Obama's Dorian Gray Portrait of plans for an ally

NYT May 1:

Separately, these officials said, Mr. Mitchell's deputy, David Hale, indicated to the Palestinians that if Israel proceeded with the construction of 1,600 housing units in Jerusalem's ultra-orthodox neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo, the United States would abstain from, rather than veto, a resolution in the United Nations Security Council condemning the move.

Perhaps it might be a good idea to look at the wording of such a motion before abstaining. After all, the UN has shown a proclivity for the task of double standards regarding jews, especially those in the jewish state. Has any other president EVER made such a move with ANY other ally?

Commentary:

the Bush administration routinely vetoed anti-Israel resolutions in the UN as a matter of principle. Previous Democratic administrations at least waited to see the language of UN resolutions against Israel before offering to abstain on them.

Haaretz:

U.S. President Barack Obama has told several European leaders that if Israeli-Palestinian talks remain stalemated into September or October, he will convene an international summit on achieving Mideast peace, senior Israeli officials told Haaretz on Thursday.

Anyone anywhere think these talks will achieve anything? Was the purpose of the pressure on Israel to stop building apartments in the old Jewish neighborhood in Ramat Shlomo to begin talks which will prove talks are pointless, and open the door to imposition? I agree on one thing with Obama. Talks are pointless. Especially when you tell one side if you just hold out, the USa will impose on your enemy the things YOU want.

More from Haaretz:

The officials said the conference would be run by the Quartet of Middle East peacemakers - the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia - in a bid to forge a united global front for creating a Palestinian state. The summit, they said, would address such core issues as borders, security arrangements, Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem.

Obama is determined to exert his influence to establish a Palestinian state, the officials said, and several European leaders have vowed that the EU would support any peace plan proposed by Washington.

When White House spokesman Robert Gibbs did not respond to a question about the Haaretz report above, Rick Richman at Commentary concluded that the "proximity talks" are intended to fail:

Consider the Haaretz report confirmed, and watch the Palestinians adopt a negotiating position intended to create the necessary "stalemate."

In related news, the latest CBS News/New York Times poll shows once again the significant gap in support for Israel between Democrats and Republicans. When asked - "Is your overall opinion of Israel very favorable, mostly favorable, mostly unfavorable, or very unfavorable?" - 48% of Democrats said "very favorable" (7%) or "mostly favorable" (41%). Among Republicans, 70% answered "very favorable" (24%) or "mostly favorable" (46%).

The links below verify EVERY ONE of the assertions above.

Barack Obama is going to impose his version (anyone trust that?) of a peace on the USA's (in the near future - formerly) only reliable ally in the Middle East in the belief that doing so, even if it solves NOTHING except the existence of Israel, will cure the war we face, and as he said, and Petraeus has argued reduce the risk and hate facing American troops.

Has ANYTHING this president believes about how the world works just OUTSIDE the borders proven true? Has he achieved ANYTHING based on those beliefs which improves the security of the American people? Maybe the answer is on the IPOD, made in Shenzen China, he gave the Queen of England.

Could he even get the Olympics? No, but he can attempt to bully our main ally .. and the results will be the same - giving Obama the opening I believe he really wants .. to SWITCH SIDES in the Middle East. Certainly to lay that groundwork. I can hear it ...

'WE must be realistic, my fellow Americans, it is in the American interest to be with the mass of the population and resources in the ME'

Maybe I would feel differently about this reasoning if this president's back ground was more like that of George Marshall, instead of Jeremiah Wright.

Occam's razor, people.

Israel's problem in this case is worse for us. The end point of this administration is going to be far worse for this nation, than an Israel which will reject the imposed peace, or slide into some diplo-purgatory, and face embargoes and pariah-hood.

There will be no nation ANYWHERE who will trust the American people as allies. Obama was fairly elected.

By the people.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Little Optimism in Israeli-Palestinian Final-Status Talks (time.com)
• Barack Obama threatens to impose peace plan on Middle East (telegraph.co.uk)
• What Comes After Mideast Talks Draw a Blank? (time.com)
• Bleak setting (news.bbc.co.uk)
• US gives Abbas private assurances over Israeli settlements (guardian.co.uk)
• 'Proximity talks' stall before they begin (thejc.com)
• 5 more fresh articles...

Hamas Deputy Minister: "Jews are bacteria"

MEMRI has the whole speech.

"[The Jews] suffer from a mental disorder, because they are thieves and aggressors. A thief or an aggressor, who took property or land, develops a psychological disorder and pangs of conscience, because he took something that wasn't his.
"They want to present themselves to the world as if they have rights, but, in fact, they are foreign bacteria – a microbe unparalleled in the world. It's not me who says this. The Koran itself says that they have no parallel: 'You shall find the strongest men in enmity to the believers to be the Jews.'
"May He annihilate this filthy people who have neither religion nor conscience. I condemn whoever believes in normalizing relations with them, whoever supports sitting down with them, and whoever believes that they are human beings. They are not human beings. They are not people. They have no religion, no conscience, and no moral values."

