For all the lectures we must endure about killing commies in South America or Operation: Ajax in 1953 we read this:
Consider Obama’s stance toward Israel and the Palestinians. Since taking office, he has maintained the Bush administration’s policy of opposing any reconciliation between Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah government in the West Bank and Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip. Politically, that’s understandable, since lifting the U.S. boycott of Hamas would produce a nasty fight at home. But because Obama has succumbed to the pre-existing conventional wisdom, he must now try to orchestrate a peace process between Israel and a Potemkin Palestinian leadership in the West Bank. Hamas, after all, not Fatah, won the last free and fair Palestinian election, and it might have won again had Abbas not canceled local balloting this summer.
Given his lack of democratic legitimacy, it is delusional to imagine that Abbas can carry out the brutally painful concessions a final peace deal would require. And it is delusional to imagine that Hamas will permit the success of a peace process meant to further marginalize it; indeed, it has already greeted the start of direct talks with terrorist attacks. “Fresh strategic thinking†would have meant U.S. support for a Palestinian unity government, including Hamas, which empowered Abbas to negotiate a deal with Israel that the Palestinians could then vote on in a national referendum. (While Hamas does not recognize Israel’s right to exist, its leaders have repeatedly said that if the Palestinian people vote for a two-state solution, they will accept the results). Not coincidentally, this is the path that Malley proposed. Instead, the Obama administration is launching a peace process with the same structural deficiencies that plagued the one launched by Condoleezza Rice near the end of the Bush administration. It is doing exactly what Power promised it would not: taking the safer, more familiar approach, even though it has already failed.
\\http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-09-06/obamas-foreign-policy-fails-on-afghanistan-israel/2/
I read that 3 times trying to shake away the fact that what I was reading was a declaration that Hamas was somehow more legitimate than Fatah. I vote neither is legit but how can anyone even pretend Hamas is a legitimate player.
The reason its rule of Gaza is so iron clad is because they slaughtered the Fatah faction after the first round of elections. Killing off the opposition then declaring yourself open to a second round of polling is no basis for legitimacy.
Trying to claim Hamas will somehow magically accept Israel if the Arabs living in the WB and Gaza vote in favor of a 2-state partition is made with a degree of blind faith that would make any tent revival preacher green with envy. The statement is irreconcilable with its declarations of vowing the destruction Israel. It also assumes Hamas won't murder those in favor of making peace in the run-up to any referendum. Hamas would be quite able to rule Gaza unmolested if they would end their petulant shit-stirring at every opportunity. Israel would be more than content to forget they exist and move on with their own affairs but Hamas is the child that will not go to bed while the adults are having company for dinner.
This war will not end until one side or the other is exterminated. It is how history has resolved all great culture clashes from the Greeks vs. the Persians to Rome vs. Carthage. To think our science and technology will allow us to escape this historical tide is naive at best but we cling to this Judeo-Christians ethos that insists not everyone is irredeemable so we persist in tolerating the intolerably intolerant. Israel, by every measure, is the superior culture. However, it won't be able assert itself as such in a politically acceptable manner until those scurrying around at the edges of its house render an insult sufficient to drown out the cries of the internationalist movement/anti-semites, i.e. a WMD attack or other substantial existential injury.
Beinart then goes on to whine about Obama continuing Bush's policy in A-stan. What Obama is really doing is repeating the Bush policy on pre-surge Iraq.
Obama wants a surge to act tough and hold the line among independent voters but at the end of the day he's an internationalist, hence the withdrawal deadlines. Obama is trying to fight the war with a low footprint. Rumsfeld and company were highly sensitive to appearance with regards to going in heavy and occupying heavy. It would only reinforce the liberal malfeasance that the war was one of empire. But by coddling the left Rumsfeld left the door unguarded for the jihadists to enter. This is exactly where Obama is at today but the withdrawal in 2011 isn't leaving the door unguarded it is tantamount to surrendering the entire damn house.
Mark my words: we will be back in Afghanistan and maybe Iraq by 2020 if not 2015. Perhaps even sooner in Pakistan.
And this is where Beinart and the liberals are willing to accept tyranny though they would damn the Pinochets of the world. They are willing to accept Saddam, Chavez, Hamas, Castro, Fatah, the mullahs, the Taliban ad infinitum and ad nauseam if it means bringing the US to heel for some internationalist vision. Make us one big world cooperating on all matters of national security, they say, and we will have a world where war becomes obsolete.
Except shit doesn't work like that. When these tyrants claim they want to bring the US to heel in the name of international cooperation they are only sincere about the first half of that statement. These nations don't have friends, they have interests and they have ambitions.
Obama and the left are tools at best or co-conspirators at worst.
