Q: Brandon Garcia wants to know, “What does the Vice President do?”

PALIN: That’s something that Piper would ask me! … [T]hey’re in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom.

I’ll gladly agree to this compromise with you. Biden knows at least (or as little) of foreign policy and statecraft as Palin does of the (f*cking!) Constitution. Sound about fair? Depending on whether you think Alaska’s proximity to Moscow (or is it Siberia?) provides Palin with the foreign policy credentials she and her team claim it does, this gives her an advantage in at least one crucial area of knowledge.

I hate to tell you this, Tom. But your apparent penchant for courtroom drama isn’t drawing me in much, and neither is Biden’s. But then again, neither is McCain and Gingrich’s. Some context for the quote would have been nice, (as would a link. What is up with all the laziness on providing links the first time around with you guys? If these fussy snippets are so damn important then why wait to attribute the report directly?) But if context is less important to you than drama and innuendo, then I can see why you’d prefer to just let Biden’s latest gaffegasm dangle – as every serious analyst will likely do. They’ll just do that without drawing some silly and premature political conclusion from it – much to the chagrin of some.

Tom, just curious. Why would an Irish-American lawyer be so concerned about whether or not Israel is “allowed to” (or encouraged to) attack Iran? I don’t understand what sort of stake you have in perpetuating all the standard and amateurish Mid-East right-wing fear-mongering other than when I recollect your pro-”life” comments to Yonah months back and speculate on some sort of possibly ulterior domestic political motivation on your part. Again, just curious.

“Mark my words,” the Democratic vice presidential nominee said at a Seattle fundraiser Sunday, “it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

“I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate,” Biden said, including the Middle East and Russia as possibilities, “and he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you – not financially to help him – we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.”

The garrulous Biden said that he’s “forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know, so I’m not being falsely humble with you. I think I can be value added, but this guy has it. This guy has it. But he’s gonna need your help. Because I promise you, you all are gonna be sitting here a year from now going, ‘Oh my God, why are they there in the polls? Why is the polling so down? Why is this thing so tough?’ We’re gonna have to make some incredibly tough decisions in the first two years. So I’m asking you now, I’m asking you now, be prepared to stick with us. Remember the faith you had at this point because you’re going to have to reinforce us.”

…Now. There’s nothing whatever to worry about, Ephraim.

That said, perhaps you take issue with her remark about “domestic constituencies”. Even that isn’t something I see as anti-Israel. It might be a bit misguided, in my book – but to imply that the Israeli people are all hawks or that they think AIPAC or the Jewish lobby in America speak for them at large is a mistake. The democratically-elected Israeli government speak for them, and its composition and policies change as they see fit.

Unlike Bush, I don’t think Obama is going to make decisions just based on what any one person, in the position of advisor or not, tells him. Tom may feel that you’ve “hunt(ed her) down”, but I think this clip just shows a bit of a glib overextension of her work, rather than a damning drive to crush Israel into oblivion or to allow it to fall into a military abyss. Blind trust in one’s advisors is clearly not a characteristic that Obama has ever displayed – no matter how much Tom identifies with that (incredibly discredited) approach.

For now, I’m willing to see the interview as the sort of aberration that a young and ambitious talent such as Power would be expected to make, and one that is less relevent today now that the situation on the ground as changed. However, if it isn’t, then I’ll have a bigger problem with it.

Thanks for the video. It deserves airing, and she deserves to be questioned on it. Should the Obama administration aspire to craft a comprehensive and active Israeli-Palestinian strategy then they should be pressed to clarify it and take into account the sort of objections statements like this will raise. But in the meantime, I think Obama will have enough on his plate, he won’t be driven to create a peace-making “legacy” a la Clinton, and I’m more than content with the status quo of butting out of the dispute while continuing to support Israel while leaving it to the parties to decide when they’ve achieved the collective responsibility necessary for more active US diplomatic intervention to be of any significance whatsoever.

In case you haven’t guessed, though, I’m not a single issue voter. Nor do I have some kind of stubborn resistance to being proven wrong on something. I just don’t think there’s a solid case to make that Obama will usher in the destruction of Israel. Call me naive, but I’d like to see more proof before swallowing a single-issue voter’s entire worldview on that. After all, I obviously don’t swallow Power’s view. Nor do I feel threatened by it, and especially not by anyone who thinks that any one suggestion calls for absolute allegiance or absolute renunciation.

Tom, you really think that Obama’s statements to Birzeit students in 2006 regarding America’s commitment to Israel are to be brushed aside? If your whole point is that you can’t believe him (the extreme left has been just as pissed by his stances), then you don’t really have much of an argument either for what he would do. You just try to discredit his commitments, which is fine. But the fact that you can’t ever seem to discredit his judgment says something as well.

Can you think of any way to characterize Powers’ position as set forth in that video other than the way I have described it?

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You tell me what you think this means.

Just who is insulting whose intelligence?!

And why do you always resort to such simple little potshots? I addressed in detail, and hardly in a way that fawns upon the UN, the trade-off between unilateral action in Iraq and the rise of Russia and her friends. If you can’t address a well-accepted and entirely non-partisan assessment on the survival lessons taken by dictatorships, then just own up to that, instead of retreating with a fatuous little smear against “the left wing” at large. Your (and their) hatred of the UN won’t make America or Israel any safer than will the left’s alleged “love” for it.

Provide a link or I’ll assume that you have no evidence to back-up whatever innuendo you’re bending and stretching to fit, piecemeal, into what you want to believe.

