Posted by
Bill Crawford on Saturday, June 05, 2010 10:45:33 PM
The short skinny is that, with the creation of the incident in the Gaza blockade, the Islamabad government has announced to the world something many have suspected for a while now: the Western, pro-American sentiments they have shown us since 9/11 are now pretty much history, and the Turkish government seems to be angling to be some sort of gravitational center in the Muslim world. This is not good.
Looking deeper, there are some more troubling things afoot here. For a long time here, there have been many who have lamented that much of the Islamic resentment towards us has been borne of our support for Isreal, which therefore wasn't worth it.
There is an element of truth to this, which begs to be followed by the qualitative question, is our support worth it? George Marshall resigned in 1948 from Truman's Cabinet because he and the President were on different ends of that answer.
I agree that in 1948, it was clearly a more open question, but in my mind, at present it is not. This is where the Obama administration comes in.
After the Gaza flotilla incident, our Sec State chimed in against the Isrealis in one news cycle. The relations between Obama and Netenyahu are strained. No, that isn't quite strong enough. They are akin to FDR and Hoover's relations on the car ride to the 1933 Inaugural. Worse than that, there are West Wing people trying to quietly float the notion of a "nuclear free Middle East"- more to the point, asking Iran to give up their nuclear ambitions in exchange for Isreal giving up the nukes everybody knows it has. Even if both sides agreed and did it (not going to happen), it would be about the most destabilizing thing you could ever to to the region.
Which brings us to our President. We have seen cycles of Presidents veering between being an Isreali ally and being an 'honest broker' in the Middle East. Jimmy Carter was the most maddening at this game. Obama seems to be married to the broker end of the spectrum, no matter how much it annoys or scares our best friend in that hell hole.
in 2008, I had my head handed to me on many occasions for bringing up the preachings of Jeremiah Wright in trying to draw a picture of Obama. This President spent twenty years listening to the sermons of a Black Liberationist, and some of it has obviously rubbed off.
I, for one, am not surprised. Are you?