Hillary’s Late Hit
When, in the South Carolina debate, Barack Obama said he would meet with the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran and North Korea in his first year as president, he stepped into a cow pie.
Hillary pounced, declaring that in a Clinton White House, there would be no promised first-year meetings with any dictator or enemy of the United States.
The morning headline in Miami roared that Obama was open to meeting Fidel. In the Jewish community, word was surely being moved that Obama had opened the door to a face-to-face meeting with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a Holocaust skeptic who has predicted the Israeli state is not long for the Middle East—and should be transplanted to Europe.
Pundits watching that Citadel debate scored Hillary the winner, contrasting her presidential sobriety with Obama's puppy enthusiasm for talking to tyrants.
Why, then, with press and politicians declaring her the winner, did Hillary Clinton have to step in and clock Obama after she won the fight?
The day after the debate, Hillary said Obama had exposed himself as "irresponsible and naive."
This gave Barack, who had been busy explaining what he had meant, an opening to declare that what was "irresponsible and naive" was Sen. Clinton's vote to give George Bush a blank check to plunge us into a war in Iraq most Democrats have come to believe was the worst strategic blunder in U.S. history.
Instead of Barack's impetuosity being the issue, Hillary's war vote is now front and center, her greatest vulnerability in seeking the nomination of an antiwar party. Her eagerness to exploit Obama's blunder also suggests a lack of serenity and confidence in her double-digit lead over Obama.
In the next debate, Hillary is certain to be put on the defensive about her war vote, and Obama has been liberated, by her throwing the first punch, to hit back hard—on his strongest issue, the war.
A surprising mistake by Sen. Clinton, who has run something close to a flawless campaign. But there is a more substantive issue here. That is the gravamen of the original question.
Should not the United States be in constant contact with those we see as enemies, to prevent irreconcilable differences from leading us into war? Here, Obama's instincts are not wrong.
During World War II and the Cold War, FDR and Harry Truman met with Josef Stalin. Ike invited the "Butcher of Budapest" for a 10-day tour of the United States and tete-a-tete at Camp David. JFK met Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna—after he declared, "We will bury you." Richard Nixon went to China and toasted the tyrant responsible for the deaths of thousands of GIs in Korea and greatest mass murderer of the last century, Mao Zedong.
None of the five with whom Obama said he would meet is in the same league with these monsters of the 20th century.
Kim Jong-il has not launched a war on South Korea or tried to assassinate its prime minister and entire cabinet, as his father, Kim Il-Sung, did. Syria's Bashir al-Assad has yet to fight his first war and has never perpetrated the kind of massacre his father did in Homa. Yet, George H.W. Bush welcomed Hafez al-Assad as a fighting ally in the Gulf War.
Castro is the same evil tyrant he has always been. But Vice President Nixon survived meeting him, and he is surely less dangerous than the young Fidel, who reportedly urged the Soviets to fire their Cuban-based missiles at the United States, rather than pull them out.
Hugo Chavez is an anti-American demagogue, but also the twice-elected president of Venezuela. How does he threaten "The Republic That Never Retreats"? As for Ahmadinejad, he is not the supreme leader of Iran, and his nation has not launched a war since the Revolution of 1979. With no atomic weapons, no ICBMs, no air force to challenge ours, no navy, an economy 2 percent of ours and its oil reserves running out, Iran is scarcely an existential threat to the United States.
All of these rulers wish to be seen as defying the United States, but not one of them—not North Korea, Iran, Syria, Venezuela or Iran—can seriously be seeking a major war with the United States that would bring wreckage and ruin to any or all of them.
What we have in common with them is that neither of us wants a hot war. As for a cold war, does any one of these nations represent a long-term strategic or ideological threat to a United States of 300 million, with 30 percent of the world's economy, and the best air force, navy and army on earth, and a nuclear arsenal of thousands of weapons?
If Bush can bring Libya's Muammar Khadafi, who was responsible for Pan Am 103, the Lockerbie massacre of American school kids, in from the cold, why cannot we talk with Hamas and Hezbollah and Assad and Ahmadinejad?
What has any of them done to us compared to what Khadafi did?
Though poorly stated, Barack Obama had a point.
COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
Entries(RSS)
"If Bush can bring Libya’s Muammar Khadafi, who was responsible for Pan Am 103, the Lockerbie massacre of American school kids, in from the cold, why cannot we talk with Hamas and Hezbollah and Assad and Ahmadinejad?
What has any of them done to us compared to what Khadafi did?"
That's a very good question that Pat has raised. Isn't it very odd that the Bush Administration has mended our fences with the Khadafi Gov't - which has sponsored numerous deadly terrorist attacks against Americans through the years, while we invaded Saddam Hussein's nation for the purpose of toppling his regime -falsely tying him to our worst ever terrorist attack - eventhough Saddam, whatever his faults were, had never sponsored any terrorist attacks against the United States? And why has the major news media not reported on this inconsistency in U.S. policy toward Middle Eastern dictators?
It's the difference between being able to take a punch in the face i.e. turn the other cheek... & the other ethic of and eye for an eye.
The Jews are in charge of dictating our policy today in the middle east and they were paying saddam back for having attacked israel. With them it's an eye for an eye and now they're using the u.s. as their golem, in implementing that. My question is what do we do to israel now, once we have our nation back. They're betting as usual turn the other cheek.
"Should not the United States be in constant contact with those we see as enemies, to prevent irreconcilable differences from leading us into war? Here, Obama’s instincts are not wrong."
Except, as Dr. Fleming has observed, that the United States is incapable of formally acknowledging anything without encouraging and subsidizing it. Judging from Obama's apparent eagerness to increase the breadth and depth of U.S. foreign aid, this would certainly be the case under his presidency.
Why does this website give Anti-Semites and Judeophobes a forum to preach their filth?
Are you the real Rodney King or only a metaphoric victim?
There's enormous power in the victim Role; no power in being the Actual victim.
Which are you?
The vibe I get is that you are in the Role and we are the Actual victims. You don't feel that. Or perhaps you do? Why not debate it, instead of smear? Do you have a case? Let's hear that intelligently laid out, 'Rodney'?
So now anti-semitism = questioning US foreign policy and Israel's (understandable) self-interest therein? Perhaps the metonymic Mr. King should buy a dictionary.
MGB said:
"So now anti-semitism = questioning US foreign policy and Israel’s (understandable) self-interest therein?"
No, but it appears to be "Joo" hate when Billy-bob says:
"The Jews are in charge of dictating our policy today in the middle east...My question is what do we do to israel now, once we have our nation back."
You guys shouldn't be ashamed of hating Jews, if you do. Or maybe it's not hate. Maybe you just think their culture is evil or decadent or whatever, and that they are demonically clever and therefore able to control the most powerful country in the world. But why tiptoe around about it? Why not just say what you really think about Jews? Problem is, when you pussyfoot, everybody naturally gets all suspicious about what you're being so coy about, and starts to wonder if you're crypto-Nazis. So just come out of the closet and show us what you really think, and how you differ with the Nazi view (or where you agree, if there are any points of agreement), so we readers out here don't get all nervous that you guys are in the closet about being brownshirts and skinheads and whatnot.
From http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IG31Ak01.html, "Ask Spengler" column, 31 July 2007:
"...
Dear Spengler:
Do you think the United States is ready for a woman president?
Chilling in Chappaqua
Dear Chilling:
The Americans are not ready for a woman president. That is why they will elect Hillary Clinton.
Spengler
..."
P.S. The link was
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IG31Ak01.html
(no "," at the end)
traeh's comments reek of a 12-step, let's all hold hands, sing kumbaya, and admit our faults approach.
Again, the point is that much of American foreign policy is not in the US's interest. No foreign country - and I hate to burst traeh's bubble but Israel is a foreign country and not a state - has the right to determine American foreign policy.
As usual, these cowards slander anyone who questions this policy as anti-semitic since no logical argument would ever work. So traeh, why don't you just come right out and admit that you picked up your tactics at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting, where admitting one's problem is the first step toward therapeutic recovery? Or do you have the "disease" that plagues many "addicts"? Certainly your imploring those of us who believe in America's right to have a foreign policy in its own interest to come out of the anti-semite closet amounts to an attempted "intervention."
"and how you differ with the Nazi view"
Good grief traeh! Who except politically correct liberals and "conservatives" who have been horsewhipped by political correctness resort to the "If you have any un-PC thoughts you must be a Nazi" argument? That is SPLC territory.