hamas leaders, who has been headquartered in Damascus for years. Here "tea with Assad" is just a cover for a pernicious encounter.

The Geek asks:

Either way, does this look good for Obama? If you are a supporter of Israel, can you really, in your heart of hearts, also support Mr. Obama's presidential campaign?

Samantha Power refuses to correct her version of Jenin

Samantha Power, one of Barack Obama’s foreign policy advisers, asks a question of David Rohde, a reporter who covered the intifada for the New York Times. The quote is as follows:

Samantha Power: I have a question for David about working for the New York Times. I was struck by a headline that accompanied a news story on the publication of the Human Rights Watch report. The headline was, I believe: “Human Rights Report Finds Massacre Did Not Occur in Jenin.” The second paragraph said, “Oh, but lots of war crimes did.” Why wouldn’t they make the war crimes the headline and the non-massacre the second paragraph?

....Israel is accused in sensational press reports of a massacre in Jenin, and is subjected to severe international condemnation; HRW finally gets out a report and says there was no massacre; the NYT reports this as its headline; and Power thinks the headline still should have been: Israel guilty of war crimes!

Marty Peretz; 'I don't care if our pro-Zionist stance costs us'

These "definite" opinions, as Peretz calls them, have prompted some of his politer critics to write him off as a "stalwart defender of Israel." Harsher detractors accuse him of pursuing an "iron-fisted and ugly approach" to Israeli-Arab relations.

"So tachlis, are we losing influence because we're vocal on the Israel issue?" ... "I've puzzled over this a lot," ... "I don't care if our declaredly pro-Zionist stance is costing us some influence. But, you know, I get quoted an awful lot."

Peretz... says he prefers Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton. "In the 1980s there developed among African Americans a deep strain of hostility to Jews. That's not the case any more," he says. "In the history of the Jewish-Black relationship, Louis Farrakhan will be a footnote. Al Sharpton won't even be that, he'll only be a street fighter with gold jewelry."

Despite his support for Obama, Peretz doesn't seem to have too much faith in the candidate's approach to foreign policy. "If Obama's elected, we will see more diplomacy in American foreign policy. But that doesn't mean there would be any more successful diplomacy," he says.

Why is Che adorning Obama's Texas new offices?

It will be interesting to see how he'll react (if at all) to the flag hanging in one of his new campaign offices in Houston, Texas.

Yep, that's right -- that is the national flag of Cuba hanging on the wall with none other than Che Guevara superimposed on it.

Barak Obama: Is he really for change?

Obama became further ensconced in the politics of Zionism when he co-sponsored an amendment to the Illinois Pension Code enabling that state to lend money to the Israeli government.

In January 2006, Obama made his first trip to Occupied Palestine, seeing it first from the vantage point of an IDF helicopter. Later he met with a group of college students at Jerusalem University's Ramallah branch. An International Solidarity Movement (ISM) member, identified only by her first name, Katie, was in the audience.

.. Katie was under the impression that Obama was a progressive, compassionate individual who would be sympathetic with the plight of Palestinians.... she was in for a rude awakening.

Katie recalled the event in a widely disseminated e-mail. She questioned Obama's comments regarding the need for Arab governments to embrace democracy, not theocracy. "...How can you explain to the Palestinian people how the U.S. can be opposed to these things (theocracy and terrorism) but still supports a state that has racist, oppressive, unjust and apartheid policies...?" she asked.

According to Katie, Obama informed her that he would not accept the assumptions she made, thereby ignoring that part of her question. He added the U.S. relationship with Israel was not going to change.

Samantha Power's split personality?

She made a monstrous comment about Hillary Clinton, and then retracts it this way:

Obama’s top foreign policy adviser Samantha Power has resigned from the Obama campaign, after a Scottish newspaper reported she called Hillary Clinton a “monster.” Power, who was unpaid, initiated the move, according to the Obama campaign.

