Why I Think Obama Is Better For Israel

I did a post a while back on why I don't think we have any reason to doubt Obama's commitment to Israel. I said then that I would eventually like to do a post on why I think Obama is better for Israel. With 4 days until the election, I suppose there is no better time than now.

Now, I don't, in any way, doubt John McCain's commitment to the security of the State of Israel. He has a long record of support that I think we should be grateful for. Of course, it's easier to express support for Israel from the Congress, where you're one voice out of many, and don't have to make any real decisions. Presidents of both parties have campaigned with a strongly pro-Israel rhetoric and disappointed once in office. Not the least of these is George W. Bush. Jews, and other supporters of Israel, should not be so enthusiastic for another Republican after George Bush. Sure, all of his public statements are tremendously supportive, but behind the scenes, his proposals, like the Road Map, and the Annapolis Summit, have been the same kind of disastrous mistakes the Clinton administration made. (At least with Clinton, it hadn't been tried yet. Bush should have learned his lesson). His state department, through Condoleeza Rice, has been pushing Israel into all kinds of unsafe concessions, like removing security checkpoints, and dismantling settlements, in the name of peace, with absolutely not guarantees from the other side. I suspect either candidate running now, is likely to disappoint somewhat once they're in office. Most presidents do. But here is why I think Obama's overall worldview will be better.

First of all, while many of Israel's supporters were also strong supporters of the Iraq war, those really in the know, knew from the beginning it was a mistake. Iran was always a bigger threat to Israel than Iraq was. Attacking Iraq has strengthened Iran, and increased they're influence in the region. Of course that is all in the past. However, as long our troops remain paralyzed in Iraq, Iran will never take any threat from us seriously. Obama's plan to withdraw our troops from where they are not needed to allow them to refocus on our real threats, will give the United States greater leverage in the region. Furthermore, Obama's efforts to engage Iran in direct diplomacy will leave the Arab world unable to claim that the US is just an imperialist power trying to arbitrarily force its will on the region. If negotiations break down, and military action becomes necessary, we will have a much easier time convincing the rest of the world of the reality of the threat. If we rush in to another war, like John McCain wants to do, the anti-American sentiment in the region will get even greater, and recruitment for Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah will continue to rise.

Furthermore, I cannot exaggerate the importance to Israel of having an America that is respected by the world. Before George Bush, we were a moral leader. If we declared a war was necessary, other nations knew they could trust us. In the last eight years, we have become an object of derision the world over. They resent us for our power, but do not respect us. There has been no better terrorist recruiter than George Bush. John McCain has made it clear that, if there would be any change in his approach to foreign policy from that of George Bush, it would be to make it more militaristic. Obama clearly has the respect of the world, and with him as president, America has the opportunity to claim it's role as moral leader again. Since America is, and will remain, Israel's best and strongest ally, having America respected in the world, means that we will be taken seriously in our support for Israel, and Israel will consequently enjoy greater respect from the rest of the world (though I don't delude myself into thinking it will ever be anywhere near the level of support it gets from the United States).

Lastly, and, of course, I couldn't comment about this the last time I wrote about Obama and Israel, I want to stress the significance of Joe Biden versus Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin, by all accounts, is a supporter of Israel. She may even have had an Israeli flag in her office. Nothing in her response to the question about Israel in the debate gave me reason to doubt her sincerity. However, she clearly has no particularly deep understanding of the issues facing Israel, and what American policy should actually be, beyond this vague notion of "support." Joe Biden, on the other hand, has been a leader in supporting Israel in the Senate for 36 years, even longer than John McCain. Israel could not have a better friend in the vice-presidency than Joe Biden. His debate answer was not the vague expression of support we heard from Sarah Palin (and most other politicians, really), but a thorough critique of how the Bush administration has mishandled the situation, including the pushing for elections in Gaza that lead to Hamas' rise to power there. He made it clear that he will be driven by what is truly in Israel's best interests and not some abstract theory about how to reshape the Middle East. When he says that he would not have joined the ticket were he not absolutely convinced that Barack Obama supports Israel as strongly as he does, he has a record of support strong enough that he deserves to be taken seriously and seen as not just pandering. The fact that Obama showed that Biden is the kind of person he would like giving him advice on foreign policy is very reassuring to me, and should be similarly reassuring to all supporters of the Jewish State.

The McCain campaign and the Republican Jewish Coalition(RJC) have no argument other than their McCarthyite guilt-by-association charges. He once talked to/shook hands with/ate lunch with/went to church with someone who expressed some anti-Israel sentiment. The latest faux scandal they are trying to trump up seems to be about a toast Obama once made to Prof. Rashid Khalidi, who is on record supporting the PLO. Even from the text of the toast as reported by the LA Times, it seems that he essentially said he enjoys talking to him because he likes to hear views that differ from his own. Prof. Khalidi, as well, has said that Obama disagrees with him on just about everything related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yes Obama, clearly enjoys hearing views different from his own, as most mature, intelligent people do. But listening to someone, even being friends with them, in no way indicates agreement with their politics. I have many friends with different politics from my own, and I assume most readers of this do as well. The RJC may like to claim that he surrounds himself with anti-Israel people, but it just isn't true. He clearly has a couple of friends with anti-Israel views, but he also surrounds himself with Joe Biden, Dennis Ross, and a host of others with pro-Israel views. He is a mature, intelligent person, with a complex mind, who likes to hear different points of view, but nothing in his record indicates any reason to doubt that his own sympathies lie with the latter group.

