President Barack Obama talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday. Photo: White House |
Popular democracy and a will for peace weigh heavily in the relations between the leaders of Israel and the United States. As it happens, Barack Obama, the new U.S. president, is a very popular leader whose appeal extends beyond U.S. borders — even to Israel. And the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, is the head of a fragile coalition where he must pay lip service to the cause of promoting a secure and just peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Netanyahu has opposed a two-state solution in the Middle East and when he took office this spring said a Palestinian solution was secondary to his focus on Iran. “The biggest danger to humanity, and to our state Israel, stems from the possibility that a radical regime will get nuclear weapons, or a nuclear weapon will be armed by a radical regime.”
Yesterday, President Obama set the order of business squarely with a resumption of Palestinian talks. The goal, Obama said, is a separate Palestinian state.
Netanyahu may not like it, but he may not have a choice. Obama has chosen the path of diplomacy, reaching out to Iran, and waiting for the result of elections in that country next month before taking his additional steps toward dialogue.
Since Netanyahu took power in March, speculation has centered on whether and when he might set a deadline and use Israeli air strikes in an attempt to cripple Iran’s nuclear capacity. There are precedents — Israel bombed Syrian nuclear facilities in 2007 and Iraq’s Osiris nuclear facility in 1981.
Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported that top U.S. officials warned Netanyahu before his visit to Washington “that Israel not surprise the U.S. with an Israeli military operation against Iran.”
It’s not difficult to imagine what would be happening now if a Republican president were in the White House and if Netanyahu had a stronger hold on Israel’s Knesset. The policy is clearly spelled out in a guest opinion column in the Washington Post.
John P. Hannah, who was former Vice President Dick Cheney’s national security adviser, clearly sides with Netanyahu. “Successful denuclearization of hostile states is most likely to occur as a result of regime change, coercive diplomacy or military action, not U.S. pledges of mutual respect.”
Regime change was the order of the day for Hannah in the run up to the Iraq War. He and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby were key in gathering the thin and fake information on Iraq’s non-existent nuclear program prior to the war.
Cheney and Hannah argue that the United States and the world were safer under the neoconservative policy that held sway during the Bush administration — strongly aligned with Netanyahu and his allies in Israel. At the same time, he implies that U.S. policy in the Middle East under Bush was successful.
He writes: “…given the history of tyrannical Middle Eastern regimes seeking nuclear arms, we must also acknowledge that the Obama strategy reflects the triumph of hope over experience.”
- Peter Eisner
05/21/2009 :: 10:04:48 AM
The Melancholy Poet Says:
There is what we hear…
and then there is what is truly heard…
which might be like a choice
being split into two
Peremtory Factors in which one choice
seems like the other but does not produce the same results…
because the Geometrical Elements
are mutually exclusive
or by Pure Essence…
are entirely different.
One might look then into a Theoretical Mirror
and begin to wish that one could see the True Face of the Whole…
but only if the Mirror of Thought being used by the Observing Mind is able to detach from an unnecessary adhesiveness to any untried or unknown Preconceived Theory and is not showing only a kind of Mental Allowance for a (only hypothetically present) Imaginary Image which no True Mirror could reciprocate by any Truthful Effect…but the Reflection of one’s own Mind by which one may view the full and/or partial qualities of the Proportions of the Internal Mirror though not in its Complete Entirety unless the Mirror in its Entirety is being used with fullest possible Awareness even by attempt as if it had been already broken into Segments for Concious Understanding…
into Parts of a Whole from which renewed Thinking may derive…
or been divided into Quadrants evenly At Will and by the choice hard to make…
or into a more random:
Million Pieces Of Seemingly Viable Illusions about the Ongoing Processes of the Events of the Whole of the Current World Scenario betokening all of those pieces of things which remain in remnants as those military shatterings which may prove sharp to the theological-politcal touch and ever in need of delicate handling when picking up the prevailing opinions of the Many and the Few which are ever sparkling enticingly like Wishfulfilling Jewels those crystals scattered upon an imaginary floor of but one Level of Conciousness which may provide enduring security in its Limited Quadrant…if the Correct Awareness is produced multilaterally and at multilevel stages.