“With deep regret, I am resigning from my role as an advisor the Obama campaign effective today,” Power said in a statement released by the campaign. “Last Monday, I made inexcusable remarks that are at marked variance from my oft-stated admiration for Senator Clinton and from the spirit, tenor, and purpose of the Obama campaign. And I extend my deepest apologies to Senator Clinton, Senator Obama, and the remarkable team I have worked with over these long 14 months.”

I couldn't help but compare this to her response, a few days earlier, to Ha'aretz correspondent who interviewed her:

Among other things, he found the following things she said, in a 2002 interview, about what should be done to stop the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

"[It will] mean sacrificing - or investing, I think, more than sacrificing - billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel's military, but actually investing in the new state of Palestine, in investing the billions of dollars it would probably take, also, to support what will have to be a mammoth protection force, not of the old Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military presence."

In that same interview, Power said that the situation will "require external intervention."

Pollack very reasonably interpreted this as an expression of support for a "ground invasion of Israel and the Palestinian territories." Otherwise, he wrote, what did she mean when she spoke of "a mammoth protection force"?

Power herself recognizes that the statement is problematic. "Even I don't understand it," she says. And also: "This makes no sense to me." And furthermore: "The quote seems so weird." She thinks that she made this statement in the context of discussing the deployment of international peacekeepers. But this was a very long time ago, circumstances were different, and it's hard for her to reconstruct exactly what she meant. Anyway, what she she said five years ago is less important that what she wants to say now: She absolutely does not believe in "imposing a settlement." Israelis and Arabs "will negotiate their own peace."

In both incidents, she stated an opinion, position or personal insult, and later confessed that she couldn't quite understand what got into her...

________

Update: I didn't know all this about Power and co...

Update: Obama's Scary Advisers

"Contentions" follows up on Samantha Power's possible advice to Obama:


Question: Let me give you a thought experiment here, and it is the following: without addressing the Palestine - Israel problem, let’s say you were an advisor to the President of the United States, how would you respond to current events there? Would you advise him to put a structure in place to monitor that situation, at least if one party or another [starts] looking like they might be moving toward genocide?

Answer by Samantha Power:

What we don’t need is some kind of early warning mechanism there, what we need is a willingness to put something on the line in helping the situation. Putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import; it may more crucially mean sacrificing — or investing, I think, more than sacrificing — billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel’s military, but actually investing in the new state of Palestine, in investing the billions of dollars it would probably take, also, to support what will have to be a mammoth protection force, not of the old Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military presence. Because it seems to me at this stage (and this is true of actual genocides as well, and not just major human rights abuses, which were seen there), you have to go in as if you’re serious, you have to put something on the line.

Unfortunately, imposition of a solution on unwilling parties is dreadful. It’s a terrible thing to do, it’s fundamentally undemocratic. But, sadly, we don’t just have a democracy here either, we have a liberal democracy. There are certain sets of principles that guide our policy, or that are meant to, anyway. It’s essential that some set of principles becomes the benchmark, rather than a deference to [leaders] who are fundamentally politically destined to destroy the lives of their own people. And by that I mean what Tom Freidman has called “Sharafat.” [Sharon-Arafat; this is actually an Amos Oz construction — NP] I do think in that sense, both political leaders have been dreadfully irresponsible. And, unfortunately, it does require external intervention

Note that this is a thought experiment in which Power is cast in the role of an adviser to a President. Well, the thought experiment is no longer confined to the laboratory. It has become a near-reality, with Power advising Obama on how to conduct his foreign policy vis a vis Israel. And her advice is pretty chilling: Attack and break Israel, build up Palestine. And translated into simpler language, attack a democracy in order to empower an Islamic totalitarian genocidal regime.

And she now has Obama's ear, who has assembled a team of advisers who all share her fundamental urges; Obama, who has been a devoted member in a church that openly celebrates Louis Farrakhan.

