Y'know, I have to say, I do not think that any administration in my lifetime has been as much as a cipher as this one is.
With Bush and with Clinton and with Bush and with Reagan I pretty much understood what they stood for and either agreed or disagreed on various issues, but with this guy it's hard to know just what he stands for or why he does what he does.
I don't trust him because he has very clearly earned our distrust.
I mean, really, arming the Muslim Brotherhood??
That would be like arming the Nazis or arming the Soviet Union. It goes beyond ignorance or stupidity into some whole other realm of either malice or ignorance.
Is there a third option beyond Obama malice or ignorance?
It seems to me that the difference between us on Obama's hideous foreign policy in regards Israel and the Middle East is that you think he has ill-intent whereas I have always argued that, due to ideological reasons, he is simply misguided.
We've touched on this before, but again, if the guy is malicious what is his motive?
"We've touched on this before, but again, if the guy is malicious what is his motive?"
You just have to remember where, ideologically speaking, he comes from.
If being in college among Sixties/Seventies radicals right at the time when the cause of the Arabs in Palestine was being adopted as their cause celebre wasn't enough—
If spending a few formative years in Indonesia, politically moderate though it may have been, but always Muslim-majority, wasn't enough—
If having been preached at for 20 years by a black supremacist pastor who thinks Jews (members of the same nation that overwhelmingly participated in the Civil Rights marches in MLK's day) are behind present-day African-Americans' predicament—
If all those aren't enough, let's just remember he's a committed Marxist, and Marxism has had a record of being against Zionism ever since 1920, when Zionist leaders of socialist leaning requested to join the 2nd International but were rebuffed on the grounds that nationalism of any kind wasn't welcome.
Ever since, Zionism has represented the exact opposite of what Marxism intends for human evolution: A move back into national-political existence instead of away from nations into an amorphous "Brotherhood of All Mankind." Jewish nationalism is the ultimate red carpet in the eyes of a Marxist, no matter that the state of Israel was for its first few decades one of the only successful implementations of the collectivist economic model.
Of course, the above may not be the factor that motivates Obama in his policies toward the Jewish State (though it does motivate a great many Progressives worldwide). If not that, then, there's all the rest I've given. If not Marxism, then his "anti-colonialist" view of Israel as a "vestige of white colonialism" that needs to be uprooted, or his sympathy toward Muslims and willingness to believe they're being oppressed and therefore he has the duty of siding with them (as he wrote he would do in Dreams from My Father).
"What do you think his ultimate intention is?"
I believe that, like most on the Progressive Left, he wants to delegate the destruction of the Jewish State to her Islamic imperialist enemies. You hear what they say after every terrorist attack or rocket barrage on Israel: "I don't condone it, but that's what you get for your oppression." He will arm our enemies with a wink and a nod while claiming plausible deniability; any suffering on Israel's part won't be his direct doing, and will be reason for the Jews to do some "soul-searching."
Obama is the image of the demonic merger of the Sixties Hippies, Islam sympathizers, "anti-colonial" white-hating supremacists and 1930s-minded faux-isolationist Buchananite Stormfronters come to roost in the White House. Hammer and sickle, swastika and crescent all united in a single focus, against the Jews and their nation-state. I've lurked on Progressive Leftist, Islamist, White Supremacist and Black Supremacist websites and, despite the fact that they'd normally be at each other's throats, when it comes to the Jews and their state their synchronism is astounding.
I think that we are sifting fine sand in this conversation and it's interesting how that sifting can lead to alternative conclusions.
You write:
I believe that, like most on the Progressive Left, he wants to delegate the destruction of the Jewish State to her Islamic imperialist enemies.
I am not certain that your premises, which I do not deny, automatically lead to this conclusion.
He was the student of anti-Israel 60s radicals. He did spend formative years in Indonesia, a country rife with anti-Semitism, as well as anti-Christian bigotry.
He did have a Black Nationalist pastor and he is, as a social democrat, definitely influenced by Marx and holds to a "post-colonial" view via Khalidi and Said.
And, yet, I do not believe for one second that Barack Obama wants to see the destruction of the Jewish State of Israel.
I could very well be wrong, of course, but I do not think so.
The evidence that you have given above is all true and it points to an ideological inclination that is also shared by very many pro-Israel progressive-left Jews who essentially think that Israel is primarily the guilty party in the Arab-Israel conflict. Because Obama, and these Jewish progressives, see Israel as the overriding power in the relationship they give Israel the lion's share of the blame for the failure of peace.
