The US Middle East vision: war on dictators?Follow

I'm venting my opinions in a forum called the Asylum.


What do you expect? Really?

It's not about the focus though. I freely admit that this may be my own cynicism at work, but it just seems to me like making such specific statements sets up an "out" in terms of foreign policy in that region. It provides safe harbor for the administration whenever the subject of the Middle East comes up and my concern is that this is a sign that they don't have real plans for the other stuff going on there (aside from the also relatively simple stuff he put forth about Tunisia and Egypt) and are putting forth the same old goals so that they can talk about doing "something" in the area.

Dunno. It just seemed to me that with all the stuff going on there, this seemed like an odd time to so strongly speak out about the need for Israel to give Palestine a bunch of land. And that's without going into the broader arguments about appeasement which I'm sure most conservatives would zero in on first. I recognize that the position of the US hasn't really changed, so it's not like he's proposing anything too radical. But that's the point. You have nothing new to put forth, so why do it, and why do it right now?




That's one of those cases where things get sticky for the US though. I guess that's part of my point though. There are all of these movements going on in the region and it's going to require really careful diplomacy to thread through them to get results that both improve the conditions of freedom and liberty for the people while not inadvertently handing over control of large portions of the regions to powers which have no more than lip-service interest in those things. Iran is a big problem in the area and is definitely trying to play these things to their advantage. But I don't think that throwing Israel under the bus is the right way to win people over either. I'm not sure if that's what this is about either, but as I said I'm not sure why he'd pick this time to make such strong and specific points about it in the first place.


I'd work to try to make those movements positive ones first *then* once you've got a hopefully more representative middle east you can work on resolving the Israel/Palestine issue. By defusing the conditions of constant threat that Israel feels it's facing, it'll be more willing to compromise, and by showing the Palestinian people that they can stand up and be counted without having to follow extremist leaders and engage in violence, they'll be more willing to as well. Doing it the other way around just seems backwards to me. To me, the popular uprisings and protests are the means towards peace in the region. Follow that thread and the rest will fall into place. It should be a first priority in the region, not pissing people off by making demands on them now that we know they can't agree to.

I should have said has 'attempted to assasinate'.

But the precedent stands. If Obama decides someone is a threat to national security, he reserves the right to have that someone killed in a third country without any judicial process. How long before the C in C's 'enemies' must-do list is expanded? Who knows? But if killing an American in Yemen is fair game, how long before targetting Americans at home becomes acceptable?

Western Countries have Courts and Judges and Juries for good reasons, not least of which is politicians responsibilities should not include deciding who lives and who dies according to their personal political views.

Well dont let me get in the way of you and varus and your daily bouts of intelekchual jousting. It must be very stimulating for everyone.

I don't know how much of the speech was just repeating stuff for PR reasons, I don't want to speculate about that either (because I think it's ultimately irrelevant because statements needed to be and were made and that's what it was about). What I do know is that there's no "out". There is plenty of media coverage of all these issues so everyone knows about them, there's also Al Jazeera now (with a lot more viewers since Tunisia) and it's not like the US control them and can tell them to shut up, unless you're the Bush administration and just try and blow up their buildings in Baghdad and Kabul).



I think Israel/Palestine is an issue that is of higher interest to a lot of people globally. I think a lot of the non-Israeli Jewish care about it, and I know the Palestineans in other countries do, too. I don't think he's spoken about it overly strongly anyway, so meh.




I think the problem is that the US need allies in the area, but there's not really anyone with policies the US should support fully; I think as far as Bahrain is concerned, we should support Iran but obviously that isn't such a good idea beyond dealing with Bahrain. I think we agree that it's all just so messed up there's no easy way to deal with anything at this point.


Edit: Also, did it somehow slip your mind that Israel's PM is visiting?

Edited, May 20th 2011 10:42am by Kalivha

Nads,



He's not very mellow for a surfer is he?

Maybe he lost his copy of northshore.

Holy **** Paul, even varus thinks you're rabid!

That's probably as low as anyone could get.

I don't get your point. Varus thinks Moe's a rabid liberal.

/Lol

Seconded, actually.

This one is for Debalic:

He looked like Billy Bob Thornton in Love Actually getting worked over by Hugh Grant.