Barack Obama’s belief in “engagement” with America’s enemies hasn’t worked out too well with Iran but that doesn’t stop his No.1 fan at Time magazine from encouraging the president to try his luck with Tehran’s ally Hamas. That’s the upshot of Joe Klein’s lament, in which he criticizes Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s tough talk with the Arab world at the Brooking Institution’s U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Qatar. Klein, along on the junket with Hillary, wasn’t terribly interested in the secretary’s obituary of Obama’s failed outreach to Iran. But he did have harsh words for her summary of the situation in Gaza, which she rightly blamed on Hamas’s violence. The fate of Gaza, solidly in the hands of Iran’s terrorist proxy, would, she said, have to await a comprehensive settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Indeed, as long as an Islamist rejectionist group controls Gaza, nothing can be done about the place.
That answer pleased neither the Arabs nor Klein. The writer places the blame on Israel for Obama’s acknowledged failure in the Middle East, while ignoring the fact that neither the supposedly moderate Palestinians of Fatah nor the extremists of Hamas have any interest in learning to live with a Jewish state, no matter where its borders are drawn.
Yet rather than concentrating our energies on preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons — a development that would undermine the security of most of the Arab world as well as present an existential threat to Israel — Klein wants the United States to concentrate its energies on finding a way to lift the partial international blockade on the terrorist state in Gaza. The blockade of Hamasistan allows food and medical supplies to enter the area but seeks to prevent the import of building materials (which can be used to bolster Hamas’s thriving small-arms industry) or weapons from abroad. The three conditions that Israel has placed on lifting the blockade are an end to the terrorist missile fire from Gaza into southern Israel, a stop to arms smuggling, and the release of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Klein is right that the missile fire has come to what may be a temporary halt. He also believes that the smuggling issue can be resolved, although, as shown by the death of a Hamas leader in Dubai at a time when he was seeking to facilitate the transport of weapons from Iran to Gaza, this is not a minor point. As for Shalit’s ordeal, Klein dismisses it as “an insane sticking point.”
So what’s his solution? The United States must “engage” the Hamas terrorists. That’s something that both Obama and Clinton have rightly pledged not to do — but, according to the columnist, “if Obama’s policy really is about engaging our enemies, he needs to engage Hamas — and Hamas needs to respond. Quickly.” According to Klein, the problem for Hamas is that the alternative to dealing with Obama is a return to the policies of the dread Dick Cheney and the neoconservatives. He concludes: “The leaders of Hamas — and other potential interlocutors, like the Syrians — need to understand that this may be their last best chance for progress. After Obama, the deluge.”
While a more sensible foreign policy may well have to await the election of a new president, what Klein fails to understand is that no matter who sits in the White House, it is not in America’s interest to rescue the killers of Hamas. Rather, it should be our policy to isolate and hopefully oust them from power. But if any argument is designed to undermine the appeal of the president’s discredited engagement policy, it is Klein’s belief that Barack Obama is the last best hope of one of the world’s most vicious terrorist groups.
On MSNBC Joe Scarborough was brought on as a conservative spokesman and hence needed to be “balanced” with liberal co-hosts. Tucker Carlson wasn’t paired with liberals but his show soon degenerated into mindless stupidity and hence he has been thoroughly neutered as far as representing the conservative viewpoint. Monica Crowley was a moderate conservative but even she was paired with liberal Ron Reagan Jr. No conservative will be given their own venue in the way that Chris Matthews, Tim Russert, Jeff Greenfield, and George Stephanopolous has. The default or mainstream point of view is always the liberal one and hence conservatives will always be identified as such; they will always need to be “balanced,” and conservatives will never get to develop their craft in the way that Russert et al. has. That’s why they hate the FNC and talk radio.
If Obama wins what Kerry won, and picks up Iowa, Colorado, and New Mexico, he would win the election. Personally, now that Republicans are no longer in control of Ohio and therefore will not be using the state’s resources to suppress the black vote, I think Obama will win that state. But he doesn’t have to.
John Hartland,
Just wondering…what does your comment have to do with Ms. Chavez’s?
Mistakenly posted in the wrong thread. Mea culpa.
Yeah, Ms. Chavez, Linda Douglass single-handedly sunk John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign.
The fact that South Carolina activists called the senator a race traitor while Bush looked the other way had nothing to do with it.
John Heartland- how do you spell ACORN- What % of dead people vote Democratic- one person, one vote live or dead).
I could never understand why liberal media folk–remember, there are many behind the scenes folk who set the agenda we see, read and hear–just don’t admit their biases and then declare their attempt to be fair and objective. This way, one could be open to criticisms without hostility and suspicion, thereby gaining credibility and– if they are the serious professionals they claim to be–willing to listen to those critiques in order to improve their delivery of the news.
Linda Douglas wasn’t merely a “reporter with democrat-leaning views”. When Webb Hubbell pleaded guilty and agreed to testisfy honestly in a plea bargain with Independent Counsel Starr’s office, Ms Douglas’s husband saw to it Hubbell got a $45,000 fee to lecture on ethics in government. Along with a huge consulting fee at LAX Int. airport from Democrats and even the Riadys, Hubbell clammed up and, as he famously said to his wife from a jail phone, “rolled over once again” for the Clintons.
Hubbell never did any of the work he was bribed for, and Mr Douglas wound up paying back the entire fee. That amounted to a $45,000 bribe by the spouse of an ABC reporter to keep quiet about the Clintons. Linda Douglas is a reporter with corrupt-leaning views.
@ paul zisserson,
Let me know when conservative reporters admit their conservativism and declare their attempt to be objective. For example, Brit Hume was ABC’s lead White House correspondent for years, and he was (and is) a right winger. Even now that he’s the news chief of Fox News, he still refuses to admit his (quite obvious) conservatism. So conservative reporters/journalists/anchors are no more moral than liberal ones. Members of *neither * group “admit their biases”.
Other notable conservative TV reporters/anchors over the years:
David Brinkely, Catherine Crier, Lesely Stahl.