I think, I hope, these grave concerns will reach a certain critical mass which Obama may be forced to face down. I'm looking forward to hearing him articulate some very clear ideas and positions about his intentions towards Israel, hopefully followed by decisive deeds. Like getting rid of his bunch of Achitophels...

__________

And for those who keep referring to his speech to AIPAC, let me draw your attention to this little story from Ali Abunimah, from "The Electronic intifada". By Abunimah's own testimonial, this is what Obama said to him in

"the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat he now occupies.

As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front." He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy, "Keep up the good work!"

Does it need translation? Isn't Obama practically saying that he cannot reveal his genuine sentiments about the Palestinians because he is in a campaign to get elected? What remains unsaid but pretty clear is that as long as he needs to court the Jewish voice, he cannot be "upfront" about his own position.

As Abunimah himself helpfully adds later in the article:

... given his historically close relations to Palestinian-Americans, Obama's about-face is not surprising. He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to get elected and he will continue doing it as long as it keeps him in power. Palestinian-Americans are in the same position as civil libertarians who watched with dismay as Obama voted to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act, or immigrant rights advocates who were horrified as he voted in favor of a Republican bill to authorize the construction of a 700-mile fence on the border with Mexico.

Only if enough people know what Obama and his competitors stand for, and organize to compel them to pay attention to their concerns can there be any hope of altering the disastrous course of US policy in the Middle East. It is at best a very long-term project that cannot substitute for support for the growing campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions needed to hold Israel accountable for its escalating violence and solidifying apartheid.

A quick tour of the rabid anti-Israel Left blogs and media outlets can reveal some other telling quotes which suggest Obama's so-called staunch support of Israel is merely a convenient pose. Like this, for example:

Less than two weeks after Obama gloated to AIPAC about his love for Israel, he unexpectedly admitted the truth while campaigning in Iowa recently. "[N]obody is suffering more than the Palestinian people..." said Obama, "the Israel government must make difficult concessions for the peace process to restart..."


So we have it on the best of the Indecent Lefty's authority that when Obama says

"[N]obody is suffering more than the Palestinian people..."

(Really? Not even the genocided people of Darfur? Not even genuinely starving, AIDS victim kids in Africa? Not even persecuted women in Pakistan and Iran? Not even the residents of Sderot, with the daily barrage of Qassams being lobbed at their children, by the very people who suffer most in the world ???)

he is "unexpectedly admit[ting] the truth".

Shades of Carter, Tutu.. etc etc..

Can this be a coincidence, when Obama's choice of Foreign Policy expert includes "Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, who says that Obama offers “a new definition of America's role in the world.” (Here)

____________

Late update: When I invoked Carter's name, I did not know that he was an Obama admirer, and an active one, too:

Former President Jimmy Carter lavished praise on Illinois Sen. Barack Obama during an interview at his home on Monday, though he won't formally endorse any candidate in the race for the Democratic nomination.

"Obama's campaign has been extraordinary and titillating for me and my family," Mr. Carter said.

Ah, well. The vapid ex-president, ostensibly "neutral":

* nonetheless goes on record beaming with avuncular delight as he "lavishes praise" upon the anointed one's head

* reports, discreetly, on a conversation with Bill Clinton about Obama

*and expresses confidence that the candidate "could carry some southern states if he becomes the Democratic nominee."

He does all this, and still maintains that he is keeping out of the race to the White House. No doubt he also believes it.

Gossip of love, politics and then some...

I. An apologia

Let it be stated right away that I consider this post to be in breach of an important rule of mine to never gossip.

Because

"Tale-bearing is, essentially, any gossip. The Hebrew word for tale-bearer is "rakhil" (Reish-Kaf-Yod-Lamed), which is related to a word meaning trader or merchant. The idea is that a tale-bearer is like a merchant, but he deals in information instead of goods. In our modern "Information Age," the idea of information as a product has become more clear than ever before, yet it is present even here in the Torah.It is a violation of this mitzvah to say anything about another person, even it is true, even if it is not negative, even if it is not secret, even if it hurts no one, even if the person himself would tell the same thing if asked!


