The Obama Glass Totally Empty?
Posted on November 24th, 2008
by Leon Hadar |
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I’m aware that some of my colleagues have been depressed about the notion that the Clintonites are taking over the Obama Administration. I’m certainly disappointed by the expected nomination of Hillary Clinton to be the next secretary of state. But I was encouraged after reading Scowcroft Protégés on Obama’s Radar in the WSJ today, and especially this
The relationship between the president-elect and the Republican heavyweight suggests that Mr. Scowcroft’s views, which place a premium on an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord, might hold sway in the Obama White House.
And this
Mr. Scowcroft said his biggest piece of advice for the new administration was that it should make a renewed push to help broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. He also endorsed Mr. Obama’s call for diplomatic engagement with Iran.
“Compared to the other alternatives we face with Iran, we ought to give it a really good, sincere try,” Mr. Scowcroft said. “I have a hunch that we’ll be more successful than a lot of detractors think.
In fact, I have a contrarian view on the Hillary nomination. I think that Obama wants to take some bold steps on Israel/Palestine and on Iran and knows that such moves could put him on a collision course with supporters of Israel. Now…Hillary as an independent Senator from New York could have ended up exploiting possible pressure on Israel and opening to Iran and even use his foreign policy as a way of running against Obama in 2012. By getting her to work for him, Obama co-opts her and could even use her to sell his Mideast policy to skeptical American-Jews, etc. UPDATE: But of course that might be just wishful thinking on my part…
Filed under: Foreign policy, Politics
And if having Hillary in the Cabinet doesn’t work out, she will at least be out of the Senate. It works out very nicely for Obama either way. Having joined his team, she either stays there or goes back to being a private citizen.
I think you and Scowcroft and Obama are spot on with both of these. Clinton and Emmanuel bring among other things some strong pro-Israel cred that is exactly what is needed to force a deal with the Palestinians. It’s the Nixon-China algorithm. That and a deal with Iran were the two no-brainer strategic moves that should have happened on or about 9-12-08. Iran is the regional hegemon and a sophisticated, non-Sunni (and therefore anti-al-Qaeda) society that is going to be as dangerous with nuclear weapons as China turned out to be. You cut a deal with them, and negotiate a Palestinian state, and the whole Islamic fundamentalist terrorist thing has the rug pulled out from under it, high road closed.
I think there’s a premise here that’s worth questioning.
While Scowcroft and Zbig are infinitely better than Bush’s lot, where, substantively, do they think there’s room for an even moderate-sized breakthrough?
Per the Israeli press right now the Israeli government is absolutely paralyzed at the prospect of having to obey its own Supreme Court’s order to evict one single houseful of settlers from one single house in the occupied territories. And yet we are supposed to believe that Israel is otherwise somehow prepared to agree to and then also be able to fully carry out the evacuation of a goodly portion of the *hundreds of thousands* of its (armed) settlers who live in the West Bank otherwise—which is what any kind of deal almost certainly must insist on? And this of course doesn’t even mention the issues of the Right of Return or Jerusalem.
And yet … once again the call is for the U.S. to put itself front and center in the eyes of the arab and moslem world in very probably delivering a big bust, and once again highlight our own hypocrisy? After all ever since ‘67 the U.S. position has been that the settlements are an obstacle to peace. And yet on the other hand we have a President who has openly proclaimed that he will do nothing to pressure Israel into anything. And so once again the likelyhood is that the peace talks will fail, and once again the U.S. has just advertised in neon its own lack of principle and its centrality in causing the stalemate.
So how exactly is this in our interest? It’s one thing to subsidize someone. It’s another altogether to be seen as participating with them in what, after awhile, looks like nothing more than delaying-tactic PR exercises. If, as it seems, we must do the first, then why must we also do the second?
Seems to me real “realism” may sometimes simply mean that with some situations the only thing that’s going to change things is with the workings of time.
Cheers,
This is all mere speculation until Obama takes office. We have no idea what he has up his sleeve.
http://rightklik.blogspot.com/
I completely agree with you that this is a good sign. But I don’t know how good it is considering Hillary Clinton and Rahm Emannuel - the two biggest war hawks of the Democratic party minus Joe Lieberman - are going to give us any positive signs. Obama should appoint Chuck Hagel to some sort of cabinet post.
Everyone seems to have an idea about what Obama will do, and, strangely enough, it is always exactly what that person wants him to do. This trend doesn’t seem to make an exception for those who are already positioned as his foe (like Hannity and the other numbskulls on talk radio), who just know that Obama will show his true liberal colors the first moment he steps into the oval office.