In the pronouncements he made at the very beginning of his presidency, Obama said– quite correctly– that the United States has its own strong interest in seeing the speedy conclusion of a fair and durable Palestinian-Israeli peace.
But in yesterday’s press briefing, Assistant Sec. of State P.J. Crowley said the following:
- Our objective is to get them vested in formal negotiations. And in those formal negotiations, we will tackle the hard issues that we know exist, and get not only to the finish line, but get across the finish line.
Ultimately, this is not a process by which the United States will impose conditions on Israel, on the Palestinian Authority, on other countries. This is – ultimately, the judgment as to both getting to negotiations and getting to a successful conclusion is something that the parties will have to make. We, the United States, are prepared to help them.
On the face of it, this looks just like the characterization of the US role as nothing more than that of a “facilitator” that lay at the core of the failures of both the Clinton administration and the GWB administration to secure the Final Peace Agreement between Israel and Palestine.
If the US just “facilitates” the mediation– while continuing to give Israel unparalleled assistance in the financial, security, and political spheres– that adds up to nothing more than being complicit in Israel’s continued grave violations of international law in the occupied territories. US aid to Israel needs to be made tightly conditional on Israel complying with the demands of international law and of US diplomacy.
Of course, Crowley has spent just about all of his career in the State Department in a situation where mouthing these kinds of things was what was required if an employee there wanted to have any chance of promotion. So perhaps it’s not surprising he’s still mouthing them.
Haaretz’s Natasha Mozgovaya reported that the White House “had nothing to add” to Crowley’s comments.
So many people who should be paying attention are on vacation these days!
The Obama administration will certainly not succeed in Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy if it sticks to the “facilitator” role. Crowley and everyone else who speaks for it needs to start quietly but consistently reassuring Americans and everyone else that the administration will be firmly pursuing our own country’s undoubted interest in this matter, including through the considered use of all the instruments of policy at its command.
Looks to me like Obama is going through extraordinary verbal contortions, in order not to displease the Israelis.
What he is really intending is particularly opaque to me.
Of course, Mitchell was famous for that, in his dealings in Northern Ireland. So it may be that there is a seed of optimism there. But probably not.
The long history of successive US administrations, US support for Israeli is undoubtedly, unchangeable and unthinkable.
Whatever, wherever US give a full support for Israel. This includes in all aspect on world stage, in the international communities, through international agencies to the military Aide.
Make no mistake Obama will be alike, as I did said in the beginning, when some though there is a wind of change in WH have come with a new US president.
Let not forgot Obama’s rhetoric with Iraq, Iraq still occupied by US and still Obama in same WH signing more support more money for the war in iraq….
The Obama administration will certainly not succeed in Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy if it sticks to the “facilitator” role. Crowley and everyone else?
Rahm Emanuel, White House Chief of Staff, the position of White House Chief of Staff is considered among the most powerful in Washington, yet its day-to-day specifics are not common knowledge.
White House Chief of Staff Describes Role, Principles, Concerns
The US-Israel support is something that bothers the adversary du jour to no avail. The anti-Israel block has tried the Soviet side (Egypt, Syria, PLO), the non-aligned block, the eastern European KGB aligned block, some rich Arab sponsors (Iraq, Saudis, now Iran), and have run against a deeper bond between Israel and the US.
Like a miffed woman trying to come between a couple, they have tried to increase the cost to the US of supporting Israel through to oil embargo, political influence, ganging up on international bodies and NGOS, and of course the ultimate cost of terrorism culminating in the ultimate message of 9/11 that US support for Israel leads to death, destruction, and constant state or alert.
Predictably the French succumbed first, and so have other European democracies who have the added complication of internal moslem demographic headaches. Somehow the dark side still cries foul when the US remains supportive of Israel, in their eyes two camps with different views is not acceptable, their idea of a fair fight is a lynch. Anything else and they claim bias, even though they have a multiracial, moslem loving US president.