It's not that Obama wants to see Israel fall to the Jihad, but that he thinks that Israel is an oppressor state which must reform itself. This is what very many diaspora left-leaning Jews, like Jeremy ben Ami and Thomas Friedman and Peter Beinart, tend to believe, as well. They think this because they have entirely erased Jewish history under imperial Islam from their understanding of the conflict. They look on Jewish history under Islam as entirely irrelevant to the long Arab-Muslim war against the Jews.
At the end of the day it hardly matters, tho, does it?
The bottom line is that people like Beinart and Obama and Abbas erase or distort Jewish history and blame the Jews of the Middle East for Arab-Muslim hatred toward them.
Whatever the finest intentions in their hearts, their words and behavior promote hatred toward Jews.
When the Iranian Adolf-wannabe talks about "Israel being wiped off the pages of time," how do the Progressives interpret that? They say there's nothing genocidal about it, it's a benign, even noble, statement that Israel as a political entity will go the way of the Soviet Union and Apartheid South Africa—not anything to do with a massacre of the Jews residing therein, you see.
To be sure, there are some denizens of Huffinglue and Common Screams comments that are OK with a massacre of Israeli Jews. But even if they're not the minority, the rest wish to keep the appearance of being for justice and peace and human rights. Or they may really believe it. Whatever the case, for the majority of Progressive Leftists, the interpretation of Ahmadinejad's statements as calls for genocide are something you are not allowed to bring up, something you are the one who's going to be called a Racist™ for suggesting.
You know I keep archives of DKos material going way back. One "delightful" incident I remember is a short-lived user, a pro-Israel poster named Ran Lubrani (a Sephardi surname, interestingly). When he dared to suggest that "the Palestinians want me dead," that that's the only thing they really want, the resident anti-Zionist, anti-colonial disciple of Khalidi and Said, Edtastic, let out cries of indignation: "Stop that RACISM! This is RACISM!" Makes you wonder if a Jew in the 1930s saying Mein Kampf should be taken as a statement of actual intent would have been cited for anti-German "racism," as an analogy.
In a way, this "I care about Israel and I want it to change to something more multicultural" frame of speaking is a lot more insidious than outright calls for genocide. It shifts the blame upon the Zionist for daring to oppose that vision. All the calls to exercise prudence, to err on the side of caution, will be decried as "intransigence"; any misgivings about the multiculturalist plan for Israel—that it might work even worse than it has in Lebanon, Rwanda, Yugoslavia or now Western Europe—will be shouted down as "racism."
And what if all those steps to "change" Israel do lead to a bloody outcome? I've imagined Progressives saying, Bugs Bunny like, "Well, you could be wrong, you know," but even that's giving them too much credit. What they'd do is put the blame on the Jewish victims as is their custom: They'd say their plan could have worked but was foiled by, you guessed it, Zionist "intransigence" and "racism."
Yes, at the end of the day, like you said, it doesn't matter. Not being able to read minds, I have no idea if Obama really believes he's just acting for the transformation of Israel or if he secretly wishes bloody revenge to be visited on her Jewish inhabitants. Either way, the result is the same, and we mustn't let our minds be snared by the shifting of the blame on us for the "sin" of assuming the worst of our enemies. The Jewish nation is the last nation in the world that can be told to let down its guard.
Yep, Progressives seem to believe in no evil but Zionist evil. Al others are "mistranslations," etc. Not all Progressives, mind you, but enough to make one wonder WHY? WHY run interference for genocidal bastards?
Israel Matzav says: "In a must-read piece in National Review Online, Andrew McCarthy says what so many others are afraid to say: Jew hatred is part of Islamist ideology. And not a minor part either."
"The answer to this challenge is to take the Islamists head-on. It is to show them for what they truly are: enemies of civil rights, totalitarian tormentors of women and non-Muslims. The answer is not to arm them — as the Obama administration, with the maddening support of some leading Republicans, is arming Morsi’s regime — with a score of F-16 fighter jets and a couple of hundred Abrams tanks. "
We are arming our enemies and turning our back toward our friends.
ReplyDeleteThe stupidity is just monumental.
We should have been supporting the secular moderates in Egypt just like we should have supported the secular moderates in Iran.
Am I wrong in thinking that Obama's entire foreign policy represents a betrayal not just of Israel, but of the American national interest?
I don't think so.
Talk about 'Closing the stable gate after the horse has bolted'
ReplyDeleteWake up America. This is was announced months back.
