By: Colbert I. King, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, February 24, 2012
“Defending Traditions And Storied Principles”: The Demonizing Of Barack Obama:
February is African American History Month. Yet these are days of sadness.
The brilliance of hope, so blinding a few short years ago, has dimmed. The dreams of a 21st-century America, where achievement is based on skills, determination and merit, free from an arbitrary color standard, have been replaced with injuries inflicted by present-day haters as malevolent as some of our worst enemies of the past.
Who could have imagined a U.S. publication suggesting that Israel “give the go-ahead for U.S.-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice president to take his place.” In case you were unsure of what you’d just read, the writer clarified, “Yes . . . order a hit on a president in order to preserve Israel’s existence.”
Those words were written only a few weeks ago, in a column by the owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, a weekly newspaper that dates back to 1925. Andrew Adler’s call for President Obama’s assassination was immediately condemned by major Jewish organizations. He apologized, resigned from his post and has reportedly put the paper up for sale.
But it can’t be unsaid. To read in a mainstream publication that Barack Obama should be killed takes the breath away.
How many other Americans think the same way? Such thoughts didn’t start with Adler. They don’t stop with him.
Now, before some of you strike back with, “Hey, what about those scurrilous attacks on George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan?,” allow me to stipulate that crazed partisans and venomous pundits populate the left as well as the right.
What sets anti-Obama foes apart from the persecutors of Bush, Reagan et al., however, is that the purveyors of this brand of inflammatory rhetoric include the GOP presidential candidates themselves.
Their charges are rude, disrespectful and designed to question Obama’s loyalty to country and commitment to his faith.
John Avlon, CNN contributor and senior political columnist for Newsweek and the Daily Beast, recently chronicled the kind of “radioactive rhetoric” that the presidential hopefuls are spewing to rev up their conservative base. I’ve chosen a few examples of my own.
Newt Gingrich: Obama has a “Kenyan anti-colonial mindset” and is the “most radical president in American history.” Gingrich has also said: “This is an administration which, as long as you are America’s enemy, you’re safe. You know, the only people you’ve got to worry about is if you are an American ally.”
Rick Santorum: Obama has “some phony theology. Not a theology based on the Bible,” and he is “systematically trying to crush the traditional Judeo-Christian values of America.”
Mitt Romney: Obama associates with people who have “fought against religion.” “Sometimes,” Romney said recently, “I think we have a president who doesn’t understand America.”
As Avlon observed: “This line was straight out of the ‘Alien in the White House’ playbook, a riff that reinforced the worst impulses of some in the audience.”
In this political environment, there is no invective too repugnant, too vicious to throw at this president of the United States.
It is in this climate that we celebrate African American History Month and the achievement of generations against all odds. The demonizing and denigration of the nation’s first black president cast a pall over what should be a time of tribute to indomitable Americans.
But we soldier on.
African American History Month concludes next week, and George Washington University will host an event Tuesday “celebrating the African American legacy in Foggy Bottom.”
Since the discussion will be devoted to my old turf, I expect to be on hand. “Half the fun of remembering is the rearranging,” as an Internet posting put it, and this trip down the avenues of yesterday should be worth taking, even if it returns us to things that were hard to bear at the time.
It is the present, and what lies ahead, that is unsettling.
How will observers of African American History Month many years down the road regard the time in which we now live?
Ah, but these things are being said about Obama, we are told, because of his policies, not because of the color of his skin.
It’s never about race; it’s all about the defense of great traditions and storied principles . . . as in cases of the Civil War, Plessy, Brown, lunch counters, bus travel, the poll tax, Jackie Robinson.
It’s sad, and infuriating.
Iran War Would Cost Trillions: Will the GOP Pay More Taxes For That?
While GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul is doing all he can in this election cycle to gin up a debate about US foreign policy and a measure of the costs and benefits, the debate about Iran, China, Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel’s security has been taking place in a gravityless environment.
Mitt Romney’s opening foreign policy opus at the Citadel criticized Obama for defense cuts with promises to boost America’s defense commitments abroad, to boost military spending on hardware and ships in the Pacific — to do everything we have been doing but more.
Where are the dollars going to come from?