Abdallah Jarbu, Hamas Deputy Minister of Religious Endowments.

Cross-posted from T&P.

PS: Thanks to Pastorius for inviting me to post here.

UPDATED The Middle East prepares..... The world waits.....

Update at bottom.



Is this the inevitable war? The "JOLT" I spoke about here?

This is where the roaring has been emanating from for years. The "dry tinder" is ready and waiting for the "spark".

What decision will our talking head in his throne make, without our input?

Will he side with Iran ideologically or worse, militarily? Will this be an explosion in the ME, or become our next world war?

The Middle East prepares..... The world waits.....

DE BORCHGRAVE: Jitters over expected Israeli air attack
Gulf states get set for a raid on Iran's nuclear sites
By Arnaud de Borchgrave | Friday, April 17, 2009

COMMENTARY:

Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Oman - are getting ready for what many now assume will be retaliation from Iran after an Israeli bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities later this year.

Up and down the Gulf, Patriot missile batteries have been quietly deployed around key oil installations. The Patriot system is designed to detect, target and hit incoming missiles that may be no more than 10 to 20 feet long and flying at three to five times the speed of sound. Iran has hundreds of missiles and rockets.

There is also a steady traffic in and out of Washington of high-ranking GCC military and defense officials, including Army, Air Force and Navy chiefs. Gulf rulers are fearful Israel's new government - headed by the tough, uncompromising Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - will walk away from any possibility of a Palestinian solution. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said as much when he it made clear that "we are no longer bound by the previous government's undertakings for the negotiation of a Palestinian state."

The Annapolis accord of 2007 for a two-state solution? Didn't happen on our watch, said Israel's new governing team. Mr. Lieberman even wants to strip any rights from Arab Israelis who are disloyal to the Jewish state.

Undeterred, George Mitchell, the new supernegotiator for a Middle East settlement, went back to the region for the third time since Barack Obama became president. He sees a glimmer of hope for a peace deal with Syria that would detach the ruling dictatorship from its close ties with Iran. However, a Netanyahu government in Israel is not about to give up control of the Golan Heights it has occupied since the 1967 Six-Day War.

While Iran may unclench its fist in words, as President Obama unclenched America's, no one in Israel, and very few in other countries, believe Iran's theocrats will relinquish the nuclear ambitions they have been working on secretly for the last quarter century. Mr. Netanyahu echoed nearly unanimous Israeli feelings when he said an Iranian bomb, coupled with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's threats of destruction against the Jewish state, is an "existential crisis" that Israel cannot and will not ignore.

Israel's moderate President Shimon Peres added a stern warning. If forthcoming talks with Iran don't yield results, he admonished, "We'll strike." But, he added, this cannot be done without the United States.

Would they really depend on Obama? That would be suicide. But then again, going forward without Obama's approval, would also be suicide. Wait a minute, not doing anything, will be suicide. Shit!

Israel's military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin told the Knesset's foreign-affairs and defense committee that the emergence of a nuclear arsenal in Iran is now "mainly dependent on a political decision."

The assumption among most GCC rulers is that Israel will launch bombers against some of Iran's 27 nuclear sites as soon as it becomes clear the mullahs won't agree to surrender their nuclear option at upcoming six-power talks. The United States and Iran will be at the same negotiating table - along with China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany - for the first time since the Iranian revolution ousted the late shah 30 years ago.

Iran's next presidential elections are scheduled for June 14, when Mr. Ahmadinejad may lose the presidency to a candidate judged by Western powers to be comparatively moderate. However, the latest word from Iran-watchers is that the supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, favors the re-election of his extremist protege. This would be another green light for the Netanyahu coalition government to order an attack.

In response to the comments, I have added a simplified timeline of the lead up to WWII. Substitute these timelines, with those of the building ME crisis.

Despite Obama, a major war is brewing.

1921 Because of the political weaknesses of the League of Nations, the major powers held diplomatic conferences outside the organization; the first of these conferences was held in 1921 and 1922 in Washington DC.

1928 Paris: American seceratary of state, Frank B. Kellogg and french foreign minister, Aristide Briand, drafted a treaty condemning war at an international conference.

Late 1920's Military gained increasing power in Japan.

1930 Japan's liberal prime minister, Yuk Hamaguchi was fatally shot. Political disorder followed, and within two years militarists controlled the Japanese government.