Was it ignored because it was a project of G-d's gift to the US, the great Barak Hussein Obama?
Y'know, I have to say, I do not think that any administration in my lifetime has been as much as a cipher as this one is.
DeleteWith Bush and with Clinton and with Bush and with Reagan I pretty much understood what they stood for and either agreed or disagreed on various issues, but with this guy it's hard to know just what he stands for or why he does what he does.
I don't trust him because he has very clearly earned our distrust.
I mean, really, arming the Muslim Brotherhood??
That would be like arming the Nazis or arming the Soviet Union. It goes beyond ignorance or stupidity into some whole other realm of either malice or ignorance.
Is there a third option beyond Obama malice or ignorance?
No, and the second option, ignorance, doesn't count.
DeleteRandall,
Deletewhy doesn't ignorance count?
It seems to me that the difference between us on Obama's hideous foreign policy in regards Israel and the Middle East is that you think he has ill-intent whereas I have always argued that, due to ideological reasons, he is simply misguided.
We've touched on this before, but again, if the guy is malicious what is his motive?
What do you think his ultimate intention is?
"We've touched on this before, but again, if the guy is malicious what is his motive?"
DeleteYou just have to remember where, ideologically speaking, he comes from.
If being in college among Sixties/Seventies radicals right at the time when the cause of the Arabs in Palestine was being adopted as their cause celebre wasn't enough—
If spending a few formative years in Indonesia, politically moderate though it may have been, but always Muslim-majority, wasn't enough—
If having been preached at for 20 years by a black supremacist pastor who thinks Jews (members of the same nation that overwhelmingly participated in the Civil Rights marches in MLK's day) are behind present-day African-Americans' predicament—
If all those aren't enough, let's just remember he's a committed Marxist, and Marxism has had a record of being against Zionism ever since 1920, when Zionist leaders of socialist leaning requested to join the 2nd International but were rebuffed on the grounds that nationalism of any kind wasn't welcome.
Ever since, Zionism has represented the exact opposite of what Marxism intends for human evolution: A move back into national-political existence instead of away from nations into an amorphous "Brotherhood of All Mankind." Jewish nationalism is the ultimate red carpet in the eyes of a Marxist, no matter that the state of Israel was for its first few decades one of the only successful implementations of the collectivist economic model.
Of course, the above may not be the factor that motivates Obama in his policies toward the Jewish State (though it does motivate a great many Progressives worldwide). If not that, then, there's all the rest I've given. If not Marxism, then his "anti-colonialist" view of Israel as a "vestige of white colonialism" that needs to be uprooted, or his sympathy toward Muslims and willingness to believe they're being oppressed and therefore he has the duty of siding with them (as he wrote he would do in Dreams from My Father).
"What do you think his ultimate intention is?"
I believe that, like most on the Progressive Left, he wants to delegate the destruction of the Jewish State to her Islamic imperialist enemies. You hear what they say after every terrorist attack or rocket barrage on Israel: "I don't condone it, but that's what you get for your oppression." He will arm our enemies with a wink and a nod while claiming plausible deniability; any suffering on Israel's part won't be his direct doing, and will be reason for the Jews to do some "soul-searching."
Obama is the image of the demonic merger of the Sixties Hippies, Islam sympathizers, "anti-colonial" white-hating supremacists and 1930s-minded faux-isolationist Buchananite Stormfronters come to roost in the White House. Hammer and sickle, swastika and crescent all united in a single focus, against the Jews and their nation-state. I've lurked on Progressive Leftist, Islamist, White Supremacist and Black Supremacist websites and, despite the fact that they'd normally be at each other's throats, when it comes to the Jews and their state their synchronism is astounding.
Exactly.
DeleteWell spoken.
Thank you, ziontruth.
Recent policy actions of the U.S. government under the Obama executive administration: 1a 1b
The U.S. Republican so-called "Right-Wing" establishment: 1 2
The background of Barack Obama (and, precedingly, some commentary by me about what has been the state of mind of many Jewish people): 1
On the use of the terms "Left" and "Right": 1
Zion,
DeleteI think that we are sifting fine sand in this conversation and it's interesting how that sifting can lead to alternative conclusions.
You write:
I believe that, like most on the Progressive Left, he wants to delegate the destruction of the Jewish State to her Islamic imperialist enemies.
I am not certain that your premises, which I do not deny, automatically lead to this conclusion.
He was the student of anti-Israel 60s radicals. He did spend formative years in Indonesia, a country rife with anti-Semitism, as well as anti-Christian bigotry.
