| Thursday,
November 4, 2010 A matter that was delayed by the election
news, but a matter of real importance.
A long time reader asked for comments on this:
Obama's Not So Hidden
Agenda
http://townhall.com/columnists/FrankGaffney/
2010/10/29/obamas_not_so_hidden_agenda/page/full/
Frank Gaffney <http://townhall.com/columnists/FrankGaffney/>
<snip> ... ties between the United States and
Israel - far and away America's most important and loyal friend in the
Middle East - have improved lately from the nadir to which Mr. Obama
plunged them since he took office. That has nothing to do, however, with
a change of heart or agenda on the part of the President and his
administration.
Rather, it is a reflection of a cynical
calculation forced upon the Obama White House by its panicked
congressional allies. Already laboring under the backbreaking burden of
their association with a president and his agenda that have become huge
liabilities, Democrats on Capitol Hill faced wholesale defections of
their Jewish constituents and funders if their party's leader persisted
in his assault on Israel. <snip>
Worse yet, he will be able to take advantage of a
vehicle for effecting the so-called "two state solution," no matter how
strenuously Israel and its friends in Washington object: The
Palestinians will simply unilaterally declare themselves a state and ask
for international recognition - and Mr. Obama will accede to that
request. <snip>
Such a "two-state solution" will make another
regional war vastly more likely, not prevent it. Yet, the Obama
administration is committed to pursuing that goal as Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton made excruciatingly clear in a pandering speech to the
American Task Force on Palestine last week. <snip>
For a long time I have been critical of Israel's handling of
the Palestine situation, particularly of their treatment of Christian
Palestinians, and at one time my "advice" such as it was, was for Israel to
decide what territories it wanted, build a wall around that, and leave the
rest to the people who lived there: let them establish a state if that was
their will, but hold that state accountable to the usual obligations of a
state, and face the consequences of acts of war against its neighbors. The
Israelis tried that in Gaza. The result was thousands of rockets aimed in
the general direction of inhabited areas of Israel. Imagine the consequences
if Cuba began firing rockets at Florida, of if San Diego were daily
subjected to unguided rockets and mortar fire from Tijuana. Now what?
I look at Middle East policy from an American viewpoint. One
unchangeable factor in American policy decisions is the emotional attachment
of a large segment of the American population to Israel. That is thoroughly
understandable, and a view shared by many Christians in America. The United
States and Israel are two countries, and while they have a number of common
interests, their national interests are not identical. This would not matter
if Israel were just another nation, or were Israel located in a less
strategic area, but then if wishes were jobs there would be little
unemployment. The world is as it is.
As I often do I have asked for Joel Rosenberg's comments on
the above:
Hi, Jerry -- thanks for asking my opinion.
I wish I thought Gaffney was right; but it's much,
much worse than he says.
Barrack Hussein Obama, when it comes to the Middle
East, is basically James Baker, with a backflip and a suntan. Where Baker
didn't care -- privately; he made other noises in public -- about the
Jewish community, because he knew that they'd all vote for the other side,
Obama doesn't care -- privately; he makes other noises in public -- about
the Jewish community, because he knows that the mainstream Jewish
community is, basically, Obamagirl with yarmulkes.
The relationship between the mainstream American
Jewish community and the Democratic party is basically that of a battered
wife and the battering husband. He keeps saying that he loves her, but
keeps beating her, every time he loses his temper, and then promises never
to do it again.
Not that it matters much; she's emotionally
dependent on him, and on some level thinks she deserves it.
I think it's fair to say that mainstream liberal
Jews are pro-Israel, to the extent that they are, out of tribal concerns
and fantasy. It's not out of a hardheaded conclusion that the interests of
the US and Israel are inevitably tied. (Yes, I know; this is an area where
you and I disagree, to some small extent -- I think the US national
interest is more closely aligned with Israel's than you do. That's okay; I
obviously disagree with you, but I respect your position. Our
disagreements on this are, if I may flatter myself, a dispute among
patriots.)
Which is why so much of the American Jewish
community has, for all of my life and longer, treated the hardheaded
realists in Israel -- Begin, back in the day; Sharon, up until he lost his
nerve; Bibi, right now -- as an embarrassment.
Israel is, to most of them, a fantasy playland,
where Jews don't have to listen in the middle of the night for cries of
Raus, Juden! and can -- and often do, and only should -- defend themselves
without any brutal necessities coming into play.
Both of which are lies, as Gaffney points out --
Israelis in Judea and Samaria are hearing just those cries, and if some of
those beyond the Green Line don't, it's because they're just too
battle-shocked to listen.
