U.S. ELECTED AN UNSYSTEMATIC MIDDLE EAST VISIONARY
WHOSE JEWISH POPULARITY IS FALLING LIKE A METEOR!
THE LAST PARAGRAPH EXCERPT SUMMARY TELLS IT ALL!
GREAT ORATORY ALONE DOES NOT A PRESIDENT MAKE!
POPULARITY BASED ON TICKLING MEN’S EARS ERODES!
RESULTS BASED ON WISDOM MAKES A LEADER GREAT!
OBAMA’S A BEAR CUB NOVICE TRYING TO GET HONEY
OUT OF A TREE BEEHIVE WEARING BOXING GLOVES,
AS A BUZZING BEE SWARM PUNCTURES HIS HIDE!
August 29, 2009
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
THE LAST PARAGRAPH EXCERPT FROM MICHAEL YOUNG’S ARTICLE
“[Barack Obama’s devotees may imagine that because he spent a few years abroad as a boy, he is well equipped to understand our complicated world. Perhaps he is, but his approach to the greater Middle East, shorn of the soaring rhetoric, has been artless and arrogant. The president is being tied up every which way by his foes, who can plainly see that the Obama vision is an unsystematic one.
If ever the US has been close to achieving potentially terminal self-marginalization in the region, it is now.]”
Begin Excerpt from THE DAILY STAR via World News
Obama’s Mideast vision: Confusion
By Michael Young
Begin Excerpt from THE DAILY STAR via World News
Daily Star Staff
Thursday, August 27, 2009
There is great discomfort these days among those who backed Barack Obama’s “new” approach to the Middle East when he took office 10 months ago. That shouldn’ t surprise us.
Everything about the president’s shotgun approach to the region, his desire to overhaul all policies from the George W. Bush years simultaneously, without a cohesive strategy binding his actions together, was always going to let the believers down.
As the president’s accelerated pullout from Iraq begins to look increasingly ill-thought-out, as his engagement of Iran and Syria falters, as Arab-Israeli peace looks more elusive than ever, and as Americans express growing doubts about the war in Afghanistan, Obama is discovering that personal charisma is not enough to alter the realities of a Middle East that has whittled down better men than he.
For the US president, the clearest articulation of his approach to the region was his speech in Cairo last June. However, there was always more mood to that address than substance.
The president put out a wish-list of American objectives, padded with reassurances and self-criticism, but there was no solid core to what he said – a discernible sense of the values and overriding political ambitions the United States was building toward.
As Obama himself admitted, no single speech could answer all the complex questions the Middle East has tossed up. However, American behavior on the ground has made things no easier to understand, which is why regional uncertainties are turning to bite the administration in the leg.
For example, what is the policy in Iraq? In recent weeks, following the American military withdrawal from Iraqi cities, the upsurge in devastating suicide attacks has threatened to reverse years of efforts by Washington to stabilize the country.
Ultimately, Obama’s priority can be summed up in one word, reflecting his psychological hesitation to commit to an enterprise that he associates, in a dangerously personalized way, with his predecessor. That word is “withdrawal,” and Obama described his Iraqi policy this way in Cairo: “Today, America has a dual responsibility: to help Iraq forge a better future – and to leave Iraq to Iraqis. I have made it clear to the Iraqi people that we pursue no bases, and no claim on their territory or resources. Iraq’s sovereignty is its own.”
Those were noble thoughts, but how do they square with other American concerns, such as the containment of Iran, the avoidance of sectarian conflict that might engulf the region, the stability of oil supplies, and much else? Obama feels that an America forever signaling its desire to go home will make things better by making America more likable.
That’s not how the Middle East works. Politics abhor a vacuum, and as everyone sees how eager the US is to leave, the more they will try to fill the ensuing vacuum to their advantage, and the more intransigent they will be when Washington seeks political solutions to prepare its getaway. That explains the upsurge of bombings in Iraq lately, and it explains why the Taliban feel no need to surrender anything in Afghanistan.
Engagement of Iran and Syria has also come up short, though a breakthrough remains possible.
