"In a speech to a pro-Israeli group that mixed reassuring notes about helping Israel face the Iranian nuclear threat with a blunt warning that the status quo in the Middle East was “unsustainable,” Mrs. Clinton said, “There must be no gap between the United States and Israel on security.”
She defended the administration’s decision to criticize the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over its announcement of housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem during a visit to Israel by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. The move, she said, undermined indirect talks that the administration is trying to broker between Israelis and Palestinians.
“Our credibility in this process depends in part on our willingness to praise both sides when they are courageous, and when we don’t agree, to say so, and say so unequivocally,” she said." NY Times
------------------------------------------------------
Someone here asked what I thought of HC's speech. I think it was pretty good, a nice balance of realism on the US internal political front and a continued warning that mischievous hubris on the part of our little friend in the Middle East will not be acceptable.
We all know that the US is not going to walk away from Israel. The real question is whether or not a more reasonable relationship can be worked out.
Now let us see what the government is going to do in the Nozette attempted espionage case. As Sid says the documents make for a good read.pl
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/world/middleeast/23diplo.html
Don't know what to think. If you look at it in context of an AIPAC speech it was provocative, but I don't see any way forward coming out of it. The US cannot pressure Israel in any meaningful way and Israel will not budge. The US national interest has been so compromised by the relationship that enforcing "not acceptable" when it comes to Israeli behavior does not any longer appear to be possible. Do we have to accept a mountain of BS while committing national suicide on behalf of Israel just because its friends have a lot of money and have bought all the politicians and media outlets? Sorry, but that's the way I see it.
Posted by: Phil Giraldi | 22 March 2010 at 03:23 PM
Phil
Probably right but I have to maintain some sort of stance on the positive side if I am to continue with this.
Your remark about the money having bought everything is absolutely true. They are now working on take overs of think tanks that have opposed them in the past. pl
Posted by: Patrick Lang | 22 March 2010 at 03:42 PM
Reading other blogs and looking at comments, there is a sea of change re: AIPAC and ISrael, where both are running far behind even the dogged Likud type commentators.
I do not see any realistic analysis from the bureaucratic/think tank gloobe which relates in any manner to the NEEDs [not wants] of the underprivilidged [bankrupt, lost house, lost job, lost Employment insurance, ex middle class, and or recent University graqds with no jopbs and $50-100 0000 debt].
This keeps up, there will be tsusami in public, and thereater in elites' perception in what is permissible in a deteriating econoy.
So chin up Colonel, in 2-3 years [barring WWIII] you will be rewarded by the results [though things will decline in living standards for most].
Posted by: N. M. Salamon | 22 March 2010 at 04:03 PM
Sir,
I'm going to stay on the positive side precisely because of the mountain of BS put out by Netanyahu and company. At some point in time in this country, even our AIPAC loving politicians have got to see how detrimental and one sided this relationship is. Or we are going to have to find one gigantic battered spouse shelter.
Posted by: Jackie | 22 March 2010 at 04:26 PM
Any chance Obama rams an agreement through a la healthcare?
Posted by: Trent | 22 March 2010 at 04:42 PM
What American Jews think - they support the US acting as a peacemaker even if it means putting pressure on Israel, or publicly airing differences.
See the poll data
Posted by: Arun | 22 March 2010 at 05:43 PM
If Foolbama and company push hard enough, the Labor Party might go into the opposition and Bibi's government will fall within weeks.
Our goal should be "regime change" in Israel so our national interest are assure.
If no "regime change," take it to the Security Council for a binding resolution with crippling sanctions.
Just "Rahm" it through....
Just curious, how do you take over a think tank?
Posted by: Jose | 22 March 2010 at 07:01 PM
In broad policy terms we have to create a regional policy which takes into account: the Arab states, Israel, Iran, Turkey. Our policy toward Israel cannot be removed from the regional strategic context.
We do have leverage over Israel but have not used it effectively since Ike in 1956. This is what the Pro-Israel lobby is all about, preventing the US from using its leverage to achieve a regional arrangement conducive to broad US interests.
The Obama Administration has squandered its credibility and good will in the Middle East over the past year. Obama did nothing over Gaza which is perhaps the most significant indicator together with his inaction on settlements. Obama failed to bring AIPAC down a few pegs through the spy case. Obama has continued the Bush Administration line toward Hamas and Hizbullah taking the Israeli line. Obama has not modified Israeli behavior so as to be compliant to OUR requirements in the Middle East. And so on.
It seems to me that Middle East opinion sees through the endless faux diplomacy and charades the US uses to coddle Israel.
Once we get beyond the coming November elections, does anyone really believe the White House will have a serious diplomacy in the region with respect to the Arab-Israel conflict? After November, the White House will be in reelection mode for two years thus with a hand out to the pro-Israel folks. It will be two years of more pretend and jive talk.
