President Obama has now fought his last election and no longer needs to submit himself and his accomplishments to the voters. Accordingly, all bets are off as to how far the president will push his foreign policy agenda on Iran, Russia, the Palestinians and Israel, and Islamist regimes in general. Perhaps there will be even more open U.S. outreach to Hamas, and perhaps American diplomats will soon get their wish to sit-down with Hezbollah.
Today, Frank Ricciardone, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, announced that Obama’s first trip of his second term will be to Turkey, a country which has witnessed under its increasingly Islamist government an unprecedented roll back of basic freedoms. The Turks are looking at Obama’s choice as an endorsement. They are probably right. On top of this, Ricciardone’s announcement comes right after Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that he would soon travel to Gaza, in recognition and support of Hamas.
Votes matter. How ironic it is, therefore, that Obama chooses to embrace most those governments and entities where they don’t.
And so it begins. n nThank you, 68% of my brethren. n n
I presume you're being sarcastic, and rightly so.
jeepers, this is astounding, since I was sure Obama meant it when he said he would travel to Israel as soon as he possibly could. after all, they're ONE of our very closest friends in the region. right? n nas MainesMichael says, thank you (was it really 68%? that's better than 2008 but still not good) to my co-religionists. when Obama backs Palestinian statehood in the UN, don't come whining to me.
It's important for both the US and Israel that relations with Turkey be improved. Israel tried but could not offer the apology Turkey demanded, and now things have escalated. The US needs all the allies it can get in the region and in the Muslim world. So a trip to Turkey makes a lot of sense — and Israel knows it and hopes for the best.
It's not just an apology that Turkey demands, but also lifting the Gaza blockade. nErdogan knows that Israel will never accept the free flow of Iranian weapons to Gaza. Turkey has no intentions of improving relations with Israel.
Turkey has every intention of continuing criticism of Israe, improving relations with Israel, and doing business with israel
Are you sure the US needs all the allies it can get in the region and in the Muslim world? I wonder, what for. The proverbial oil? US can have more oil than it needs if they started to extract it domestically – creating a lot of ah so needed jobs by the way. So, if not oil, what?
it's the allies of the US, Japan and the EU, that need the oil from the Middle East. … so the US needs the Middle east.
Israel is one – and one very important – ally of US, no? Or not anymore… with a second term president who doesn't need to suck up to the voters and will show his true colors on the first opportunity. nAnyway, it's bizarre to suppose that Japanese or European oil supplies are of any US business. By the way, oil is sold and bought in the market, and Middle Eastern oil pumping states are as eager to sell it as others are eager to buy it. It's market, not the Ministry of Oil like in the Soviet Union which regulates these interactions.
Israel is important to me and important to the US, but it is not as important to us as Japan or the EU and it's no more bizarre to think that the US t finds it important that European countries and Japan are filled with factories and unfrozen people than it's bizarre to think that the US finds it important to provide Israel with the weapons that have insured its military superiority and survival.
European countries and Japan are quite capable of looking after themselves and their needs, thank you very much. Isn't it a little bit condescending and sort of imperialistic to imagine that the poor sods will freeze without Uncle Sam's care? nSame goes for Israeli arms industry and military technology. Yeah, Israel buys some special equipment from the US, but sells other to the US and on the international market. I can't see any evidence of Obama having Israel's defense as one of his priorities. Hugging with Erdogan and other Islamists clearly shows that birds of a feather flock together.
Israel could not offer the apology because it was Turkey, not Israel, that was at fault. n nThe ficitional Capt. John Sheridan said it well: "I'm…sorry. [sighs] I'm sorry we had to defend ourselves against an unwarranted attack. I'm sorry that your crew was stupid enough to fire on a station filled with a quarter million civilians, including your own people. And I'm sorry I waited as long as I did before I blew them all straight to hell! [pauses] As with everything else, it's the thought that counts." n n——————————————————————————– n
BS. Erdogan was so brazen with Israel because he was supported by Obama. Now he believes that American people support him as we'll. Obama will be visiting a country which just put Israeli leaders and generals on a show "trial" in absentia, that actively subverts the sanctions on Iran, that slaughters Kurds, imprisons journalists, and works hard to turn Syria into another Egypt. Obama's visit – not the first one, either – will be a slap in a face to the Jewish state.
