President Obama's Middle East Speech

I think that most would just roll freedom of the press in with freedom of speech. There are no particular, isolatable freedoms that the press has that any other person does not. Especially nowadays.

 

Which is just fine with a lot of people in this country who believe that just because Israel is our ally means they can do no wrong and therefore can't be criticized.

I don't agree with that, but I am sympathetic to those who question giving back land to the Palestinians when they have yet to fully honor previous peace accords. Yassir Arafat couldn't keep his people from blowing up buses and killing Jews.

 

Which is fine. No one would disagree Palestine has its own problems. But Israel's "all or nothing" approach, as fostered by Netanyahu, won't even get Palestine to the table.

I don't know what the answer is. But I know Bibi's approach won't work.

 

It comes down to this.

 

You should reach out to BiBi and let him know before he get's too far down the road.

 

The last U.S. President to set limits on Israeli behavior was Eisenhower during the Suez Crisis. Let's face it, if Israel occupied Des Moines and put a wall around it, a large majority of the Congress would issue a firm statement of support. There's no costs to any actions Netanyahu takes as far as he can see. He has no incentive to negotiate.

 

Yes it does.

 

That may have been Obama's best and most formative speech as President.

Clearly he is now willing to gamble political support at home for the greater good of lasting peace in the Middle East.

This is the money shot of his speech:

"But after decades of accepting the world as it is in the region, we have a chance to pursue the world as it should be."

 

Fair point, Boom. But you also need political support at home to be able to accomplish things. And with the American electorate (particularly the portion of it that is the most reliable when it comes to going to the polls and voting) being strongly pro-Israel and suspicious at best of the Palestinians, Obama may have done a lot of damage to himself politically with this speech.

 

It's pretty hard to negotiate with folks who won't even recognize your right to exist and have broken every single land for peace deal they've signed. Israel is a tiny, tiny country that shouldn't be giving up any land that they earned in blood over several wars.

The Arab states surrounding Israel, if they really gave a damn about the "Palestinian" refugees or their apparent desire for statehood, would carve some land out of their considerable holdings.

Obama's speech was pretty meaningless, as are all of his speeches filled with nicely-delivered pap. There's a difference between using the bully pulpit of the office effectively and using it too often. He leans toward the latter category. I've never seen a president give so many "important" speeches in my lifetime.

 

Bamadog, Israel is by a quantum factor the most militarily powerful country in the Middle East, so powerful there has been NO CHANCE of any other country engaging it in war for decades (stateless violence doesn't count as war). Describing Israel as tiny is true in terms of land mass, but it's like saying tiny Manhattan cannot influence U.S. society.