Article

2010-03-17 -Signs, Portents, and the Weather-

American foreign policy: Where is the outrage?

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Posted by Mizzou Mafia 2010-03-17 10:04|| || Front Page|| [6 views ] Top

#1 Not long after President Barack Obama gave his conciliatory speeches to the Islamic world, he chose not to meddle in the sham election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In fact, he offered not a word of support for the men and women who took to the streets against that totalitarian regime.

Then, as "man-made disasters" continued to spontaneously erupt around the world including at a U.S. military base the administration held steadfast in using non-offensive euphemisms lest anyone be slighted by our jingoistic need to use words that mean something.

And when the president was given a chance to fulfill a campaign promise and acknowledge the genocide of 1.5 million Christian Armenians by Turks during World War I, he instead did everything he could to block the resolution.

These days, as Christian farmers are being slaughtered by Muslim machetes in Nigeria, outrage from the White House is difficult to find. But it made sure to instruct our Libyan ambassador to apologize to "Colonel" Moammar Khadafy after he offered some mildly critical comments about the dictator's call for jihad against Switzerland.

Khadafy can be forgiven, but there are transgressions that can't. One such sin was perpetrated by Israel after the nation's decision to allow a new housing project to be built in Jerusalem.

The White House became so agitated with the new housing project and the ill-advised timing of the announcement, which came during Vice President Joe Biden's visit that the casual onlooker might have been led to believe the Jerusalem neighborhood in question was part of some unfinished negotiation with Palestinians, or even that it was one of those "settlements." It was neither.

Still, according to The Jerusalem Post, Hillary Clinton telephoned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who, along with many other Israeli officials, apologized for the poor timing of the project's announcement to "berate," "rebuke," "warn" and "condemn" Israel. White House senior adviser David Axelrod used NBC's "Meet the Press" to call the incident an "affront," an "insult" and "very, very destructive."

As the administration was manufacturing this anger, the Palestinian Authority was preparing the newly minted Dalal Mughrabi square. You know, just a place for folks to gather and commemorate the 32nd anniversary of 1978's Coastal Road Massacre, in which 37 Israelis 13 of them children were murdered in a bus hijacking.

An American named Gail Rubin, who happened to be snapping some nature pictures in the area, was also gunned down.

No worries. No affront taken. That's not "very, very destructive" to the process. We are above the fray. Above frivolous notions of "allies" or "friends." History only matters when our enemies deem it important. We don't want to tweak the fragile mood of the Arab street.

If the purpose in this manufactured angst is to pressure Israel into handing parts of Jerusalem over to a corrupt Fatah (we don't need to discuss Hamas, which unlike Fatah, has the decency not to pretend to recognize Israel's right to exist) then someone is exhibiting a profound naivete. And if the purpose of pursuing a Jewish-free West Bank is to create goodwill with the Muslim world, good luck.

It is this administration's prerogative to change our foreign policy and allies. Yet, it would be nice if someone reiterated to our new Muslim friends that the United States has yet to deploy a single soldier to risk life or limb for the security of Israel. It has, however, only recently sent thousands of Americans to perish, in part, for the cause of Muslim freedom in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo.

That sacrifice alone should be enough to absolve us from any more bowing or kowtowing.

Posted by gorb 2010-03-17 14:23|| 2010-03-17 14:23|| Front Page Top

#2 Good post Gorb.

Posted by JohnQC 2010-03-17 19:38|| 2010-03-17 19:38|| Front Page Top

#3 Click on the link and you can read it again.

Posted by tu3031 2010-03-17 19:40|| 2010-03-17 19:40|| Front Page Top

#4 gorb, please do not quote the major part of an article in the comments. People can click on the link to read it.

Posted by lotp 2010-03-17 21:35|| 2010-03-17 21:35|| Front Page Top

#5 I usually don't do that. But I assume people are lazy/impatient like me and don't like to wait for the link-only articles and just skip them. This was a good one. Know anyone else who doesn't follow the links? ;-)

Posted by gorb 2010-03-17 23:12|| 2010-03-17 23:12|| Front Page Top

#6 Guilty as charged gorb. 9/10 i skip the articles that are only the link... unless there is good commentary to draw me in.

yeah, i am lazy and impatient. fat too. and those are my endearing traits.

Posted by abu do you love 2010-03-17 23:40|| 2010-03-17 23:40|| Front Page Top

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