In the region, the Arab states hope Turkey will "balance" against Iran. On the other hand, Islamist Turkey is getting along rather well with Iran these days. Syria isn't doing too badly itself and the Lebanese of late seem to be on the road to Damascus.
Posted by: Clifford Kiracofe | 22 March 2010 at 07:06 PM
Jose
Ahhh. First you shovel in money. These foundations are always underfunded in endowment in their own eyes. then you offer staff accompanied by supporting funding to pay for them.
Then you use your donative leverage to bring in speakers and board members that you want. pl
Posted by: Patrick Lang | 22 March 2010 at 07:18 PM
On the foundations/think tanks, look at the takeover of the conservative/moderate conservative American Enterprise Institute in the mid 1980s by the Neoconservatives and their big money backers...a model takeover operation. Buy your way in, stack the board of directors, purge those not with the program, put your own staff in.
They have had it as their pro-Israel toy for a couple of decades.
Anyone recall Bill Baroody...?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Baroody,_Jr.
Heritage Foundation got neoconized to a degree under Burt Pines back in the 1980s...
This Neoconization of think tanks associated with the Republican Party ran in parallel with the strong penetration of the party itself during the Reagan years.
Posted by: Clifford Kiracofe | 22 March 2010 at 08:30 PM
Sad isn't it? Watching our policy movers and shakers bowing and scraping before the agent of a foreign power. AIPAC, the same agent who on more than one occasion has been an active party to hostile espionage against our U.S.. AIPAC is nothing more than a band of treasonous perps who turned their backs on the nation (U.S.) who nursed and reared them.
Posted by: J | 22 March 2010 at 10:19 PM
Event surrounding second dollar collapse in the 70's.
vietnam war 59-75, peak war budget at '68
Off gold standard (second US devaluation. de facto debt default) '71
Yom kippur war '73
Oil shock '73-74
stock market crash '73-74
during 70's stagflation, US dollar lost ~90% of value in term of gold.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis
pages.stern.nyu.edu/~nroubini/papers/OilShockRoubiniSetser.pdf
In term of real dollar, today's $80 is about the price of oil during the 70's.
That's effect #1. #2. diplomatic skirmish, trade friction, tariff retaliation, order cancellation, currency realignment, treaties, etc. sooner or later things are going to add up. (so far, Russia, china, brazil, malaysia, Turkey, venezuela, swiss) and EU is going double dip.
#3 is lost of credibility. (nobody takes US stand in human right, law, peace while Israel is kicking palestinians using US weapons and support.) We will start talking about world isolation in the near future as oil price and pacific economic growth effect rippling through.
If this continues, double dip is the least the country has to worry, try the third dollar devaluation.
Time to fix Israel problem through the UN, with UN authority instead of continuing the 'peace talk' kabuki. (no, domestic politics reform with regard to aipac is impossible. It will be just another extra episode of kabuki.)
Posted by: curious | 22 March 2010 at 11:20 PM
Credibility? Just because of one hollow criticism?
The US has zero credibility in the Arab/Muslim world, at least in regard to the status of Palestine, and never ending Zionist expanionism. She must have meant with those few Americans who might not yet be sold on a civilizational war started because born-again American Jews want to steal more Palestinian land.
On the bright side, and it is significant, no criticism would have possible even as recenly as 10years ago. More and more Americans see the real price tag for blind support of Israel.
Aipac always portrays things as us versus the Arab/Muslim Other. More and more people understand that it is US versus the Zionists.
Posted by: jr786 | 22 March 2010 at 11:32 PM
Thanks for this Col. I was watching Chomsky the other day and he was talking about our relationship with the UK.how they like to be considered a 'partner' and how W Bush more or less told them they are our Lieutenants. I think it's time we made it clear to Israel they are our air craft carrier.
Posted by: par4 | 23 March 2010 at 09:39 AM
If it is true that over 500,000 Israli citizens are also dual citizens of the US then perhaps this complication should be ended.
Personally I would end it across the board.
Posted by: William R. Cumming | 23 March 2010 at 10:05 AM
"Then you use your donative leverage..."
They are showing us how it is done. Watch and learn.
Posted by: jedermann | 23 March 2010 at 10:29 AM
As a Brit who has never lived in the U.S., these are obviously not matters I can judge.
But looking at the deference of almost everyone in American politics to AIPAC, I am reminded of the remark of Abba Eban that 'a consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually.' Doubtless to say that 'no one' among those who toe the AIPAC line does so out of genuine commitment would be a vast exaggeration. But I wonder how many people are paying lip service out of fear -- a situation which is liable to create buried resentment.
