Truemors
is reporting from
Member
NP Rank:
NP Rank:
Foreign policy questions for Candidate Perry…and the President
Share:
by YankeeJim | September 21, 2011 at 06:19 am
77 views | 2 Recommendations | 3 comments
Videos
"We Should Be Ready To Protect The Future & Population Of Israel" Ehud Barak Interview pt_1
sourced by The 1
Photos
Address Foreign Policy Comprehensively
It is easy to snipe and critique when you are on the sidelines. Questions that all Americans need to ask include what is our Foreign Policy in the Middle East? What are the required and desired outcomes? What are the time frames for expectations to be fulfilled? How much is the cost? Is the current Foreign Policy desirable and affordable?
If you are a Jewish-American or a Palestinian-American or Arab-American or Muslim-American, you will have varying expectations that get reconciled among all other Americans.
America attends the Middle East because it is a primary source of fuel that is strategic to our economic interest. Economic policy combines with military policy to ensure national security.
Without Israel, America has a strategic interest as a customer of Middle East oil producers.
Interest in Israel is 1) humanitarian with a legacy to World War II, 2) political with a large and wealthy American constituency with religious and historical ties to Israel.
Yet, don’t all Americans have some sort of cultural ties and affinity with our historical roots? Irish-Americans may well care that Ireland is one of the potential default nations, for instance as do Italian-Americans care about Italy for the same reason, not to mention Greek-Americans.
With Israel and Arabs, it isn’t just nation-state affinity, it is religious. The American form of government expressly calls for tolerance without discrimination for race or creed.
The historical conflict between Jews and Muslims is something those people must work out. If leveraging America to facilitate a desirable outcome is helpful, we may do that based on our own values. If either party asks us to compromise our values for theirs, that should be out of the question.
Israel and Arab conflict is just one of many thorns in our side that we must address in context with the big picture.
I would like to see Rick Perry address the big picture and his approach to resolution in contrast with sniping that is too easy.
“Perry blasts Obama’s policies on Israel, Palestinians
By Philip Rucker, Published: September 20
Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry castigated President Obama for his handling of Israeli-Palestinian relations on Tuesday, accusing Obama of a “policy of appeasement” toward the Palestinians that he said was undermining U.S. security interests in the Middle East.
The Texas governor charged that the Obama administration — which has been trying to head off a U.N. vote on Palestinian statehood this week and relaunch peace talks — was encouraging the Palestinians to shun direct negotiations with the Israelis.
Perry, a leading contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, said the United States should reconsider its aid to the Palestinians and close the Palestinian Authority’s offices in Washington if Mahmoud Abbas, president of the authority, succeeds in his quest for formal recognition of statehood at the annual session of the U.N. General Assembly this week.
“We would not be here today at the very precipice of such a dangerous move if the Obama policy in the Middle East wasn’t naive, arrogant, misguided and dangerous,” Perry said in a speech in New York.
He blasted Obama for saying last spring that the 1967 borders should be the starting point for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Perry said Obama’s statement isolated Israel “in a manner that is both insulting and naive.”
Obama’s statement was denounced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the time. But Netanyahu had embraced the 1967 borders as a starting point for negotiations before that, and he said last month that he would do so again if the Palestinians dropped their statehood bid.
Perry’s top GOP rival, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, also assailed Obama’s Middle East policies in a statement issued Tuesday morning.
“What we are watching unfold at the United Nations is an unmitigated diplomatic disaster,” Romney said. “It is the culmination of President Obama’s repeated efforts over three years to throw Israel under the bus and undermine its negotiating position.””
Advertisement
Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (3)
at 07:41 on September 21st, 2011
Perry's comments were what was actually "naive, arrogant, misguided and dangerous."
Of interest:
We Should Be Ready To Protect The Future & Population Of Israel" Ehud Barak Interview pt.1
at 11:27 on September 21st, 2011
Americans will defend Israel as if it were a state of the USA.
at 11:33 on September 21st, 2011
Ehud Barak in his recent CNN interview, seemed to have faith in Obama's ability and judgement.