Stop complaining, you bought, bribed, and extorted most of the world to your side, but couldn’t quite coerce the US yet. I am proud of that, if you are not, life is too short to live it as a being a sour expatriate. France is beautiful, mother Russia is better aligned with you, is not like we asked you to join us here.
Then we got unlawful evil daughter from the evil “a miffed woman” in ME called…..
I said to myself I wouldn’t respond to Titus’ remarks, as not worth it.
Then I realised they have interest as social history. Titus’ remarks are the perfect example of the Ignorant American, who knows little about the outside world, but insists upon imposing his views.
A good example is the above:
Predictably the French succumbed first, and so have other European democracies who have the added complication of internal moslem demographic headaches.
Titus has seen the now debunked American video that Muslims will soon be a majority in Europe.
Another example:
When folks trespass to and from Tijuana they don’t become hostages do they? This seems unique to this land of Pirouzes and fanatics,
Titus seems to have forgotten that the persons arrested were journalists, and hardly outside the political scene. Of course any Americans are innocent, and are “hostages”. If it’s an Iranian, he’s a terrorist.
I’m interested in the phenomenon of the Ignorant American, because it weighs so heavily upon us these days. We all know that an American in Texas or California (Titus is in one or the other, I don’t remember which) doesn’t know much about the outside world, unless he looks for it on the internet. 3000 miles from the outside world, let alone crossing the ocean. I well remember a commenter on the London Times, a rancher from Montana, who was perfectly ready to tell us what to think.
Titus is one of those people. I welcome his contributions, because it illustrates well what ignorant middle America thinks.
Alex_no
The three US arrested were journalists, this is common title given but what really interesting is their history of them and their links to the political/ intelligence handler
you may look to this link (Arabic text) the writer did some history review of each of them…
Titus certainly one of few who living in their bubbles talking what the see from their very narrow hole about the world today.
Thanks Alex for responding, although you have no idea how far outside the jar you are peeing. You don’t even know if I am an American in the first place and you use me to smear Americans. Feel free to insult me if you will, just don;t generalize, when that is done to other we call it bias.
I have never seen the video you accuse me of, so you continue to miss the jar, and I was in paris during the Banlieu Intifada, and I do follow French affairs pretty close. Further the statement I made was about the French embargo going back to the Mirage and other systems, to the Osiraq reactor built in France, and the Arabophilic attitude in international fora.
I do derive pleasure from the blowback in France that has resulted in Imams having to clear their sermons and submit them in French, from the prohibition on full head covering Islamic garb, the prohibition of religious symbols in classes, and the “burquini” affair where a moslem women was kicked out of a public swimming people she wanted to enter in burqa. I guess all that happens in the context of perfect social balance between French and Arabs in modern France, right Alex?
I do not blame you for trying the French integration model, I admire you, it is that it is also a function of what you are trying to integrate, and you got a tall order in your hands.
“When folks trespass to and from Tijuana they don’t become hostages do they? This seems unique to this land of Pirouzes and fanatics”
Can you even begin to imagine what would happen if two Iranians were to go hiking in Southern Canada, inadvertently wander across the border into the U.S., and get picked up there? They’d be lucky ever to see the light of day again, and yet Americans are outraged – OUTRAGED – that when a couple of Americans are caught in Iran without visas they are arrested.
Ignorant American exceptionalism at its finest.
Titus, I could respond with ease to the issue of the three Americans picked up by the Iranian military, but seeing how this has no relevance whatsoever to Helena’s topic for this post, I will refrain.
What’s’ more, I don’t respond to ad hominem attacks. That’s just a waste of time.
“some rich Arab sponsors (Iraq, Saudis, now Iran)”
Well, I guess one out of three is not bad. Iraq is not rich, and has not been since the ’70’s, and Iran is neither Arab nor rich. Outside of that, you’ve got it about right.
To Alex and others.
Titus’s contributions(?) reflect a heckler’s intellect.
For an erudite commentary about the US’s failings in the Arab/Muslim world as well as supporting Ms. Cobban’s main themes the following is an extract from remarks made by Gen. Mullen
“Joint Chiefs chairman says US squandering Muslim good will”
ANNE GEARAN
AP News
Aug 28, 2009.
