Neither Malley nor Obama have a clue
By Ted Belman
Isseroff has some important observations on Malley and Obama in the Middle East.
Nightmares or facts: Obama, Malley and the grapevine
By Ami Isseroff
[..] If Malley is going to have an important role in Middle East affairs it may be bad not only for Israel, but for the United States and for everyone in the Middle East. This is true regardless of whether you are a Zionist, an anti-Zionist, an Arab or an American citizen concerned for American interests. It is not a matter of bias necessarily, but one of judgment.
Malley is not a novice in foreign affairs. He played a role in the Camp David negotiations. He should know the ropes. He should be capable of producing programs that are realistic, even if we disagree with them. But in 2002, Malley co-authored, with his side-kick Hussein Agha, an article about a peace plan that looks like it might have been written by a somewhat backward teenage blogger who was never in the Middle East, let alone state department service. The major points of this plan are:
* The United States will force a peace plan on the Israelis and the Arabs.
* The plan will include a swap of territory, in which Israeli Arabs are forcibly transferred to the Palestinian state. Somehow, this is supposed to implement Palestinian Right of Return. Palestinian refugees will also be settled in this area. Five million refugees in the little triangle of Umm El Fahm. Perhaps they will build lots of skyscrapers. The refugee gets to “Israel” but presto change-o, Israel becomes Palestine!
* As the piece de resistance for Americans, the plan will be enforced by an international force, presumably made up primarily of US soldiers.
Not since the infamous and ill-advised Clean Break document perhaps, have any out of office Middle East pundits put together anything so divorced from reality. The virtue of this plan is that it will make everyone sore at the United States, and make American citizens sore at their government. Nobody is going to stand for an imposed solution. Israeli Arabs are not interested in being “transferred” or “swapped” to any Palestinian state. This idea, which is also a part of the plan offered by MK Avigdor Lieberman, is considered racist. Palestinians aren’t going to like the idea that right of return is not really implemented. Americans are going to just love the idea of sending troops to keep the peace, right? That worked out really well in Iraq, didn’t it? Mr Malley forgot that “if you break it you bought it. That means that if they force a plan on the sides and, for example, the Hamas do not like it, then the USA must be responsible for the consequences. Hamas consequences are generally explosive. So the US will send more and more troops, and the Hamas and their Iranian bosses will be only too happy to oblige their passion for peace by blowing them to bits as the Hezbollah did in Lebanon. If Mr Obama wants to play an active role in fixing the Middle East, he better have advisers who know enough not to come charging in like Americans in an Iraqi museum.
Is that ever a takedown.
Isseroff goes on to question whether Obama will in fact impose the Saudi Plan
Diana West’s Gulling Americans into making terror legit? gives her take.
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Time will tell, of course. There is no doubletalk fancy enough to disguise a new era of accommodation of jihad terrorists bent on Israel’s — and the West’s — destruction, if that is the era we are heading into.
Or is there? This takes me back to my original question: Are we as dumb as Obama thinks we are?
Isseroff correctly points out that all we can do now is to point out the concerns about an Obama presidency and hope they aren’t true.
One further thing that could be done if the Republicans and conservatives could ever get their act together is to create a publicly accepted yardstick of fears thus far engendered by Obama as regards foreign policy, the Middle East and Israel in particular, the economy, Obama’s energy policy or lack of an effective energy policy, his health care proposals, his immigration policies as regards stemming the tide of illegal aliens and dealing with those already in the states, and the like.
It would be most helpful if the Republicans/conservatives could create such a yardstick by which to enumerate all the fears and concerns Obama has already engendered and as well a form of scorecard if you will, that would be accepted and used by the public and the opinion shaping media, in conjunction with the yardstick of fears, to keep score of Obama’s performance.
Comment by Bill Narvey — November 17, 2008 @ 12:34 pm