More McCain Idiocy on Iran

I just noticed this, and it's great. In his speech to AIPAC last week, John McCain had this to say about Obama's willingness to negotiate with our enemies:

"We hear talk of a meeting with the Iranian leadership offered up as if it were some sudden inspiration, a bold new idea that somehow nobody has ever thought of before."

The funny thing is the Obama campaign has never tried to portray it as a "sudden inspiration" or "bold new idea". They've constantly pointed out that it's the same approach to foreign policy employed by presidents across the political spectrum from John Kennedy to Ronald Reagan. Until now, I thought the McCain line was going to be portraying Obama as a dangerous radical, but now it seems as if he has acknowledged that Obama's view has represented the mainstream foreign policy consensus for decades. In doing so, he has all but acknowledged that his own "war is the only answer" approach is the one offering the radical departure from how diplomacy has traditionally been conducted. It's time for the press to stop portraying this guy as a moderate and tell the American people just how dangerous he is.

Appeasement

I know it's a little bit late already, but I really wanted to discuss this.
Bush's speech to the the Knesset was overall a beautiful speech, and I don't generally have too many kind words to say about Bush. However, his unfortunate comments about appeasement were truly a disgrace. When a president of the United States is visiting a foreign country, they are a representative of our country, not of their political party, and it is simply not the place to be making partisan political points. I will grant it's not entirely clear he was talking about Barack Obama. He may, for instance, have been talking about Jimmy Carter. However, anyone who's been around politics long enough is aware that "There are those" is always code for "My political opponents" in a way that can give you plausible deniability when accused of negative campaigning and put your opponents on the defensive.

Beyond the disgrace of politicizing a speech to a foreign government is the sheer factual inaccuracy of the comment. We can argue over the wisdom of talking with our enemies (and I will address this shortly), but equating it with the appeasement of Hitler is just not true. When we talk about the Munich conference, the appeasement was not in the fact that we were talking to Hitler, it was in the fact that we gave him parts of Czechoslovakia. The real irony in all this, is that when it come to his policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Bush has been one of the worse appeasers of all time. Sure, he'll make real tough speeches, and have his minions on the right go out and deliver talking points about he's the best friend Israel has ever had, and how the Democrats can't be trusted, but his actions simply do not match his rhetoric. In the face of Palestinian terrorism, Bush and his administration have continuously pressured Israel to remove security fences, stop settlement growth, and remove checkpoints at border crossings as "gestures of good faith." Well, while talking with terrorists might not be appeasement, gestures of good faith to them certainly are. Whatever decline there's been in terrorism is certainly not the result of Bush's policies, but of Ariel Sharon's wisdom in ignoring them.

But what about this issue of talking itself? I must say, when I first heard the idea, I was skeptical. As I've said before, I was a Clinton supporter, and was far more sympathetic to her position. However, the more I've researched the idea, the more I like it. As others have already pointed out numerous times, there really is nothing radical in the proposal. Presidents from Kennedy to Nixon to Reagan met with the leaders of China or the Soviet Union. (As an aside, if John McCain thinks Iran is a bigger threat than the Soviet Union was, he's either delusional, or has no understanding of foreign policy, or as I suspect, both. The Soviet Union had nuclear weapons. Iran is only trying to get them. I will grant that if they ever actually got them, they could be more dangerous than the Soviet Union was, but currently they're not even close.) The one thing else I'd like to add is that Obama's proposal really reminds me of the aphorism of one of John McCain's political heroes, Teddy Roosevelt. "Speak softly and carry a big stick." The military option's always on the table, and when you go in to negotiate, you make sure they know that, and then you see what concessions you can get out of them. You may get nothing, and have to resort to military actions, but there's nothing lost by talking to them first. As Joe Biden astutely pointed out, "Talking to someone doesn't mean we're giving up our ability to say no to them."

Some people seem to be worried that talking to someone grants them legitimacy. First of all, I don't think it's true. Talking to an enemy doesn't make them any less our enemy. Second of all, I don't think nations like Iran care very much about legitimacy from the US. These people would have you believe that while these nations talk about destroying us, the thing they really seek is our approval. If they cared in the least about our approval, the would have abandoned their bellicose ways a long time ago. Now obviously, if we want to maximize our hope of getting concessions from them, there needs to be significant preparation before the presidential meeting, and Obama has made it clear he would make those. I'm reasonably certain those kinds of lower level meetings are going on even now. They usually happen in secret. One more caveat I should add is I do think there's a different between a President Obama meeting with Iran, and Jimmy Carter meeting with Hamas. First of all, negotiations have to be done with an official representative of the government. Second of all, negotiating with your own enemies is one thing, but going behind your ally's back to negotiate with their enemies without them being involved, could really undercut their position.

Now John McCain at least has been consistent with his position on this issue most of the time. This is the man who criticized Bill Clinton in 1994 for making a deal with North Korea instead of attacking them. The man has no tolerance for evil in the world and thinks the only appropriate response is to destroy it militarily. There's a certain quixotic nobility to the position. I wish we could just destroy all evil in the world too. However, we're not all-powerful and it isn't a world of absolutes. Sometimes we need to cut deals with people we don't like to get the lesser of 2 evils. This certainly seems preferable to all out war with North Korea. The more I listen to the candidates, the more I am convinced that Obama understands the realities of the world and offers a progressive, pragmatic approach for dealing with them, whereas John McCain's approach is "simplistic" and "dangerously naive."