However, there was always something counterintuitive in lowering the pressure on Iran in the hope that this would generate progress in finding a solution to its nuclear program. Engagement is not an end in itself, it is a means to an end among countless others. Where the Obama administration erred was in not seeing how dialogue would buy Iran more time to advance its nuclear projects, precisely what the Iranians wanted, while breaking the momentum of international efforts to force Tehran to concede something – for example temporary suspension of uranium enrichment.
For Obama to rebuild such momentum today seems virtually impossible, when the US itself has made it abundantly clear that it believes war is a bad idea.
Attacking Iran is indeed a bad idea, but in the poker game he has been playing with Tehran, Obama didn’t need to show all of his cards. He’s virtually folded over Iraq, is stumbling in Afghanistan, and does not occupy himself very much with Lebanon, all places where the Iranians can and are hurting the Americans. By placing most of his chips on engagement, the president has failed to develop a more multifaceted strategy while relinquishing other forms of coercion that could have been effective in Washington’s bargaining with the Islamic Republic.
On Syria, the US has been more steadfast, particularly in trying to deny Damascus the means to re-impose its will in Lebanon. However, the Assad regime has shown no signs of breaking away from Iran, a major US incentive in re-engaging with the Syrians, even as it has facilitated suicide attacks in Iraq and encouraged Hamas’ intransigence in inter-Palestinian negotiations in Cairo.
The Obama administration can, of course, take the passive view that Syria is entitled to destabilize its neighbors in order to enhance its leverage; or it can behave like a superpower and make the undermining of vital US interests very costly for Bashar Assad. But it certainly cannot defend its vital interests by adopting a passive approach.
Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR.
Begin Excerpt from Jerusalem Post
‘Post’ poll: Only 4% of Jewish Israelis think Obama is pro-Israel
August 27, 2009
Gil Hoffman , THE JERUSALEM POST
The number of Israelis who see US President Barack Obama’s policies as pro-Israel has fallen to four percent, according to a Smith Research poll taken this week on behalf of The Jerusalem Post.
Fifty-one percent of Jewish Israelis consider Obama’s administration more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israel, according to the survey, while 35% consider it neutral and 10% declined to express an opinion.
The poll of 500 people representing a statistical model of the Jewish Israeli population had a margin of error of 4.5%.
A much-cited Post poll published on June 19 that put the first figure at 6% had been cited by top officials in both the White House and the Prime Minister’s Office as the catalyst for recent American efforts to improve the American-Israeli relationship. But the new poll proves that those efforts have not improved Obama’s reputation among Israelis.
The earlier poll, taken shortly after Obama reached out to the Muslim world in a landmark address in Cairo, found that 50% of those sampled considered the administration’s policies more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israeli, and 36% said the policies were neutral. The remaining 8% did not express an opinion.
Obama’s popularity among Israelis has been plummeting since a May 17 Post poll on the eve of a meeting between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Obama at the White House. In that poll, 31% labeled Obama pro-Israel, 14% considered him pro-Palestinian, 40% said he was neutral, and 15% declined to give an opinion.
The May poll found that Israelis’ views of Obama’s predecessor in the White House, George W. Bush, were nearly the opposite.
Some 88% of Israelis considered Bush’s administration pro-Israel, 7% said he was neutral and just 2% labeled him pro-Palestinian.
The new poll was taken on Monday and Tuesday, before reports that Obama had agreed to exclude Jerusalem from a deal with Netanyahu on a construction freeze and to allow construction of essential public buildings, such as schools, to continue in Judea and Samaria.
The poll asked Jewish Israelis whether they would support freezing settlement construction for a year as part of an American-brokered deal. Fifty percent said no, 41% said yes and 9% did not express an opinion.
The respondents’ views on a settlement freeze followed closely the platforms of the parties they voted for in the March 10 election.
Among those who voted Likud, which opposed a settlement freeze during the campaign, 73% would oppose such a deal.
Two-thirds of Kadima voters said they supported a settlement freeze.
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