But I do deviate from it from time to time. As in this post.

Why? I'm' not perfectly sure. Maybe because the human interest in the story I talk about is just too irresistible. Cécilia María's story appealed to me for the choreography of the many cycles of identity manifested in it.

This following story appealed to me because I'm such an admirer of Martha Nussbaum, and because I am so critical (usually) of Samantha Power, and because I have been following closely Obama's evolution and one person whose writings helped me think about him positively was Cass Sunstein. So all these persons, which I have been watching and listening to quite attentively in the last few months, converge in this story, in a romance where the political merges with the personal. So I just can't resist talking about it. It's just too damn intriguing, or something.

>>>>>>

II. Trading places

Sometime last May, Presidential increasingly- more- than- Hopeful Obama was saying "It has been 15 months since I first announced that I was running for the presidency of the United States of America and that's a long time in politics... "There are now babies who were born and are walking and talking."

Not only that. There were long happy couples who separated, the two halves (or at least one half) re-formed in a new couplehood which has by now tied the knot. With some luck, their first- born will arrive on the day President Elect Obama is sworn in...

Only last winter, there was this article celebrating the joy of the intellectual equality and reciprocity which characterized the personal partnership between Martha Nussbaum and Cass Sunstein:

Is it hard for people burdened with such intellectual candlepower to find each other? They didn’t seem to have much trouble. But it’s clear that they apply what they know (which is a lot) to making their relationship work (which it does, very well).

And here we are, in less than a year later:

Reports surfaced online in May that the 54-year-old Sunstein, the nation’s most-cited legal scholar, and Power were engaged, and that the relationship played a role in Sunstein accepting Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan’s perennial offer to leave his longtime home at the University of Chicago Law School.

Cass Sunstein and Samantha Power and their Harlequinesque "whirlwind romance" ended happily in a church wedding at seaside town of Waterville in Kerry, Ireland:

According to The Independent of Ireland, Power arrived at the evening ceremony in a champagne-colored Lexus covered in flowers. The 38-year-old author and foreign policy expert walked down the aisle in a cream, lace gown.

>>>>>>>

III. An old story

Of course the above is an old old story, and thoroughly predictable. Men prefer younger women. Given a choice between two highly intelligent and ambitious women, both exceptionally good looking and successful, the age factor will bring down the scales in favour of the younger one. It is, as someone once honestly stated in a discussion about a similar topic, a biological instinct. Younger women possess the ability to give a gift, or at least the promise of a gift, of fertility and longevity to their male partners.

The only story I ever heard of a reversed choice, where the man in question opted for an older woman was the case of Ralph Fiennes, when, 11 years ago he ditched his wife, Alex Kingston, for the (much older) Francesca Annis. But that, too, came to its predictable end.

When people are in love, they are oblivious to everything but each other in their idealized forms. But life and biology and convention cannot be defeated by mere love.

Here is an article which discusses age and love and marriage. Most comments point to the same sort of position.

Examples:

Mark A.:

My guideline has always been the “half my age plus seven” rule. At 50, it has seen me through three marriages, numerous other short-lived relationships, and once again has put me in the awkward position of knowing that my 34 year old girlfriend is beginning to get a bit long in the tooth. I’m not opposed to dating women my own age; it just appears they have adopted the same rule and used it against me!

Ron W:

I am 54, my wife is 28. We have been married for 9 years. We have the same hobbies, the same interests, we like the same music, we like the same movies, and we have the same political views for the most part. Age difference is one small factor that we can live with. Many people who know us describe us as having the idea marriage.

I didn’t look for someone that young. It is just that the best woman for me was 18 when I found her. Why pass that up?

I have run into some hostility. Only from women over 40. Guess they don’t like the competition.

And so on, and so forth.

More on preserving Obama's infallibility

As I said in this post, when dear Obama makes a decision or effects a policy which stands in contradiction to what his adulators expected of him, there is a tendency among Obamists to shift the blame to someone else. "It's not him. It's them" is the mantra.

