Obama and Israel–It Gets Worse
- 01.27.2008 - 2:56 PMA follow-up to my post yesterday about the troubling views of one of Barack Obama’s top foreign policy advisers, Samantha Power. In 2002 she sat for an interview with Harry Kreisler, the director of the Institute for International Studies at Berkeley. Kreisler asked her the following question:
Let me give you a thought experiment here, and it is the following: without addressing the Palestine - Israel problem, let’s say you were an advisor to the President of the United States, how would you respond to current events there? Would you advise him to put a structure in place to monitor that situation, at least if one party or another [starts] looking like they might be moving toward genocide?
Get a load of Power’s response:
What we don’t need is some kind of early warning mechanism there, what we need is a willingness to put something on the line in helping the situation. Putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import; it may more crucially mean sacrificing — or investing, I think, more than sacrificing — billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel’s military, but actually investing in the new state of Palestine, in investing the billions of dollars it would probably take, also, to support what will have to be a mammoth protection force, not of the old Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military presence. Because it seems to me at this stage (and this is true of actual genocides as well, and not just major human rights abuses, which were seen there), you have to go in as if you’re serious, you have to put something on the line.
Unfortunately, imposition of a solution on unwilling parties is dreadful. It’s a terrible thing to do, it’s fundamentally undemocratic. But, sadly, we don’t just have a democracy here either, we have a liberal democracy. There are certain sets of principles that guide our policy, or that are meant to, anyway. It’s essential that some set of principles becomes the benchmark, rather than a deference to [leaders] who are fundamentally politically destined to destroy the lives of their own people. And by that I mean what Tom Freidman has called “Sharafat.” [Sharon-Arafat; this is actually an Amos Oz construction — NP] I do think in that sense, both political leaders have been dreadfully irresponsible. And, unfortunately, it does require external intervention.
Just so we’re clear here: Power said that her advice to the President would be to 1) “Alienate” the American Jewish community, and indeed all Americans, such as evangelical Christians, who support the state of Israel, because 2) Israeli leaders are “destroying the lives of their own people.” 3) Pour billions of dollars of the taxpayers’ money into “the new state of Palestine”; 4) Stage an American ground invasion of Israel and the Palestinian territories — what else can she mean by a “mammoth protection force” and a “military presence” that will be “imposed” by “external intervention”? — in order to do the exact same thing that she considers the height of arrogance and foolishness in Iraq: an American campaign to remake an Arab society.
Note that this wasn’t her response to a question about her personal views of the conflict, or about what she envisions might be a utopian solution to the conflict; it was a response to a question about what she would tell the President of the United States if she was his adviser. Yesterday Barack Obama took a large stride toward the presidency–helped in some small measure by the speeches on behalf of the Obama campaign that Power has delivered–and it is time that someone asked him, while he is still a candidate, what he thinks of the perverse things his many foreign policy advisers have said about Israel and the Middle East.
As Samantha Power herself acknowledged, there is “a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import” that would like to know where Obama stands on these matters.
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January 27th, 2008 at 3:29 PM
I thought her specialty was averting genocide, not curing self-destructive impulses. Shouldn’t she be working in a drug clinic?
January 27th, 2008 at 3:30 PM
“…that would like to know where Obama stands on these matters.”
Pushing this line of questioning will most assuredly destroy any chance of the Democrats of capturing the White House. Anti-Israeli sentiments are rampant within the Democratic Party. This has been fairly well hidden because of naive people like Marty Peretz who find any ridiculous excuse to run from reality. Samantha Power is not an exception—she is merely more blunt than the others. It’s time to stop relying on Mr. Peretz’s insights on these matters. The Democratic Party doesn’t deserve a free ride.
January 27th, 2008 at 3:36 PM
The most absurd thing to me is the implied predicate of this whole program, as summarized by Mr. Pollak: that “genocide” is likely to bust out all over within the borders of Israel, any time soon.
Samantha Power’s credentials as a chronicler of genocide are presented as the pretext for her interview with Kreisler, and Kreisler’s question is asked precisely in the context of genocide. Power then refers to Rwanda, clearly in that context, in formulating her answer.
