Olmert’s Poodle
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As Israel entered the third week of its Gaza blitz, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert regaled a crowd in Ashkelon with an astonishing tale.
He had, said Olmert, whistled up George Bush, interrupted him in the middle of a speech and told him to instruct Condi Rice not to vote for a U.N. resolution Condi herself had written. Bush did as told, said Olmert.
The crowd loved it. Here is the background.
After intense negotiations with Britain and France, Secretary of State Rice had persuaded the Security Council to agree on a resolution calling for a cease-fire. But Olmert wanted more time to kill Hamas.
So, here, in Olmert’s words, is what happened next.
“In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the secretary of state wanted to lead the vote on a cease-fire at the Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favor.
“I said, ‘Get me President Bush on the phone.’ They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn’t care. ‘I need to talk to him now.’ He got off the podium and spoke to me.
According to Olmert, Bush was clueless.
“He said: ‘Listen. I don’t know about it. I didn’t see it. I’m not familiar with the phrasing.’”
“I told him the United States could not vote in favor. It cannot vote in favor of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favor. …
“She was left shamed. A resolution that she prepared and arranged, and in the end she did not vote in favor.”
The U.N. diplomatic corps was astonished when the United States abstained on the 14-0 resolution Rice had crafted and claimed her country supported. Arab diplomats say Rice promised them she would vote for it.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, with Rice at the United Nations during the debate on the resolution, said Olmert’s remarks were “just 100 percent, totally, completely untrue.”
But the White House cut Rice off at the knees, saying only that there were “inaccuracies” in the Olmert story. The video does not show Bush interrupting his speech to take any call.
Yet the substance rings true and is widely believed, and Olmert is happily describing the egg on Rice’s face:
“He (Bush) gave an order to the secretary of state, and she did not vote in favor of it — a resolution she cooked up, phrased, organized and maneuvered for.
She was left pretty shamed. …”
With Bush and Rice leaving office in hours, and Olmert in weeks, the story may seem to lack significance.
Yet public gloating by an Israeli prime minister that he can order a U.S. president off a podium and instruct him to reverse and humiliate his secretary of state may cause even Ehud’s poodle to rise up on its hind legs one day and bite its master.
Taking such liberties with a superpower that, for Israel’s benefit, has shoveled out $150 billion and subordinated its own interests in the Arab and Islamic world would seem a hubristic and stupid thing to do.
And there are straws in the wind that, despite congressional resolutions giving full-throated approval to all that Israel is doing in Gaza, this is becoming a troubled relationship.
Two weeks ago, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, in opposing any truce, assured the world there “is no humanitarian crisis in the (Gaza) Strip,” and the humanitarian situation there “is completely as it should be.”
Not so to Hillary Clinton. In her confirmation hearings, the secretary of state-designate, reports the New York Times, “struck a sharper tone toward Israel on violence in the Middle East.”
Clinton “seemed to part from the tone set by the Bush administration in calling attention to what she described as the ‘tragic humanitarian costs’ borne by Palestinians, as well as Israelis.”
More dramatic was a weekend report by the Times‘ David Sanger that the White House had rebuffed Olmert’s request for new U.S. bunker-buster bombs and denied Israel permission to overfly Iraq in any strike on Iran’s nuclear enrichment plant at Natanz.
Sanger described these U.S.-Israeli talks as “tense.”
Repeatedly, Israel has warned that Iran is close to a bomb and threatened to attack unilaterally. Indeed, Israel simulated such an attack in an air exercise of 100 planes that went as far as Greece.
Bush both blocked and vetoed that attack, says Sanger. But he did assure Olmert that America is engaged in the sabotage of Iran’s nuclear program by helping provide Tehran with defective parts.
This would seem a stunning breach of security secrets, but no outrage has been heard from the White House, nor has any charge come that the Times compromised national security.
With Olmert, Rice, and Bush departing, and Obama and Hillary taking charge committed to talking to Iran, can the old intimacy survive the new friction and colliding agendas?
COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
Filed under: Foreign policy, War
To play the devil’s advocate here: why did Bush do it?
Why cede to Olmert on this issue if Bush is leaving office in a matter of days, and thus does not have to face the wrath of the Israeli Lobby (like his old man did in the early 90s) by going against Israel’s demands?
Strange.
Bravo to Pat Buchanan and this magazine for this post and the articles by Greenwald and Mearshimer. We clearly have a unique opportunity for a conservative/liberal coalition to return our foreign policy to one that Washington and Eisenhower would approve of. The yoking of both Clinton egos to a successful implementation of an Obama foreign policy is a masterstroke… one imagines that the Israelis will pull such a trick on Hillary a maximum of once to their eternal regret. It is clear that the Likud factions both here and there have overplayed their hands and things are about to change. That moment will be hastened by this potential coalition, where an Obama presidency can take a new approach to the area, emboldened and buttressed by the support of America-first, non-adventurist conservatives.