So I've appointed myself a collector of such arguments. And here is another one:

Apparently, against the explicit wishes of the Jewish community, Israel, and Canada's presedence, Obama decided that the US will participate in Durban II. So Marty Peretz, of the New Republic, who is as infatuated with Obama as the next man, is now struggling to figure out how this could be. And, predictably, comes up with the answer: "It's not him. It's them".

"them" is Susan Rice and Samantha Power:

"Maybe Ambassador Rice should have been sent. Apparently, that the U.S. should attend this pre-extravaganza extravaganza was her cause. But there is no indication that she wanted to be directly saddled with the costs of going herself. She certainly grasped what the likely results would be. My guess, moreover, is that, contrary to the right-wing blogoshpere, Samantha Power was not especially hot on this experiment in public diplomacy. The two ladies are old antagonists, sharing only the affections of the president. Can you imagine Ms. Rice before some college audience when some smart-assed undergraduate like I was, holding Ms. Power's A Problem from Hell, (co-published by New Republic Books), begins to read: Rice said, "If we use the word 'genocide' and are seen as doing nothing what will be the effect on the November elections?" Rice later confessed that her remark was "inappropriate" and "irrelevant." But that was only if we planned to do nothing, which is exactly what we planned."

Here is what one commenter wryly suggests:

"Sanda said:

Sorry Mr. Peretz! You can't have it both ways. I have read in amazement what you (and the rest of the TNR, all in one corner, campaigning away - not one dissenting opinion) had to say (nay, practically promise) for the past year. That included (with zero evidence and some hints to the contrary) your assurances about Obama, Rice, and Powell and how good they were going to be for Israel. We are now collecting on this, but you can't act as if this is a surprise, explain it away, or promise again that it will all work out. We have change."

Obama's ease with anti Israel proponents:

Persuant to this , this and this:

Ed Lasky, on January 16:

In contrast to his canned speeches filled with "poetry" and uplifting aphorisms and delivered in a commanding way, behind the campaign façade lies a disquieting pattern of behavior.

One seemingly consistent theme running throughout Barack Obama's career is his comfort with aligning himself with people who are anti-Israel advocates. This ease around Israel animus has taken various forms. As Obama has continued his political ascent, he has moved up the prestige scale in terms of his associates. Early on in his career he chose a church headed by a former Black Muslim who is a harsh anti-Israel advocate and who may be seen as tinged with anti-Semitism. This church is a member of a denomination whose governing body has taken a series of anti-Israel actions.

As his political fortunes and ambition climbed, he found support from George Soros, multibillionaire promoter of groups that have been consistently harsh and biased critics of the American-Israel relationship.

Obama's soothing and inspiring oratory sometimes vanishes when he talks of the Middle East. Indeed, his off-the-cuff remarks have been uniformly taken by supporters of Israel as signs that the inner Obama does not truly support Israel despite what his canned speeches and essays may contain.

Now that Obama has become a leading Presidential candidate, he has assembled a body of foreign policy advisers who signal that a President Obama would likely have an approach towards Israel radically at odds with those of previous Presidents (both Republican and Democrat). A group of experts collected by the Israeli liberal newspaper Haaretz deemed him to be the candidate likely to be least supportive of Israel. He is the candidate most favored by the Arab-American community. (Read the rest, here)

More Ed Lasky on January 23:

...One of his advisors in particular, Robert Malley, clearly warrants attention, as does the reasoning that led him to being chosen by Barack Obama.

...Malley has seemingly followed in his father's footsteps: he represents the next generation of anti-Israel activism. Through his writings he has served as a willing propagandist, bending the truth (and more) to serve an agenda that is marked by anti-Israel bias; he heads a group of Middle East policy advisers for a think-tank funded (in part) by anti-Israel billionaire activist George Soros; and now is on the foreign policy staff of a leading Presidential contender. Each step up the ladder seems to be a step closer towards his goal of empowering radicals and weakening the ties between American and our ally Israel.

