Obama and Israel, continued
- 01.26.2008 - 9:47 AMThere has been an awakening in recent days to the presence of a disturbing number of foreign policy advisers to the Obama campaign who harbor hostile views of Israel. Ed Lasky of the American Thinker has been doing serious work on the subject, and his two pieces — here and here — are must-reads. Caroline Glick adds to the discussion here.
But there is another Obama foreign policy adviser–a prominent one–who has so far escaped criticism. This is Samantha Power, a Harvard professor, journalist, and human rights specialist who of late has become a high-profile liberal critic of American foreign policy.
For one, Power is an advocate of the Walt-Mearsheimer view of the American relationship with Israel. In a recent interview published on the Harvard Kennedy School’s website, Power was asked to explain “long-standing structural and conceptual problems in U.S. foreign policy.” She gave a two-part answer: the first problem, she said, is “the US historic predisposition to go it alone.” A standard reply, of course. The second problem, though, should give us pause:
Another longstanding foreign policy flaw is the degree to which special interests dictate the way in which the “national interest” as a whole is defined and pursued . . . America’s important historic relationship with Israel has often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer reflexively to Israeli security assessments, and to replicate Israeli tactics, which, as the war in Lebanon last summer demonstrated, can turn out to be counter-productive.
So greater regard for international institutions along with less automatic deference to special interests–especially when it comes to matters of life and death and war and peace–seem to be two take-aways from the war in Iraq.
Power is not just assenting to the Israel Lobby view of American foreign policy, but is also arguing that Israel had something to do with the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003–an appalling slander, and a telling one.
Also of note is a recent opinion piece Power wrote for TIME magazine, titled “Rethinking Iran,” the thrust of which rethinking involves the need to engage diplomatically the mullahs and pretend that the Iranian nuclear program is a figment of the paranoid imagination of the Bush administration. She writes:
The war scare that wasn’t [the recent incident between Iranian speedboats and the U.S. Navy in the Straight of Hormuz] stands as a metaphor for the incoherence of our policy toward Iran: the Bush Administration attempts to gin up international outrage by making a claim of imminent danger, only to be met with international eye rolling when the claim is disproved. Sound familiar? The speedboat episode bore an uncanny resemblance to the Administration’s allegations about the advanced state of Iran’s weapons program–allegations refuted in December by the National Intelligence Estimate.
Does Power actually believe that the NIE put to rest concerns about the Iranian nuclear program? If she actually thinks that — and it appears she does — she deserves voluminous ridicule from thinking people everywhere.
Does anyone think that if the time comes that Power has President Obama’s ear, she will advise him to do anything other than repudiate America’s greatest ally in the Middle East in favor of appeasing its greatest enemy? And here’s an even better question: Does Barack Obama have a single adviser who would tell him to do anything else?
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January 26th, 2008 at 10:19 AM
I’m not sure Power is different than James Baker and his ilk. All dirt bags.
January 26th, 2008 at 10:42 AM
Does Barry’s fastidious Americanism make an exception for Kenya — more precisely, for his jihadi-coddling tribal “cousin”? If so, he’s either (1) a phony or (2) entirely clueless about his own advisors, who are no different than all those whites who allegedly exploited black athletes, musicians and entertainers in the past.
January 26th, 2008 at 10:43 AM
“This is Samantha Power, a Harvard professor”
I noticed the anti-Semitism of the Democratic Party’s left-wing elite over four years ago. It astonished me that few people asked hard questions of the John Kerry campaign. His stepson even blasted Israel shortly before Election Day. It also seemed that most of the retired military leaders who endorsed Kerry were hostile toward Israel. One of the main reasons that this nonsense was ignored is due to the pernicious influence of Marty Peretz. Too many people are persuaded that things can’t be too bad if the Democrats continue to receive his support. They fail to realize that Peretz’s judgment is severely flawed.
Harvard University is an intellectual whorehouse. Samantha Power is a beneficiary of its policies of “inclusion.” In other words, Power is member in good standing of this institution only because she is a leftist woman. One can hope that the general public soon learns that a Harvard soft science degree is normally not worthy of respect. The same essentially holds true for the very shallow Barack Obama. He is a major candidate only because a high number of guilt tripped whites want to prove that they are not racists.
January 26th, 2008 at 10:56 AM
I posted this back on 1/6 in response to an Abe Greenwald post about Samantha Power (I thought he was much too kind to her) and thought it would add to this thread:
Miss Power is far more of a BDS-addled leftie than is acknowledged here. Her screeds against the administration in various op-eds over the past few years are filled with harsh invective with nothing to back it up. In the same book review Abe mentions in the post, here is but one of many examples: “…in Bush’s view, wartime demanded a strong commander in chief, and he would be far more effective prosecuting the war if he could free himself of the meddlesome legislative, judicial and even interagency checks fashionable in peacetime.” Right — her ability to peer into the mind of the commander-in-chief is perhaps one reason Obama likes her. This is the kind of sneering, insufferable, and of course never-backed-up-with-a-single-fact nonsense that works so well at Harvard but falls flat among any serious observer who isn’t a hyper-partisan Democrat.
January 26th, 2008 at 11:35 AM
If we get Obama as Democratic nominee, it’s shaping up to a bad choice between a reactionary Republican and a Democrat obtuse about the high stakes in the Middle East.
A Bloomberg 3rd party candidacy looks more appealing under the circumstances. But it would be objectionable because he would short-circuit a democratic primary process and his views are not entirely known. And we have to project out the probable impact of his candidacy on the poll results. Can he win?
Republicans have a lot to answer for: a smug obliviousness to the insecurities created by globalization, mismanagement leading to the current economic debacle, the lack of national health insurance, and the lack of a realistic energy policy emphasizing conservation. They have become ideologically hidebound dinosaurs, much like the goons who ran the Kremlin in Soviet times.
January 26th, 2008 at 11:50 AM
As far as I can tell, Hillary is the most pro-Israel Democratic candidate. The fact that she kissed Suha Arafat has little significance, since it is the job of a first lady to kiss the wives of political figures.
January 26th, 2008 at 12:12 PM
Does that apply to First Laddies?
January 26th, 2008 at 12:23 PM
To be fair Obama is being supported by both Rahm Emmanuel and the Daley boys who will be pro-Israel. I have been shocked that the Jewish vote has been so anti-Obama. He seems tailor made for a certain kind of liberal Adlai loving Jewish voter. Maybe this is a reason? Or is it that Jewish women love Hillary?
January 26th, 2008 at 2:02 PM
“Barack Obama. He is a major candidate only because a high number of guilt tripped whites want to prove that they are not racists. ”
That and George Soros.
January 26th, 2008 at 2:12 PM
The notion that ANY US president candidate will be less hostile than the others is an illusion or delusion. No matter what they lie in their campaigns, neither Hillary nor even Giuliani will be much different towards Israel than Obama or the others.
America is accelerating in a process of decline and loss of dominance due to ignorant, incompetent and stupid policies, both internally and externally. In time of major crises the usual reaction in history is to look for scapegoats. And the jews have consistently been a convenient target, not in small part because they are tame and pliant relative to Hitlerian or jiahdi fascists.
Throwing Israel to the wolves to appease the arabs is so much more attractive option than to address the fundamental problems of America, that it’s simply too tempting as the only option.
The US is now in the fall stages of Rome. In the same manner in which that decline could not be stopped, it is now America’s turn, complete with the barbarians at the gate. Europe is lost already, who is gonna prop the US, China?
The chickens of the collapse of education and the fall of knowledge and reason are coming home to roost.
fp
http://fallofknowledgeandreason.blogspot.com/