Rosner debunks every bit of your inital, garbage assertion. “Stridently anti-Israel”? Those were your initial words. Now who’s trying to weasel of of what was plainly said? Coming up with an off-the-cuff suggestion that wasn’t pre-approved by AIPAC hardly makes someone anti-Israel. You might not think third-party military forces to be a good idea, and she clarifies her remarks in such a way that shows that she was hardly offering a doctrinaire philosophy, but an incredibly unremarkable idea at a time when events were much more fluid and much more violent on the ground.

If this is all you have to offer in order to brand someone as “stridently anti-Israel” then good luck finding any advisors with the independence to actually, critically, analyze events rather than to just tell you what you want to hear. The whole reason that the Bush administration has brought the Republican party down in flames is because, in their paranoid obsession with absolute loyalty, they mistook propaganda for sound advice. Fortunately, the Israelis are smart enough to not structure their politics and military strategies in this way – even if you don’t realize that.

The fact that she has tried to weasel out of what she once plainly said, or the fact that Max Boot thinks it’s a “pipe dream” doesn’t she isn’t smoking that particular pipe. What she’s saying is that if she had her druthers, she would cut off aid to Israel and give it to the Palestinians and put a huge foreign force on the ground, presumably to “protect” the Arabs from Israeli genocide.

The fact that a lot of Israelis want someone else to protect them is hardly proof that this policy is not anti-Israel. And I see no possibility of NATO agreeing to such a mad scheme or any European country being willing to risk its troops to protect Jews. One dead soldier and all we will hear is “Why should our boys die for the Jews?” The force will be withdrawn and the Arabs will attack an Israel that has allowed itself to be weakened by relying on other people will protect them.

In Defense of Samantha Power
Max Boot – 02.26.2008 – 10:49 AM

Obama`s top adviser says does not believe in imposing a peace settlement

You’re joking, right? In what universe do you think that will happen?

One where the US president is a competent diplomat.

Considering Powers’ stridently anti-Israel views,

Evidence?

And you do realize you’re twisting a point that has to do with supporting intervention in, say, the Holocaust, Rwanda, Bosnia, Iraq and other neo-conservative pet projects, don’t you? But if those are scary positions to a supporter of Israel, then perhaps you’ll want to take issue with the reflexive habit on the part of Obama’s discontents here to ally themselves with the American Right.

Exactly so.

Considering Powers’ stridently anti-Israel views, it is precisely this belief that should concern anyone, Jew or gentile, who is a supporter of Israel.

What’s wrong with getting the Security Council to legitimate US policies on Iran et al?

You’re joking, right? In what universe do you think that will happen?

If you’re implying that US (and Israeli) interests take primacy over those of multilateralism for the sake of multilateralism alone, then I’d agree, Tom. I had few if any qualms on invading Iraq on principle alone. But to prop Power or anyone you’d like to associate with her as a paper tiger for UN fecklessness, seems incredibly desperate. Her writings, for which she won a Pulitzer, on using military action to achieve moral aims speak volumes in and of themselves.

But let’s not make a false dichotomy and deny that there are consequences to strident unilateralism. The emboldening of Russia would be one of those consequences. And even France’s assertion that there would be a return to “multipolarity” was a prescient one that speaks to that outcome.

I don’t think any world order would emerge that would challenge US dominance at this time. Which puts us back into the perfect position of finding a way to reclaim leadership of it. Surely there’s got to be a way to repair damaged alliances and longstanding foreign policy aims without letting UN fecklessness get in the way. And with Iraq decreasing in importance and the installation of conservative governments in France and Germany, even moreso.

Other than that, we (America) can and should support Israel as enthusiastically as we can, especially militarily and economically, and yes, diplomatically. But we shouldn’t impose or think we could impose political solutions on Israel or its neighbors in the Arab world as a general course. Treaties have to be sponsored primarily by the parties in question. And as for our broader rhetorical support for Israel and pro-Israel propaganda by the candidates and the parties, yes, that’s very heartening and nice to hear. But if America lacks the moral standing in the world that it once had, such support won’t mean much to anyone other than to Jewish egos, while polarizing everyone else by virtue of the toxicity of America’s ever-diminishing brand.

Jesse’s toxic. He’s also irrelevant. What we don’t want is an America that’s so toxic and irrelevant that the only people who are impressed by the morality and argumentative strength of America’s support for Israel are other extremely insecure Jews and fundies. It might feel good to make allies with fundies (and you don’t have to try very hard to do that, they’ll support Israel no matter what – maybe that’s why some of you are so easily seduced by them), but they’re nuts. And they’re the ones who will lead Israel into a military nightmare. It’s a catch-22 because they provide the most accessible grass-roots, emotionally appealing constituency for supporting Israel. But they don’t have a fucking clue how to make Israel more secure in any way, shape or form. And why should they? Their ideology precludes it. I sincerely await the miraculous moment when someone on this site stoops to acknowledging that very simple fact.

As much as everyone here hates Zbig and Mearsheimer/Walt, the fact of the matter is that they should be engaged and challenged in an intellectually serious way or their ideas could prevail. And I’m not sure that Powers is a disciple of either one. But sticking one’s head in the ground and saying “I’m with the party of the fundies so Zbig et al can screw off” seems like an impossibly lost, and dare I say it, incredibly stupid strategy.

I know that a lot of Jews will be voting for Obama. They should just not pretend that they have Israel’s interests at heart when they do it or pretend that there is no difference between the candidates when it comes to their Israel policy.

An Obama administration will almost certainly be the most anti-Israel administration ever. No one will be able to say that they didn’t know.