Buchanan wrote:
“With Olmert, Rice, and Bush departing, and Obama and Hillary taking charge committed to talking to Iran, can the old intimacy survive the new friction and colliding agendas?”
Strikes me that this is wishful thinking based on not perceiving that to a limited but significant degree there is not a “colliding agenda” between U.S. interests and Israel’s. And that’s why I suspect Leon Hadar too might be somewhat mistaken in believing that Obama isn’t going to jump right into this mess.
While substantively I think the U.S. really has no vital national interest involving in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict it surely does on a purely political plane. That is, to desperately try to disguise the fact that without the support it gives Israel that Israel could not be doing what it has been doing Or at least to provide U.S. Presidents and diplomats with *something* to say. “Cover” as it were.
Or, to put it another way, if for some strange reason the rest of the world and especially the arab/moslem world did not perceive the U.S. to be complicit or culpable at all in Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and etc., *then* we really *would* have about no interest whatsoever in the conflict aside from the theoretical humanitarian concern and the economic aspect of us giving Israel all the money that we do.
But that’s not the situation. The U.S. political situation is that we can’t help but providing all the political and economic support we do to Israel, and therefore our interest is purely and simply trying to persuade the world that we do care what Israel is doing. And even if and when that proves ridiculous, our Presidents and diplomats still of course must be provided with at least something to say, even if everyone and their mother knows it is pure moonshine.
Likewise, Israel has an interest in doing what it can to lessen the world’s anger at it, persuade whoever it can to not be hostile or lessen same and etc., and its Presidents need something to pretend to say too.
Ergo the common interest is at the very least some bit of kabuki “peace” theater/process.
And the funny thing with this is that with each turn of the ratchet demonstrating ever more the futility of any such “peace” process, the *need* for having same just grows greater. Therefore, even now in the wake of Gaza and with the utter destruction of Bush’s “roadmap” and castration of Abbas and the moderate Palestinians, precisely *because* things may explode further there is a greater need for the U.S. to prevent same because of the even further harm it will cause to its image/reputation and etc. “Gee, those were *our* tank shells being used in Gaza, and damnit, everyone seems to have *noticed* it….”
So even though things are now even more hopeless, the pressure on Obama is just all that more intense to try to persuade the arabs and the world that no no, the U.S. doesn’t *really* support the bad things Israel does and its colonization of those territories and etc.
My prediction then is that Obama will indeed put a lot of attention and emphasis on the Israeli/Palestinian issue right away. Yet another “process” or etc. will be announced, yet some more different words will be found to try to lend credence to the idea that something different is really being tried or done, and blah blah blah.
There are some 4,000,000-500,000 Israeli settlers in the occupied territories. Israel will never remove them since to a large extent now they are Israel. Israel may talk forever as if it might indeed remove them, but if any Israeli government ever *did* agree to remove any significant number of them that government would fall and be repudiated forthwith or else something else would be done rejecting that concession. Look at what was done to Rabin.
And I wouldn’t be surprised if even then, at that point, you would see whatever Israeli government that emerged and the U.S. get together to dramatically announce yet another grand peace process/initiative/whatever, once again implying that a solution is just around the corner. Even no matter if the entire world itself got together and put up a banner saying “Just what fools do you think we are?”
Gee, and people wonder why you see the image of Mr. bin Laden so often on the T-shirts of arab and moslem youth all over the world. Wonder how long before they start appearing on the streets of Europe, or are they there already?
I am continually amazed that both conservatives and liberals still actually believe that there is a chance for a peace involving a two state solution.
Israeli author Israel Shahak convincingly showed over a decade ago that Israel had absolutely no intension of allowing a two state solution. None whatsoever. The idea of a two state solution was merely put out by the Israeli government to mislead and assuage the guilt of liberals in the west.
Furthermore,and even more disturbing, was how Shahak showed how pervasive the idea of a “greater Israel” actually was among the Israeli elites. This means that not only has Israel has always meant to kick all the Palestinians completely out of their former homeland, it has also always had plans on the back burner to annex portions of Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt et al. This idea or Eretz Israel wan’t new . This idea’s orgins can be traced all the way back to the Zionism birth in the in the late 19th century.
There is a current example of how this grand plan will be accomplished, the Kurdish area of northern Iraq. It is a place controlled by an Israeli puppet government that is also awash in Israeli mercenaries (essentialy occupation troops), all prepared to overthrow any Kurdish government is stupid enough to defy Israel.
Shahak, by the end of his life, had come to the conclusion that the only solution was one country with both Palestinian and Jewish citizens. Israel, he felt, was so inherently racist and expansionist, that its continued existence would bring nothing but disaster to the Mideast. Gaza is only the most current example of this ongoing tragedy and travesty.