I am one who thinks that war with Iran is far off and in the near term unlikely — unless Israel makes a tremendous mistake by triggering and forcing a geostrategic move by the United States, a choice that could very well ultimately dismantle the close US-Israel relationship, or alternatively if forces inside Iran that would benefit from war actually cause an escalation of events that produce a potential nightmare in the Persian Gulf and region.
That said, fewer and fewer people agree with me — and various of the presidential candidates seem to be competing with each other to tell US citizens how quickly they would deploy US military and intelligence assets to undermine Iran’s Supreme Leader and his government.
That’s OK — in the Summer of 2007, both analysts and agitators in the political left believed Bush and Cheney would bomb Iran before year’s end. Neoconservatives and pugnacious nationalists like John Bolton also believed this. I did a survey of folks on the inside and argued in September 2007 in a widely read Salon article that they would not bomb Iran. They didn’t.
In the summer of 2010, some folks on the left were absolutely convinced that the US would bomb Iran before August. Again, that was not how things turned out — and was not the analysis I had from talking to people in the defense and intel establishments.
Today, things are fuzzier — but at the highest levels of the national security decision-making tree — there is palpable doubt that bombing Iran achieves any fundamental strategic objectives while at the same time ultimately undermining US, Israel, and regional security, undermining the global economy. One senior official I heard when asked about bombing Iran then said, “OK, and then what? Then what?! Seriously, then what???”
I’ll write more soon about what a much more level-headed and serious strategy with Iran would look like — particularly since so many are hyperventilating today and in some cases pounding the drums for a collision, one that they think can be done on the cheap.
It is ridiculous to think that a strike by Israel against Iran, that would in real terms tie the US to the conflict, would not be staggeringly expensive and consequential.
So, it would be interesting to hear from those who want to reside in the White House — and even the Obama administration which has some ‘kinetic action’ advocates on the inside — on what a more sensible financial management strategy for these proliferating conflicts, including an Iran War, would be.
George H.W. Bush got the Japanese citizens to write a check for $13.5 billion to the US to pay for the first Gulf War. He was perhaps the last fiscally responsible war time US President.
Wars cost lots and lots of money — and if a substantial chunk of the GOP crowd wants these wars and feels that it is in our national interest to have them, then by all means they should start lining up some of the wealthiest in the country who are helping to agitate for these conflicts to pay more in taxes for them.
By: Steve Clemons, The Atlantic, February 12, 2012
Why, Yes, Mitt Romney Does Lie A Great Deal
I’ve always had a soft spot for Mitt Romney, who strikes me, in a way I can’t completely define, as a good guy. The fact that he is an audacious liar does not strike me as a definitive judgment on his character, but primarily a reflection of the circumstances he finds himself in – having to transition from winning a majority of a fairly liberal electorate to winning a majority of a rabidly conservative one, one that cannot be placated without indulging in all sorts of fantasies.
So I do understand David Frum’s sympathy for Romney. What I don’t quite get is Frum’s claim that Romney is not an audacious liar. He made this claim in a joint interview we gave on Canadian television, and again the other day in the Daily Beast:
Mitt Romney cares a great deal about speaking accurately and truthfully. He uses statistics carefully in his speeches and debates, unlike former leading rival Rick Perry.
He eschews the audacious somersaulting of reality we often hear from current rival Newt Gingrich …
So long as we are in the world of facts and specifics, Romney has shown himself scrupulous not to overstate or misrepresent. Even where he has changed his mind, on abortion for example, you’ll see no equivalent of the glaring disregard for the factual record of a Ron Paul
Really? It seems to me that Romney makes factual, specific claims that are false all the time. Some of them are minor, daily stories, such as his denials, when convenient, that he knows anything about the ads he is running against Newt Gingrich. Others are obvious attempts to mislead the public about his own history:
When first asked as a 1994 US Senate candidate about records showing him voting in the 1992 Democratic primary, Romney said he couldn’t recall for whom he voted.
Then Romney told the Globe he voted for Tsongas because he preferred his ideas to his then-opponent for the nomination, Bill Clinton. Later, he added that it was proof he was not a partisan politician.
