foreign policy « Yourish.com

09/14/2009

Slapping the outstretched hand

Filed under: Politics — Tags: foreign policy — Soccerdad @ 12:00 pm

Two recent observations from Barry Rubin stick out.

In regard to Prince Turki’s recent up-ed in the NY Times, Rubin writes:

Note also–something else nobody is going to notice–that the op-ed insults the United States as it directly contradicts Obama’s current initiative to get something from the Arab states to match an Israeli construction freeze.

And in regard to the latest maneuvering between Tehran and Washington he writes:

This means: By sending a five-page insulting letter the Iranian government has derailed the sanctions’ project and will gain in prestige without any cost.

(emphases mine)

I thought that by showing greater respect to the Muslim world, President Obama was going to repair the damage done by the Bush administration to America’s reputation in the region. Rather the outreach appears to be the equivalent of hanging a “Kick me” sign on America’s posterior.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

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12/10/2008

The more foreign policy changes …

Filed under: Politics — Tags: foreign policy — Soccerdad @ 10:00 am

With all the talk about the need for change, there’s an awful lot in foreign policy that stays the same.

Some, including James Baker have been urging, President-elect Obama not to wait until the last minute to be engaged in Arab-Israeli peace.

Daled Amos strings together posts by Emanuele Ottolenghi and Rick Richman to argue that neither Bill Clinton or George W. Bush exactly waited until the last minute or their respective terms to engage in the Middle East peace process. Daled Amos with this from Rick:

During the entire 14-year process, not a single terrorist organization was dismantled. The problem was most certainly not U.S. presidents who “waited too long.”

and adds his own, very worthwhile two cents:

Of course, to admit such a thing would be to hold the Palestinian Arabs actually responsible for something in this mess–ant that is just not going to happen.

On a more general note, Bret Stephens observes that President-elect Obama’s foreign policy team is looking more and more like a third term of George W. Bush’s. (Or, at least, a continuation of the incumbent’s second term.)

Instead, Mr. Obama has assembled a team of intellectual clones. Not only that, it’s one that neatly conforms to the same foreign-policy consensus that typified much of President Bush’s second term: revival of the Arab-Israeli “peace process”; a diplomatic approach toward Iran; concessions to North Korea (with no serious expectation of genuine reciprocity); abandonment of what was once called the freedom agenda. As for Iraq, whatever differences there might have been are now moot, thanks to the surge and the passage last week of the status-of-forces agreement.

Stephens expects that Presdient Obama’s will be just like the past four years, but faster. And he doesn’t mean that in a positive way.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

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05/21/2008

Staying in the center while everyone else moves left

Filed under: World — Tags: foreign policy, Sen Lieberman — Soccerdad @ 9:00 am

Sen. Lieberman on what’s wrong with the Democratic Party:

By contrast, in 2000, Gov. George W. Bush promised a “humble foreign policy” and criticized our peacekeeping operations in the Balkans.Today, less than a decade later, the parties have completely switched positions. The reversal began, like so much else in our time, on September 11, 2001. The attack on America by Islamist terrorists shook President Bush from the foreign policy course he was on. He saw September 11 for what it was: a direct ideological and military attack on us and our way of life. If the Democratic Party had stayed where it was in 2000, America could have confronted the terrorists with unity and strength in the years after 9/11.

Instead a debate soon began within the Democratic Party about how to respond to Mr. Bush. I felt strongly that Democrats should embrace the basic framework the president had advanced for the war on terror as our own, because it was our own. But that was not the choice most Democratic leaders made. When total victory did not come quickly in Iraq, the old voices of partisanship and peace at any price saw an opportunity to reassert themselves. By considering centrism to be collaboration with the enemy – not bin Laden, but Mr. Bush – activists have successfully pulled the Democratic Party further to the left than it has been at any point in the last 20 years.

(This is adapted from the speech he gave at the Commentary Fund Dinner.)

John Podhoretz, yesterday, explained why Sen. Lieberman is not – as some of his critics assert – a hack:

By remaining steadfast on the war in Iraq when others in his party fled their vote and then blamed their inconstancy on the supposed “lies” of the administration. And by refusing to join the jackal-like feast on George W. Bush’s reputation, Lieberman earned the hatred of many fellow Democrats. That hatred caused a hugely rich man in his state to spend millions of his own money to oust Lieberman from his own party’s nomination after serving three full terms as senator.And yet there he remained, and remains, unbending. This is the opposite of hackery. It is the antithesis of hackery. It is the quality everyone says he yearns for in Washington — principled consistency, a willingness to work across the aisle in a bipartisan fashion, and a refusal to kowtow to the loudest voices merely because they are so loud. Last night, at the annual dinner of the Commentary Fund, Lieberman said he remained a Democrat precisely because he believes the strong foreign policy he espouses must have a bipartisan foundation.

California Conservative adds his thoughts. One nitpick though: He casts Clinton with other pacifists. Clinton, at least in the case of the NATO war against Serbia was willing to go to war to spread freedom. It was a stance that Sen. Lieberman praised in his speech.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

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