Buchanan has been right about Israel all along. He knows the dirty deal created by England and the US with the european zionists in 1913. He knows that the State of Israel has always been a threat to all its neighbors since 1948. If you look at the map from 1948 to 2009….Israel has continued to steal more and more land, by brutal occupation. It is time for the US (Obama) and England (Brown) and the United Nations to force a two state solution, forcing Israel back to its 1967 borders…there is no other solution. Israel must be made to pay reparations to Gaza, and remove all its troops from those territories. Gaza has a right to defend itself against the 3rd largest military in the world…thats human nature.
I don’t see a story here. Olmert made discredited claims? That makes the U.S. (or Bush) look like Israel’s poodle? That’s a big stretch.
http://www.rightklik.net/
I am amazed by all the people who still think Obama will bring hope and change, despite all evidence to the contrary.
It says here this issue is far less intractable than believed. The current impasse is a combination of things: Israel ensuring Palestine is so unstable that it has no negotiating partner; Palestine unable to unify and bureaucratize and agree to peace on Israel’s terms. The way out is to have the Arab League and the UN cross-agree that either or both can act as the negotiating entity for the Palestinians, and make peace with Israel for them; not unlike the way the parents of a 17-year-old can negotiate a legal settlement for their offspring. As part of that peace, the territorial issue is settled, violence is renounced on both sides, peacekeeping forces separate the two sides, and some financial settlement in lieu of the right of return, with perhaps some regional component by Saudi, Jordan, Syria etc. to accept Palestinians, and along with the rest of the Arab League and the UN support economic and infrastructure development in Palestine, all these happen. Some agreement is made for how a transition to an independent Palestinian government will be managed after peace is made by means of this UN/Arab League mandate. Assuming the UN and Arab League step up and do this, essentially imposing themselves on both the Palestinians and Israelis fairly, both sides will simply have to accept it. Done deal, next problem please;-). But seriously, the key is not allowing the Israeli intransigence and Palestinian disorganization… which feed one another in an infinite loop… to be barriers any more. The trick then is to have the world (UN and AL) make peace with Israel in the Palestinians’ name, by proxy, with power of attorney so to speak. Besides the upside to the US in terms of image, this cuts some high ground out from under the A-Q types and the guy in Iran. That’s a big win. And with Hillary and Rahm, and UN and Arab League auspices, Obama can bring this one off. It could even happen this year. What is most key is for the Saudis, Egyptians, and Jordanians to step up and commit themselves.
Pat,
As a (recovered) Roosevelt Democrat I used to think I didn’t like you much. As a recently-minted Libertarian I have concluded that you make a lot of sense. I read this article on LewRockwell.com and I hope to continue to see your work there. Keep it up – it’s good stuff.
encouraging to read sane articles like this in an American publication: congratulations.
As the dust settle down on whats remained of Gaza,obsevers will realize the brutal nature of the Israeli aggression into Gaza.It would certainly be difficult from the out set, to asses the catastrophic consequences of the damage done to both human and material,yet initial reports are talking of wide spread destriction.Some areas of Gaza have been totally wiped out, leaving over a million out of the 1.5million inhabitants of Gaza, either homeless or living in a partially damaged homes.Similarly,loss in human lives is equally painfull.Only God knows the true number of the people killed in this mad incursion, dead bodies are still being pulled out from under the rubble.What lessons did Israel learned from this ugly war?;of course nothing, as usual, Israel will resort to its traditional blame game discourse shifting the responsibility into Hamas for trying to defend itself from Israeli systematic killing of Paletinians.Under the banner of fighting terrorism,Israel would kill and destroy anybody and any sight at will, with impunity, but for the Palestinians to defend themselves its terrorism calling for American intervention with threats to all Arabs not to lend any helping hand to the Palestinians while being buchard by Israel.This crazy show has to stop if the West is keenly interested in the survival of Israel .Should Israel however, continue with its shortsighted policy, the onus of survival will be heavy a load for Israel to carry.From now on, Israel shoul learn that it will never achieve any of its expansionist’s goals, and that the range of choices available to it will be limited to either accept to live in peace with its neighbours or pack and leave to where they originally came from.
Even though I never supported Obama, I would rally behind him if he takes tougher stance on Israel. AIPAC, ADC etc. controls of our politics makes us all pooddles of the Israel.
A Jewish state, is not possible as just for now 1/3 of Israel citizens are non jewish and growing faster than the Jewish population.
Israel can only survive as a Jewish state if they use force, undemocratic means or violence, because otherwise non jewish people will be the majority in less than 20yrs.
Therefore there is no need of two states as being proposed which is in actual sence based on discrimination supremacism. Like South Africa, the indigenous and immigrant can co-habit if there is political will from both sides with a representative constitution (quotas).
The use of Holocust as a weapon to scare people should be stoped because it will never happen again. Jews have to learn to live with other. Slaughtering of Palestinians and using US to support these acts should stop just as the rockets from Hamas.
Written at the begining of the year yet still very relevant, you should add your twitter link, ill follow for sure