Yet in 2007, while making his first run for president, Romney offered a new explanation: He said he voted for Tsongas as a tactical maneuver, aiming to present the “weakest opponent” possible for Bush.
Or important components of the claims that undergird his policy arguments:
At last night’s debate, for instance, Romney claimed that Obama “went before the United Nations” and “said nothing about thousands of rockets being rained in on Israel from the Gaza Strip.”
This is flat out false. Obama talked about the rockets hitting Israel in two speeches before the U.N.: One in 2009, and the other in 2011.
These are just a couple of examples plucked from the last day of campaigning. There is an endless supply, large and small. Romney’s whole line of attack against Obama rests upon facts that are verifiably false. His main foreign policy indictment is a lie that Obama went around the world apologizing for the United States – this is the basis for his slogan that he “believes in America,” as well as the title of his campaign book, No Apology. His domestic indictment of Obama rests upon his ludicrous claims that Obama “has no jobs plan” and his repeated, specific assertion that Obama wants to create full equality of outcome.
Even by the standards of politicians, Romney seems unusually prone to dishonesty. Again, you can ascribe this to circumstance rather than character. I see him as a patrician pol, like George H.W. Bush, who believes deeply in public service but regards elections as a cynical process of pandering to rubes. I think you can plausibly make other interpretations, and you can separate Romney the man or even Romney the president from Romney the candidate. But I don’t see how you can paint Romney the candidate as in any way scrupulous about the truth in any form.
By: Jonathan Chait, Daily Intel, January 27, 2012
Blinded By The Right: Unwavering Support For Israel Hurts Wider U.S. Interests In The Middle East.
In 2003, Democrats upset about President George W. Bush’s plans to invade Iraq invited French President Jacques Chirac, an opponent of the war, to address a joint meeting of Congress. It was blatant political play, an attempt by the opposition to work with a foreign leader in offering a counterargument to the president’s invasion plans and limit his ability to carry though with his decision to go to war in the Middle East. Chirac was feted across Washington by liberal think tanks and pro-French lobbying groups as American politicians and Democratic activists fell over themselves to be identified with a strong anti-war leader.
This, of course, did not happen. The idea that Congress would openly side with a foreign leader against the president of the United States seems too far-fetched to believe. Remarkably, however, something not dissimilar happened in Washington Tuesday, May 24, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to a joint meeting of Congress (a speech interrupted more than 25 times by a rapturous standing ovation). While these types of congressional addresses are rare, this particular event is even a bit more unusual: The speech’s intention — with the full assistance and backing of the Republican leadership in Congress and implicit support of Democrats — was to give Netanyahu a public forum to offer a rebuttal to President Barack Obama’s recent proposals for moving forward with the Arab-Israeli peace process.
As the New York Times reported last week, the invitation was initially requested by Netanyahu of the GOP leadership before the president’s Middle East speech plans had even been formalized: It was “widely interpreted as an attempt to get out in front of Mr. Obama, by presenting an Israeli peace proposal that, while short of what the Palestinians want, would box in the president.” In turn, Obama’s May 19 speech was scheduled purposely so that the president could get out ahead of Bibi’s remarks.
It’s one thing for Republicans to oppose the president’s position on Arab-Israeli peace. In the hours after Obama’s Middle East speech, Republican presidential contenders like Tim Pawlenty and Mitt Romney did just that, arguing that the president had proverbially thrown Israel “under the bus.” (Never mind that Obama simply reiterated long-standing U.S. policy toward the Arab-Israeli peace process.) They were joined — in a bipartisan manner — by prominent Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in offering pushback on the president’s words.
It is certainly appropriate for members of Congress to disagree with the president’s foreign-policy agenda. But it’s something else altogether to be appearing to work in concert with the leader of another country in trying to put the president on the defensive –and seeking to score a partisan political advantage in the process. By openly siding with Netanyahu against Obama and making Arab-Israeli peace a partisan issue, Republicans in Congress are at serious risk of crossing a dangerous line and in the process undermining U.S. interests in the Middle East.