We may all wish for armed intervention in actual genocides, such as that of the Hutus against the Tutsis, or of Pol Pot against pretty much everyone in Cambodia, or of Hitler’s Germany against the Jews. But identifying the political situation in Israel as “genocide” is demonstrable lunacy.
The alarming thing is not so much that Power would advocate intervening in genocide, as that she apparently thinks the circumstances of Israel are close enough to genocide to be worth discussing in that light. This is the mindset of a radical ideologue, not someone who is influenced by reality.
January 27th, 2008 at 3:41 PM
Haven’t even heard from Zbig, Malley and Co yet. Rest assured, you will though, and in all the right places, too.
This is very serious and must be followed up and more carefully investigated.
Power’s past and present remarks and the general direction of this whole thing, as Pollak has suggested, look to be indicative of a well rehearsed plan of action by Obama’s campaign “policy advisers”, to stick it to the Jews, [the “bad” ones, only, of course, which in plainspeak means anyone who strongly supports Israel and is not an Obama Democrat] and to Israel, but who, for now, will attempt to mask their intentions for so long as is possible during the run up to the election, while also embarking on a major effort to silence, suppress and shame into submission, any calls for clarification, or any expressed concerns or queries, about these early bad news signals coming out of this campaign.
Say it ain’t so, Barak!
January 27th, 2008 at 4:13 PM
Another educated idiot dispensing advice. Just what we need. Darn kind of her, however, to offer Israel the protection of the United States military after the creation of the Hamastan that she envisions. Or did I misunderstand her?
January 27th, 2008 at 4:18 PM
The really horrible thought is the suggestion of a Clinton - Obama ticket. Clinton 1 was in trouble for nominating Lani Guinere as head of Cvil Rights Commission. later on it turns up that there were still termites in the woodwork when Hillary’s medical plan as originally presented to congress had provisions for diversifying the medical profession, using racial/ethnic quotas. As it stands now, it looks like a solidly Democratic senate, and perhaps a similar House.
An incipient disaster for Israel in spite of the record number of Jews in congress.
January 27th, 2008 at 5:07 PM
it may more crucially mean sacrificing — or investing, I think, more than sacrificing — billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel’s military, but actually investing in the new state of Palestine
I just threw up a lot in my mouth.
Great idea, Samantha–we should reward terrorists, and then they won’t ever bother anyone again! They’ll completely abandon their murderous ideology, because of course it’s really only about their poverty and “oppression.” (But pay no attention to the neighbors, please!)
January 27th, 2008 at 6:19 PM
If Hillary is elected, Bill will have major imput if he’s not running the whole show. So the question becomes what are his views on the subject.
January 27th, 2008 at 6:28 PM
I’ve tried to keep an open mind about Obama (partially because I’m Canadian, not a US citizen or resident!) notwithstanding his choice of congregational affiliation and his endorsement by Oprah (who herself has a somewhat warped view of Israel), but there was something about a paragraph in the transcript of his S. Carolina victory speech that gave me pause:
“We’re up against the belief that it’s all right for lobbyists to dominate our government, that they are just part of the system in Washington. But we know that the undue influence of lobbyists is part of the problem, and this election is our chance to say that we are not going to let them stand in our way anymore.”
[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/26/us/politics/26text-obama.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&adxnnl=1&fta=y&adxnnlx=1201475647-2R2xfWQQF3TjEecNDQX3iw]
But after reading Pollack’s exposé of Samantha Power’s view of the world - not to mention the “advice” she would give to a President, it’s not too much of a stretch to conclude would that the above excerpt from Obama’s speech is putting us all on - somewhat disconcerting - notice.
January 27th, 2008 at 7:57 PM
As I always say, Hillary seems to be the most pro-Israel Democratic candidate.
And if we believe that electing her is voting for Billary, remember that Bill, by threatening a veto, prevented the Security Council from imposing sanctions agains Israel in 1993 because of the 400 Palestinians who had been expelled from Israel and weren’t being admitted into Lebanon.