The U.S. military is bungling its outreach to the Muslim world and squandering good will by failing to live up to its promises, the nation’s highest-ranking military officer wrote Friday.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there is too much emphasis on telling the U.S. story and not enough on building trust and credibility.
“We hurt ourselves and the message we are trying to send when it appears we are doing something merely for the credit,” Mullen wrote in an essay published in a military journal. “We hurt ourselves more when our words don’t align with our actions.”
Mullen said he dislikes the military’s focus on “strategic communications,” which he said has become a cottage industry where the shaping of a message eclipses what that message says.
“Most strategic communication problems are not communicatons problems at all,” Mullen wrote. “They are policy and execution problems.”
Efforts to reach out to the Middle East and elsewhere in the Muslim world is a main priority of the vast communications and public relations machinery of the Defense Department. Mullen suggested that much of the effort is wasted, or at least misdirected.
Public opinion in the Muslim world would seem to bear him out.
A survey of two dozen nations conducted this spring found that positive public attitudes toward the United States have surged in many parts of the world since President Barack Obama’s election, but not in most of the Arab and Muslim world.
The poll registered continuing levels of profound distrust about U.S. influence and motives among Muslims, particularly in Turkey, Pakistan and the Palestinian territories. There, the report from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center said, animosity toward the United States “continues to run deep and unabated.”
U.S. intelligence considers Pakistan, a nuclear-armed Muslim country that Mullen has made a priority with nearly a dozen visits over the past 18 months, among the most profoundly anti-American places on Earth.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates frequently remarks that the United States has let itself be “out-communicated by men living in caves,” a wry reference to the skill with which al-Qaida uses the Internet to distribute its messages and capitalize on U.S. failings.
Mullen noted one of those failings, the abuse of Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison, but he said the problem isn’t the skill of the communicators.
“Our biggest problem isn’t caves, it’s credibility,” Mullen wrote in the Joint Force Quarterly. “Our messages lack credibility because we haven’t invested enough in building trust and relationships, and we haven’t always delivered on promises.”
more on US’s failings in the Arab/Muslim world:
Ansar Abbasi انصار عباسي) is an investigative editor for one of the leading newspapers from Pakistan, The News International. He is known for his investigative journalism,
This take us to Bush administration’s outreach to the Islamic world, Karen Hugheswas appointed to craft a bold new approach for U.S. public diplomacy. She was longtime friend President George W. Bush named her as the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy
Karen Hughes, once again a strong woman with no substantive experience on the subject.
In her ME tour She assures a room of Saudi women then she went to turkey She meets with a group of Turkish women.
In all her tour she mate with hand-picked women groups or student as if her tour and her job more for US media front than really understand the sense of Islamic streets..
Pirouz threatens us with knowledge:
Titus, I could respond with ease to the issue of the three Americans picked up by the Iranian military, but seeing how this has no relevance whatsoever to Helena’s topic for this post, I will refrain.
Humor us Pirouz, hopefully your perspective is wiser than Shirn’s lame hypothesis about what would happen to undocumented Iranians coming in from Canada. As a matter of fact Shirin we caught quite a few undocumented Iranians when they were required to report to immigration after 9/11. Were they tortured? Have they disappeared, have they been hidden from their families or authorities. There are three American is the black hole called Iran and our jokers fall back to their reflexive reactions to wit
Salah – conspiracy theories
Helena – silence unless she can find a way to smear US/Israel
Shirin – unresearched knee jerk opinion
Pirouz – pseudo intellectual rambling and fluff
Omop – nada mixed with some hatred
Salah – conspiracy theories
Our very sensitive very “little mind doesn’t even realize how offensive” talking this way…. with judging people here
Check your rhetoric about Islam/Muslims, Arab ME nations , as far as your mantra here, you are almost have them all..
Titus you have been extremely discourteous and gone majorly off-topic.
My bad Helena. I am just en emotional Joe-Shmoe following his own train of thought. Sometimes the poison thrown around gets my adrenaline going. So much hate goes around here.