This behavior follows a concerning pattern. Last November, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, after a meeting with Netanyahu, suggested that a Republican Congress would serve as a check on the Obama administration when it came to Israel policy (a position he later sought to walk back). In the fall of 2009, Cantor criticized the Obama administration for its rebuke of the Israeli government over the eviction of Palestinian families in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. Most surprising of all, the attack was lodged from Jerusalem, where Cantor was heading a 25-person GOP delegation — an unusual violation of the unspoken rule that members of Congress should refrain from criticizing the U.S. government while on foreign soil. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee took a similar position this February while traveling in Israel. He called the Obama administration’s opposition to Israeli settlements (a position long held by Democratic and Republican presidents) equivalent to “racism” and “apartheid.”
Last week, as Netanyahu lectured Obama at a frosty White House news conference and issued statements on what he “expected to hear” from the president about his commitment to Israeli security, Republican lawmakers barely batted an eye at behavior that by any other foreign leader would spark outrage from their caucus — and instead aimed their attacks at Obama.
This seems at pace with the GOP’s default position on Israel. This February, writing in the pages of National Review, Romney stated that “Israel must now contend with the fact that its principal backer in the world, the United States, is seeking to ingratiate itself with Arab opinion at its expense.” It’s a view that no doubt would have been met with astonishment in Arab capitals, where America’s image remains largely negative. One can’t help but wonder whether the tail isn’t wagging the dog — after all, is there a reason that the United States shouldn’t seek to ingratiate itself with Arab public opinion? There is an implicit assumption here that no matter what Israel says or does the United States must continue to be blindly supportive — an odd stance for an American politician to take, particularly when Israel’s actions occasionally run counter to larger U.S. interests.
Although one cannot ignore the fact that strongly held empathy for Israel is, in part, motivating this position, there is of course a healthy dose of domestic politicking at work. Democrats have long relied on Jewish support — both electorally and financially. Republicans, though less reliant on Jewish voters, have successfully made support for Israel a litmus test for Democrats to prove their national security mettle. Moreover, with strong backing for Israel among the party’s conservative base, defending Israeli behavior has become a surefire way for Republicans to politically cater to social conservatives and evangelical voters. In fact, Israel probably enjoys more clear-cut support for its policies among social conservatives than it does among American Jews! (And Netanyahu, in particular, didn’t just fall into this love fest: He has long supported and helped spearhead the alliance between the Israeli right wing and American religious conservatives.)
All this is a very far cry from George H.W. Bush’s open conflict with Israel and the American Jewish community in 1991 over loan guarantees for Israeli settlements. That the perception continues to exist that Bush’s aggressive stance cost him severely in the 1992 presidential election no doubt haunts the Republican Party — and any American politician inclined to put public pressure on Israeli leaders.
But ultimately there is more than politics at stake here. At a critical moment in the political transformation of the Middle East, America’s steadfast and unyielding support for Israel — underwritten by both parties in Congress — risks undermining America’s long-term interests in the region. Last year, Gen. David Petraeus commented in congressional testimony that “Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples [in the region].” His statement provoked controversy in Washington, but ask any seasoned Middle East observer and you’d be hard-pressed to find one who disagrees with the general’s assessment. It is not Iraq, Afghanistan, or Libya which is the greatest source of anti-American attitudes in the Arab world — it is the continued lack of resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the view of many in the region that the United States has its thumb on the scale in favor of Israel.
None of this is to suggest that Washington should turn its back on the Jewish state. But this is also a time when a more evenhanded position on the conflict is desperately needed — particularly as the United States will need to deal with a new government in Cairo that will likely be less supportive of Israel, a wave of unsteady democratic reforms spreading across the Mideast, and a U.N. General Assembly that appears ready to endorse Palestinian statehood this fall. These events will have serious repercussions not just for Israel but for U.S. policy in the region. Obama at least seems to realize this fact and has — albeit tepidly — challenged a recalcitrant Israel to get serious about peace. Yet Congress seems intent on restraining his leverage, effectively holding U.S. actions hostage to the whims of partisan politics — and in the process working in concert with a foreign leader to do it. At some point, it raises the legitimate question of who is looking out not for Israel’s interests, but America’s.
By: MIchael A. Cohen, Foreign Policy, May 24, 2011
Netanyahu Speech To Congress Shows America Will Buy Anything
A blistering piece of commentary by the esteemed (and leftist) Israeli political commentator, Gideon Levy, in Haaretz today is a must read for anyone who cares to see what progressives in Israel think of Netanyahu’s show today before the U.S. Congress.