Obama is switching horses. His plan is to drop most if not all relations with Israel and switch to Turkey – - and all that that entails. Expect to see a MASSIVE weapons sale and strategic military alliance with Turkey soon. I wouldn't be shocked if the Turkish navy decided to 'blockade' Israel using American weapons and equipment.
Rubin has sooo little of value to contribute, despite his intelligence, as he has no sense of proportion
I find it tasteless of you to attack Mr Rubin ad hominem instead of discussing the issue at hand.
when the fool tries to term a trip to Turkey as "doubling down on Islamism" tastelessness IS what's at hand, Serge. n nour country is allied with Turkey, is working with Turkey to toss aside Assad, and THAT will do more for Israel than anything done by the US in a dozen years. Without Assad, Hamas has already been weakened and Hezbollah will soon be greatly weakened. n nWe are working with Turkey and Saudis to roll back all the influence that iran accrued in the Middle East…. and more than anything, it's Iran that has blocked any movement toward a peace deal in the years since that little creep Arafat croaked.
Turkey's Erdogan is a mad dog Islamist. He and and his militant religious party jail everyone who dares to oppose their radical Mohammedan agenda – either from military, or media, or just of citizenry. Erdogan deliberately and systematically is ruining the most important part of Ataturk's inheritance: the secularism of the Turkish state – something that has made Turkey the cherished ally of the West. Now Erdogan is as worth of tossing aside as Boy Assad is, so working with him is speaking loudly of who your new/old president really is.
No, Serge, he's not a "mad dog Islamist". Ayman al-Zawahiri.is a mad dog Islamist, Erdogan is a calculating politician. n nI don't like Erdogan and I deplore his methods, rhetoric and his rather typical contempt for personal and political freedom for his opponents, but "mad dog' he is not. n nMad dogs don't appoint guys such as Davutoglu to run their foreign policy. n n nYou're resorting to the same sort of silly Purity tests as Rubin. n nYou wanna complain about stuff, try explaining how we can work with the Saudis and shut up about working with the most moderate of Middle eastern states.
I don't believe you cannot see that Al-Zawahiri and Erdogan chase the same ends by different means. They're team, each member of which has his specialty skills. When you hijack a secular country and convert it to a Islamist one, you can afford to hire or recruit professionals like Davitoglu, who do their best fulfilling your orders. nNothing new for any kind of politician to speak from both sides of their mouth, if I can use this old Arabic proverb. And Mohammedans are real high achievers in this art. nThere is no such thing as moderate Islamist, period. Or do you suggest that Nazi storm-troopers were bad, but "moderate Nazis" just OK?
Apparently your definition of fool is anyone who calls attention to facts that you are not aware of or do not care to acknowledge. That is what makes you foolish and ugly. n nYes, ousting Assad might weaken Hamas. But if he is replaced by a vacuum as was Mubarak, it might also strengthen the Muslim Brotherhood (strengthening Hamas), Al Qaeda, or both, and might give afford non-state actors access to Saddam's WMD stored in Syria. n nAnd it was our "ally" Turkey that demanded Israel's exclusion from NATO joint military exercises and from a conference on anti-terrorism, and the scaling back of joint US-Israel exercises. n nBut we get it – the Obama white house can do no wrong, and anyone who criticises them is a fool.
of what am I unaware? n nyou think me unaware that letting go of generations of authoritarian repression in the Middle east isn't going to result in instability after those regimes have spent generations lying to and maleducating the people? n nI'm not. I simply think that tnhe present situation is bad and CAN NOT get better until things change. n n
And are you aware that the old authoritarian regimes in the Arab world are being steadily replaced by the new ones – no less authoritarian but more devoted to the medieval, millenarian death cult? nThings definitely need to change in that corner of the world, but Obama is as capable to bring this change as he was capable to do it domestically. How has this hopey-changey stuff worked for yah, pal?