The introduction of the theme of Israeli policy threatening the lives of American servicemen by Biden and Petraeus could be a game changer, surely. For this charge is liable to resonate with a mass audience, in a way that arguments about the disastrous effects of Israeli policy on U.S. national interests may not do.
Another -- famous -- remark of Eban was that 'one of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all.' I find it easy enough to see why Eban thought this a good idea at the time.
But the attempt to exploit the enormous emotional force of the taboo against anti-Semitism in support of the Zionist project risks backfiring, particularly in the context of the blind alley into which that project has got itself. To define anti-Semite in a way which brackets Ray McGovern together with David Duke must necessarily lead to a progressive erosion in the force of the taboo.
Moreover, if one believes that the points made by Petraeus about the disastrous effects on U.S. foreign policy interests of unconditional support for Israel are cogent, then it follows as a simple point of logic that the emotional force of the taboo is being exploited so as to ensure that the American ship of state continues on an Ahab-like mission of self-destruction.
To use financial muscle to contain dissent also risks backfiring. One classic anti-Semitic image is of Jews as incapable of genuine loyalty to anybody but themselves -- another is of them manipulating financial power behind the scenes in their own interests. If for example the United States did get inveigled into a war with Iran in the way that Philip Giraldi has suggested could happen, and this turned into a disaster -- a prospect which clearly concerns Admiral Mullen -- one might see a rapid revival of old stereotypes.
As I noted in an earlier thread, that unpleasant but not unintelligent man Kevin MacDonald has scripted a role for American Jews, as an 'hostile elite'.
(See http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/SlezkineRev.pdf.)
What I find amazing is that so many influential figures in the American Jewish Community seem so anxious to audition for the role which MacDonald has scripted for them.
As I say, as a Brit who has never lived in the United States, these are not matters I can judge. But I do wonder whether some of these people are not complete lunatics.
Posted by: David Habakkuk | 23 March 2010 at 12:47 PM
I have to maintain some sort of stance on the positive side
I don't "have" to maintain a positive stance. I think this is 100% positive. Since it was done the only way it can be done to make those that rose in standing ovation during the Iran issue to start to think.
What I thought about when reading the above was that "my web friend" the luftmensch, Philip Weiss, seems to be an optimist by choice while you in this incident seem to feel somehow forced to remain one. Also he seems to have been, as far as I can tell, no admirer of Clinton, while you seem to be. I am slightly more on your side in this respect. I respect her for having remained on her husbands side during the crisis, the election brouhaha I have almost forgotten by now.
Posted by: LeaNder | 23 March 2010 at 02:19 PM
LeaNder
"I have to maintain some sort of stance on the positive side I don't "have" to maintain a positive stance. I think this is 100% positive. Since it was done the only way it can be done to make those that rose in standing ovation"
What does all that mean? pl
Posted by: Patrick Lang | 23 March 2010 at 02:55 PM
If one feels, as I do, that given the history of the Jewish people, Jews ought to have a place of their own where they feel safe and secure, it is very difficult to watch the State of Israel with the support of so many American Jewish organizations pursue policies that repeatedly force its friends and most loyal supporters to act against their own best interests in order to disprove Jewish fears of abandonment. If Israel does not soon develop a healthier leadership it is only a matter of time before it crosses some threshold of outrageousness that will trigger a bitter and painful end of this perverse relationship.
Posted by: jedermann | 23 March 2010 at 03:28 PM
What does all that mean?
I'll try:
It's a shift. A slight one, but a shift. It's like a breeze of fresh air, a grain of sand in the panegyrical oil of the usual flatter and self-celebration amid war-drums for the latest new "Adolf". Two grains would have turned her into Gog & Magog. One had to be.
****************************
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/03/jstraipac.html#comments
[Alan Dershowitz about 1:26 in] What we do is, we resolve our differences internally, and we speak with one voice. And we put out a consensus statement with one voice, and to have two separate voices on issues were we have major agreements creates exactly the wrong impression in a political view and in public, and it gives people cover. You know, for me J Street is having a ?great internal struggle?, you can’t be pro-Israel and invite Brzezinski.
Cover? Brzezinski?
Wait minute, wasn’t that: Three Jews, four opinions? If I notice, do I have to run for “cover”?
Brzezinski was against the Iraq war, now Dershowitz (a liberal, no less) thinks no Jewish institution should talk to or associate with him anymore. Note, he would even talk to Hamas, but obviously not with Brzezinski.
Very, very, very, very odd.
**************************
In a nutshell: this is not sustainable. It must change. So why not look out for little signs of change, grains of sands in the well oiled machinery?
Posted by: LeaNder | 23 March 2010 at 06:27 PM