... Malley is a revisionist and his views are sharply at odds with the views of others who participated at Camp David, including Ambassador Dennis Ross and President Bill Clinton. Malley's myth-making has been peddled in the notably anti-Israel magazine, Counterpunch and by Norman Finkelstein... (Read the rest, here)

Noah Pollak in Contentions:

But there is another Obama foreign policy adviser–a prominent one–who has so far escaped criticism. This is Samantha Power, a Harvard professor, journalist, and human rights specialist who of late has become a high-profile liberal critic of American foreign policy.

For one, Power is an advocate of the Walt-Mearsheimer view of the American relationship with Israel. In a recent interview published on the Harvard Kennedy School’s website...

Power is not just assenting to the Israel Lobby view of American foreign policy, but is also arguing that Israel had something to do with the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003–an appalling slander, and a telling one.

...Does Power actually believe that the NIE put to rest concerns about the Iranian nuclear program? If she actually thinks that — and it appears she does — she deserves voluminous ridicule from thinking people everywhere.

Does anyone think that if the time comes that Power has President Obama’s ear, she will advise him to do anything other than repudiate America’s greatest ally in the Middle East in favor of appeasing its greatest enemy? And here’s an even better question: Does Barack Obama have a single adviser who would tell him to do anything else? (Read the rest, here)

You may well ask what has re-awakened my interest today of all days when there has been nothing about any of it in the news.

Well, it is this comment I ran across, on Solomonia, in a thread that was discussing the latest staging of Palestinian ad misericordiam show:

It's great that you guys can laugh it up about these photos. This was done to illustrate the point that Israel did indeed plunge the Gaza strip into darkness when it cut off fuel supplies last week. Israel also cut off supplies of food and medicine. Do any of you deny this? And you wonder where the terrorists come from.'

If you think collective punishment is a valid tactic, please explain to me the difference between your morality and that of the terrorists when they blow themselves up in Tel Aviv?
You people are in a moral swamp.

Stupid clowns

The comment was placed by one calling himself "Obama supporter". Now of course this crude type of "criticism" can hardly be Obama's fault. After all, how is he responsible for what his supporters think about Jews or pro-Israel advocates? I realize all this. And yet I cannot help being very anxious when a presidential candidate's name is flagrantly asserted in connection with the kind of opinion this poster propagates. It seems unlikely that someone with such a strongly-worded animus towards Israel would choose to emphasize his/her support for a presidential candidate who was unambiguously supportive of Israel.

Alan Dershowitz explains it better, here:

''Change" alone cannot be a basis for deciding which candidate to support... What matters is the direction of the change, who is in charge of bringing it about--and who is supporting the candidate. When I cast my vote, I look not only at the candidate but at who is supporting him or her. Elections empower not only the winning candidate but the constituencies that helped to elect that person. I worry about the constituencies that are supporting some of the candidates.

For this reason, I favor the nomination of a centrist Democrat, one who is capable of attracting independents, moderates, and the growing number of anti-Bush Republicans.
___________

What makes Obama such a desirable candidate to so many die-hard "Liberals"??

Here is one possible answer:

Many white liberals feel that his success in coming this far - and especially if he wins - tells us so much about how the United States feels about itself. David Greenberg called him the ‘great white hope’, and quoted social critic John McWhorter as saying: ‘What gives people a jolt in their gut about the idea of President Obama is the idea that it would be a ringing symbol that racism no longer rules our land.’ (7)

Hah. That's what I've been saying for quite some time now.

____________

And here is a view from Israel:

.. Obama is still considered a candidate that's not as friendly and supportive as those leading the pack. The panelists, in written responses, explained that they are still bothered by his "lack of international experience," "ideological tendencies and constituency," and "emphasis on international organizations." One of the panelists expressed doubt as to his true feelings and said, "We don't know and have no way to know to what extent he really means what he says." The panel agrees - it was skeptical when we asked if the speech reflects Obama's actual views. However, some stated that, "The mere fact that he made the effort is encouraging and telling."