Levy begins his piece with these loaded, and to my mind, honest salvos concerning Netanyahu’s speech to Congress today:
It was an address with no destination, filled with lies on top of lies and illusions heaped on illusions. Only rarely is a foreign head of state invited to speak before Congress. It’s unlikely that any other has attempted to sell them such a pile of propaganda and prevarication, such hypocrisy and sanctimony as Benjamin Netanyahu did.The fact that the Congress rose to its feet multiple times to applaud him says more about the ignorance of its members than the quality of their guest’s speech. An Israeli presence on the Jordan River – cheering. Jerusalem must remain the united capital of Israel – applause. Did America’s elected representatives know that they were cheering for the death of possibility? If America loved it, we’re in big trouble.
As Levy notes, Congress today applauded some painful statements by the Israeli head of state, and this applause said much about both their ignorance on the true state of affairs in Israel as well as their willingness to remain ignorant about the true state of affairs in Israel for political gain (see: the vote of Christian conservatives and the campaign contributions of the Jewish elite).
Below is a brief look at a few of the standing ovations Netanyahu received by our representatives in Congress, and why such applause should be troubling for us as American progressives:
1. Jerusalem as Israel’s Undivided Capital – by applauding this statement by Netanyahu, our leaders essentially applauded the death of any possible peace agreement, for, as everyone knows, East Jerusalem is the proposed capital for a future Palestinian state in every iteration of negotiations that have been produced since Oslo. And yet, a standing ovation. And it bears noting: with the Arab Spring spreading throughout the West Bank and Gaza, and a declaration of Palestinian statehood on the horizon by the U.N. in September, the death of peace negotiations no longer mean what they once did: the status quo. Instead, such a death will mean major instability with unpredictable outcomes.
2. Israel is not occupying the West Bank – when Netanyahu claimed, with a straight face, that the Jewish people are not occupiers, and that the situation in “Judea and Samaria” is not an occupation, Congress roared to its feet. That the U.S. Congress could rise in boisterous applause to a known lie is chastening – Israeli leaders past, including Ariel Sharon, have admitted the obvious: that Israel is in the difficult and damaging position of occupying another people’s land.
3. Boasting on the Status of Israeli-Arabs – Netanyahu’s government has backed a series of anti-Palestinian, anti-democratic laws recently, the most notable of which forbid citizens from recognizing, in any way, The Nakba (which is the sorrowful observance Palestinians engage in as Israelis celebrate Independence Day). By applauding, our leaders, wittingly or not, gave sanction to a leader and an administration which has done much to strip non-Jewish citizens of their democratic rights.
Netanyahu’s speech today, more than anything, signaled the official death of the peace process, for none of the “terms” presented by Israel’s leader comes close to acceptable for the Palestinians.
And by standing to applaud 29 times, our leaders today gave sanction to that death. Even the White House, this evening, issued a statement saying that Netanyahu’s speech “reaffirmed the strength of U.S.-Israeli relationship.”
Here’s why what happened today matters: America has incredible leverage with regard to Israel, and has always been capable of using that leverage to talk Israel down off the pathological ledge it’s been toeing for so long due to my peoples’ existential fear of annihilation. (For good reason, I should add, but I digress.) The United States gives Israel unprecedented monetary, military and diplomatic support, all of which could easily be drawn down.
But as we saw today, the tail unfortunately wags the dog. And this wagging may end up being disastrous not only for Israel, but for American interests in the region as well, for a Netanyahu-applauded vision of Israel-Palestine is nothing more than a recipe for confrontation, for instability like we’ve never seen.
The Arab Spring has changed dynamics such that there is no going back. If Netanyahu, and America, stay on the course articulated today, this is where we may be headed:
1. A Palestinian declaration of statehood by the U.N. in September
2. Israeli & American rejection, with possible annexation of lands
3. A conflict that will not end well.
May my analysis be wrong. I hope such is the case. I fear such a case is becoming increasingly unrealistic.
By: The Troubadour, The Daily Kos, May 24, 2011
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