1931 Explosion near the city of Mukden, Manchuria damaged Japanese-controlled railroad.

1932 Japan declares Manchuria an independent nation under the name of "Manchukuo."

1933 Hitler had taken Germany out of the League of Nations and announced his intention to re-arm the country.

1934 Italian border patrol in Italian Somaliland clashed with an Ethiopian border patrol.

1935 Mussolni waged an all out campaign to conquer and colonize the independent nation of Ethiopia.

1936 September: Hitler and Mussolini formed a military alliance called the "Rome-Berlin Axis" and began referring to themselves as the axis powers."
February: A "Populat Front" government that included Socialists and Communists won a major election

Spring: Italians entered the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa

Summer: League of Nations called off its sanctions on Italy.

1937 In the Neutrality Act of 1937, the United States expressed its determination to remain neutral in future wars.

Japanese and Chinese troops clashed near Beijing. Japanese armies captured the city and at once began to move southward. China tried to resist, but it didn't really work.

1938 Threats from both Hitler and Mussolini forced the Austrian government to include Nazi members it's cabinet.

By spring, nationalist forces in Spain had grown strong enough for a large-scale offensive. They defeated the weak loyalist troops in March 1939.

April: Mussolini invades Albania

September 22: Hitler demands that sudetenland be turned over to Germany, and if not he threatened to take it by force.

1939 September 1: Hitler declared the annexation of Danzig to the Reich, while at the same time without warning, his air force made a massive attack on Poland. Within 48 hours of the unannounced attack on Poland had become the beginning of WWII
Japan lost nearly 500,000 troops in China and spent 10 billion. Chinese losses were uncountable.

Japanese occupied about one fourth of China, including all of its seaports, the Chang Jiang valley as far as Hankou and many other interior cities.
A revised Neutrality act allowed American Firms to sell munitions to belligerent nations, but only on a cash-and-carry basis

1940 Fall: Germany held almost all of western Europe

September: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, by executive agreement transferred 50 old American naval destroyers to Great Britain. In exchange, Great Britain gave the United States long-term leases on British naval and airbases in Newfoundland, The British West Indies, and British Guiana.

November: At a Soviet-German conference in Berlin, Soviets demanded that Bulgaria, Istanbul, the Dardanelles, and the Bosporus be included in their sphere of influence.

1941 June 22: The war entered a new phase. Without a declaration of war, German armies invaded the Soviet Union.

December: Expanding conflicts and events in the Pacific area drew the US into war.

December 7: While Tojo's representatives were still in Washington, the Japanese launched a surprise attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor.

December 8: Congress declares war on Japan as did the British Parliament. Three days later, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States, and congress replied with its own declaration of war.

A Good Point

"Perhaps the greatest of all ironies in the present-day Middle East, as David Horowitz has pointed out, is that Arab Israelis enjoy more social, legal and political freedom than do Arabs in any one of the fifty-three Muslim countries."

- From an article on TROP, Understanding the Arab-Israeli Conflict.

Let's Give "Giving Up On Peace" a Chance

I was reading an article by Barry Rubin called A Middle East Strategy for the West, when I read this sentence: "The problem is not just that cynical rulers (in the Middle East) mislead the masses through demagoguery — though that's true; it's that the masses embrace extremist world views."

I had to do a doubletake. If the masses are embracing it, then it's not "extremist," right? That would be called "mainstream." By the term, "extremist world views" he is really saying simply following classic, mainstream Islamic teachings. But what a bullshit doubletalk way of saying it!

Rubin did say something worthwhile in the article, however. He wrote:

Obtaining Israel-Palestinian or Arab-Israeli peace is a useless strategy, distracting from real issues. It isn't going to happen; Islamists would use any such peace to portray those signing it as traitors; and even many Arab nationalists would denounce it to raise their credibility as tough, unyielding fighters. Violence and unrest would increase, not lessen, as a result.

Absolutely. All this talk of "peace in the Middle East" is ridiculous. It's not going to happen. EVER! Get over it. Muslims will not ever give up fighting, and the Israelis will not ever give up trying to survive. The world needs to embrace this reality and aim for something actually attainable: An Israeli population that is relatively safe from Jihadis. Israel needs to embrace this too and quit trying to be so fair. They keep being lured into making "deals" with Muslims in order to finally have "peace." They should be able to look at their own history in the Middle East, or look at easily-obtained Islamic teachings and see that "peace agreements" are a waste of time.

Thanks Damien for the sign.

Bulgaria, terrorism and drug trafficking

"Bulgaria’s Government was accused of high-level involvement with organised crime gangs yesterday, in a hard-hitting report that highlighted the failure of the ruling coalition to stamp out corruption or convict anyone for 150 gangland killings.

Government secrets were leaked to mafia figures involved in drug trafficking and a senior minister met alleged underworld bosses regularly, according to the investigation by MPs into corruption in the Interior Ministry. The profits of the drug trade were channelled to terrorist groups in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East.