We asked the panel to compare Obama to the other Democratic candidates in a head-to-head race. The outcome is quite telling: Obama has a hard time convincing the panel that he will be better than his leading colleagues. However, he does manage to be judged as favorably as some of the second-tier candidates - Dodd and Clark.

Bottom line: This seventh survey need not disappoint Obama's supporters (at least those among them who care both about Israel and about the survey). His effort, clearly, has moved the panel - reluctantly, suspiciously, slowly - in a more positive direction. However, the "unknown factor" of previous surveys is still playing a big role. One of the panelists told me: "You can't change the perceived image of a candidate by making one or two speeches."

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Yid with Lid has more:

Question remains:

Why would Barack Obama have on his foreign policy staff a man who has been widely criticized for a revisionist history of the Middle East peace process sharply at odds with all other accounts of the proceedings?

Why would Barack Obama give credibility to a man who seems to have an agenda that includes empowering our enemies and weakening our friends and allies?

How did Robert Malley, with a record of writing that reveals a willingness to twist facts to serve a political agenda, come to be appointed by Obama to his foreign staff?

Was it a recommendation of Zbigniew Brzezinski to bring on board another anti-Israel foreign policy expert?

What role did the left-wing anti-Israel activist George Soros play in placing Robert Malley (or for that matter, Brzezinski himself) in a position to influence the future foreign policy of America?
What does it say about Senator Obama's judgment that he appointed a man like Malley to be a top foreign policy advisor?

Or does it speak more to his true beliefs?

Oh Dear, yet another Obama advisor who bodes ill for Israel and has funny ideas about Jewish power...

Power Line:

Why does Barack Obama have so many foreign policy and national security advisers whose statements about Israel and American Jews are problematic? We've written at length about Samantha Power, perhaps his closest foreign policy adviser until she was forced to resign for insulting Hillary Clinton. We've also touched on Zbigniew Brzezinski and Robert Malley. And by now everyone who follows these things realizes that Obama's long-time spiritual adviser Rev. Wright hates Israel passionately.

Now comes evidence that Gen. Merrill "Tony" McPeak, who serves as Obama's national campaign co-chair and his point man when it comes to establishing the candidate's bona fides on military matters, is also hostile towards Israel, viewing its positions as preventing peace from breaking out in the region. Moreover, in something like the style of Walt-Mearsheimer, he blames American Jews for enabling Israel to take the positions that prevent peace.


Robert Goldberg

McPeak's comments ...reflect the views of Reverend Wright and other Obama advisers who believe that Israel is just a problem to be solved, not an ally to support.

McPeak is not the only member of the Obama campaign who holds such twisted views. Others such as Robert Malley or Zbigniew Brzezinski have found themselves downgraded to "informal" advisers as their anti-Israel views are made public. Samantha Powers was dismissed for calling Hillary a monster, not for sharing McPeak's belief in the malign omnipotence of the "Israel lobby."

Obama has a Jewish problem and McPeak's bigoted views are emblematic of what they are. Obama can issue all the boilerplate statements supporting Israel's right to defend itself he wants. But until he accepts responsibility for allowing people like McPeak so close to his quest for the presidency, Obama's sincerity and judgment will remain open questions.

Hmm.

The difference between dishonesty and tact

(H/T: Normblog)

I wonder who will be blamed for breaking this Obama promise?

As a senator, I strongly support passage of the Armenian Genocide Resolution (H.Res.106 and S.Res.106), and as President I will recognize the Armenian Genocide.

Here is Samantha Power, appealing to Armenian-Americans to put their trust in President Obama.