For most American Jews, the intimate involvement of
the US and Israel isn't out of a deep sense of shared common interests and
the ability of each partner to protect the others, the whole being greater
than the sum of the parts as long as each party actually does its job . .
.
It's a favor to be curried from an administration.
Gaffney "Democrats on Capitol Hill faced wholesale
defections of their Jewish constituents and funders if their party's
leader persisted in his assault on Israel."
Nah. What they faced is louder protests, while the
same people still tamely write the same checks, and then still herd
themselves to the polls to vote for the same Democrats...
It's disheartening to me that so many American Jews
spat on the outstretched hand of GWB -- the most hard-headedly pro-Israel
US politician since Harry S Truman -- to support Gore and Kerry, and then
turned away from the (admittedly much less so) John McCain to embrace
Obama. The notion that Obama's treachery against Israel -- which Gaffney
very clearly demonstrates -- should be answered with quiet protests and
smaller checks is, well, different. I dunno; maybe in the 2012 campaign,
Obama will promise to reduce his bowing to Saudi "royalty" by 20% -- and
the Jewish community (with a very few exceptions) will swoon.
The hopes of the nation don't, alas, have a lot to
do with the common sense of the American Jewish community on matters
political, with the willingness of what Ezra Levant calls the "Official
Jews" to take a hard-headed look at their politicians. There isn't any
such willingness, just a simulation of it.
And that's about where it is, alas: in my view,
Gaffney's an optimist.
Best to the family,
jr
I am not sure I have much to add to that. I do believe that
Republicans have a more emotional attachment to Israel than the American
Left including the President. It was not always so.
I do note that a great deal of innovation now comes from American
corporation laboratories and think tanks in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Given
the American school system this is likely to gain importance.
============================
The Country Club Republicans are blaming the Tea Party for not taking the
Senate and defeating Harry Reid. I find that astonishing although I suppose
I ought not be surprised. There is no evidence I know of that the results in
Delaware, a deeply blue state where the race was for Joe Biden's seat, would
have been different had there been an establishment Republican. It would
still have been a key race subject to a great deal of Democratic attention
and funding. It would have taken resources away from the rest of the country
as the establishment felt obligated to pour in more in support of one of
their own. As it happened, the result was interesting: the Tea Party
supported O'Donnell and allowed her to run so effective a campaign that for
a while there looked to be a real chance that the Democrats would lose that
seat. The Democrats had to use their big guns in Delaware "just in case."
It was similar in Nevada, where it was predictable that Nevada would
draw national resources from both the Unions and the Democratic
establishment. It was thrilling to think that the Senate President Pro Tem
might actually be defeated. It was also inevitable that this would be an
expensive election decided in large part by the ground game.
I would be a lot happier had these two senate races gone the other way.
It would make reform -- actually, transformation -- of the Republican
leadership a great deal more certain and a lot easier to accomplish. That
didn't happen.
What did happen was a repudiation of the radical transformation of the
United States into European style socialism, sixty House seats, and a
transformation of the legislative majorities in many states. There are two
factors at work here: the rejection of the Democrat agenda, and the vital
energy of the Tea Party which turned Delaware and Nevada into actual
contests, and even, for a few glorious moments, gave California Republicans
some hope.
Now it is time to make sure the Republican leadership understands that
this landslide wasn't a vote of confidence in them: It was a last chance
opportunity.
=====================
The Fed is printing more money. I still have, somewhere, a Weimar
Republic stamp, originally 3 pfennig (first class letter) overprinted
several times with a final value of 3 million marks. It was still a
first class letter stamp. Three million marks. One wonders when our
stamps will have the same value -- and will "forever" stamps still work when
the overprinting begins here? I recall once having a stamp overprinted to
mird millionen (presumably an abbreviation for milliard) but that seems to
have vanished with my teen-age (not very valuable) stamp collection which I
gave up sometime in high school. I still wonder if today's "forever" stamps
will be honored when, after the government keeps printing money to finance
pension plans, we find that running the printing presses has inevitable
consequences.
================
Regarding the Delaware election: Delaware has one member of the House,
and thus both the Senate and the House are statewide races. In both the
Senate and the House elections, the Democrat candidate got 57% of the vote.
In 2006 the Democratic candidate got 70% of the vote. In 2002 Biden
got 58%. In 2008 Joe Biden, running for Senate (as well as for VP of the US)
won by 65% against -- Christine O'Donnell, who was considered a sacrificial
lamb in a race that no one believed would be any kind of contest. We can all
wish that the country has become so fed up that deep blue states like
Delaware would go Republican or at least Tea Party, but the likelihood
always was that Delaware would go Democrat in 2010 as it did in 2002, 2006,
and 2008.
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