Yet here is the deal:

... unsurprisingly, the Obama administration is no different to any of its predecessors in discovering that the responsibilities of power require a degree of historical trimming.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the administration is "hesitating" about making any presidential statement affirming the genocide or, presumably, endorsing the annual effort to have Congress call a genocide, you know, genocide.

Norm Geras, in his customary understatement:

The reason for doing so would be that the administration doesn't want to 'imperil Turkey's assistance' on various important matters. I've indicated my view about this before, so I won't repeat it. But spokespersons for the diplomatic dishonesty tact might at least credit their audience with some intelligence. Get this:

Administration officials are considering postponing a presidential statement, citing progress toward a thaw in relations between Turkey and neighboring Armenia. Further signs of warming - such as talk of reopening border crossings - would strengthen arguments that a U.S. statement could imperil the progress.

"At this moment, our focus is on how, moving forward, the United States can help Armenia and Turkey work together to come to terms with the past," said Michael Hammer, a spokesman for the National Security Council. He said the administration was "encouraged" by improvements in relations and believed it was "important that the countries have an open and honest dialogue about the past."

You see, the diplomatic tact is also in aid of further improving relations between Turkey and Armenia. How balanced. Even though it's Turkey that would be alienated by an official statement from the president. Armenians, as the report immediately goes on to say, see things differently.

Wrote about this subject here and here.

The Pastor that won't go away:
What's Wright got to do with understanding Obama

by Lee Smith

I am not sure why it seems surprising that Senator Barack Obama’s church has embraced Palestinian rejectionists. First the church newsletter reprinted an editorial by Hamas’s deputy political bureau chief, and then there was the “Open Letter to Oprah from Ali Baghdadi on her visit to Palestine,” where Baghdadi recommends the talk show hostess make a visit to the birthplace of Mary’s “beautiful Palestinian baby” (aka, Jesus), and describes an “ethnic bomb” Israel was developing in tandem with South Africa that would kill only “blacks and Arabs.”

The essential contours of the Islamist worldview are hardly alien to Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s flock. There’s the knee-jerk anti-Americanism (the Islamists’s “Death to America” and Reverend Wright’s “God Damn America”), and Wright’s use of the Arab world’s chestnut that America brought 9/11 on itself with its support of Israel. And the historical revisionism holding that the Jewish child of Jewish parents (and a Jewish God) is actually a “Palestinian” is consistent with the identity politics of Black Liberation theology.

But what’s really telling are the flights of paranoid fancy — like how Wright said that FDR knew about Pearl Harbor, that Bush was going to plant WMD in Iraq just like the Los Angeles Police Department frames suspects, and, most notoriously, that the U.S. government created HIV to kill “colored people.” The idea that the Jews were working on an “ethnic bomb” partakes of a genre that combines historical fiction with sci-fi fantasy. “But Daddy,” an alert sixth-grade biology student might query her well-educated father, “my teacher says you can’t build a weapon that only targets one kind of person.” Never mind the science, honey, we’re here for the sermon.
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Reverend Wright’s sermons are signs of a bewitched mind, and Senator Obama’s apologia treated them as though they should initiate a discussion among the citizens of the nation that his deeply troubled preacher assailed. Senator Obama thinks that Wright’s ravings merit a national discussion on race, but there are other concerns that will not only take up much of the American president’s time, but will also constitute the issues that the executive branch actually has control over — like foreign policy. What sort of insight does the Wright affair give us into an Obama foreign policy?

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Instead of condemning violence, we need to contextualize murder and those who celebrate it, just like we have to understand Reverend Wright’s racist paranoia within the framework of “original sin.” By addressing the wrongs of history we can restore dignity and minimalize grievance.

“I don’t think anyone in the foreign policy community has as much an appreciation of the value of dignity as Obama does,” says Samantha Power, who is apparently still of the Obama campaign if no longer in it. And as Obama made clear in his Wright speech, no one running for president understands the depths of grievance like he does. An Obama presidency is not going to give us a national discussion on race, but a foreign policy that is a four-year-long international conference on grievance, for the world has many grievances with America.