He did have a Black Nationalist pastor and he is, as a social democrat, definitely influenced by Marx and holds to a "post-colonial" view via Khalidi and Said.
And, yet, I do not believe for one second that Barack Obama wants to see the destruction of the Jewish State of Israel.
I could very well be wrong, of course, but I do not think so.
The evidence that you have given above is all true and it points to an ideological inclination that is also shared by very many pro-Israel progressive-left Jews who essentially think that Israel is primarily the guilty party in the Arab-Israel conflict. Because Obama, and these Jewish progressives, see Israel as the overriding power in the relationship they give Israel the lion's share of the blame for the failure of peace.
It's not that Obama wants to see Israel fall to the Jihad, but that he thinks that Israel is an oppressor state which must reform itself. This is what very many diaspora left-leaning Jews, like Jeremy ben Ami and Thomas Friedman and Peter Beinart, tend to believe, as well. They think this because they have entirely erased Jewish history under imperial Islam from their understanding of the conflict. They look on Jewish history under Islam as entirely irrelevant to the long Arab-Muslim war against the Jews.
At the end of the day it hardly matters, tho, does it?
The bottom line is that people like Beinart and Obama and Abbas erase or distort Jewish history and blame the Jews of the Middle East for Arab-Muslim hatred toward them.
Whatever the finest intentions in their hearts, their words and behavior promote hatred toward Jews.
I think you're on to sumpin', Mike.
DeleteWhen the Iranian Adolf-wannabe talks about "Israel being wiped off the pages of time," how do the Progressives interpret that? They say there's nothing genocidal about it, it's a benign, even noble, statement that Israel as a political entity will go the way of the Soviet Union and Apartheid South Africa—not anything to do with a massacre of the Jews residing therein, you see.
To be sure, there are some denizens of Huffinglue and Common Screams comments that are OK with a massacre of Israeli Jews. But even if they're not the minority, the rest wish to keep the appearance of being for justice and peace and human rights. Or they may really believe it. Whatever the case, for the majority of Progressive Leftists, the interpretation of Ahmadinejad's statements as calls for genocide are something you are not allowed to bring up, something you are the one who's going to be called a Racist™ for suggesting.
You know I keep archives of DKos material going way back. One "delightful" incident I remember is a short-lived user, a pro-Israel poster named Ran Lubrani (a Sephardi surname, interestingly). When he dared to suggest that "the Palestinians want me dead," that that's the only thing they really want, the resident anti-Zionist, anti-colonial disciple of Khalidi and Said, Edtastic, let out cries of indignation: "Stop that RACISM! This is RACISM!" Makes you wonder if a Jew in the 1930s saying Mein Kampf should be taken as a statement of actual intent would have been cited for anti-German "racism," as an analogy.
In a way, this "I care about Israel and I want it to change to something more multicultural" frame of speaking is a lot more insidious than outright calls for genocide. It shifts the blame upon the Zionist for daring to oppose that vision. All the calls to exercise prudence, to err on the side of caution, will be decried as "intransigence"; any misgivings about the multiculturalist plan for Israel—that it might work even worse than it has in Lebanon, Rwanda, Yugoslavia or now Western Europe—will be shouted down as "racism."
And what if all those steps to "change" Israel do lead to a bloody outcome? I've imagined Progressives saying, Bugs Bunny like, "Well, you could be wrong, you know," but even that's giving them too much credit. What they'd do is put the blame on the Jewish victims as is their custom: They'd say their plan could have worked but was foiled by, you guessed it, Zionist "intransigence" and "racism."
Yes, at the end of the day, like you said, it doesn't matter. Not being able to read minds, I have no idea if Obama really believes he's just acting for the transformation of Israel or if he secretly wishes bloody revenge to be visited on her Jewish inhabitants. Either way, the result is the same, and we mustn't let our minds be snared by the shifting of the blame on us for the "sin" of assuming the worst of our enemies. The Jewish nation is the last nation in the world that can be told to let down its guard.
Yep, Progressives seem to believe in no evil but Zionist evil. Al others are "mistranslations," etc. Not all Progressives, mind you, but enough to make one wonder WHY? WHY run interference for genocidal bastards?
DeleteIsrael Matzav says: "In a must-read piece in National Review Online, Andrew McCarthy says what so many others are afraid to say: Jew hatred is part of Islamist ideology. And not a minor part either."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nationalreview.com/articles/338892/apes-pigs-and-f-16s-andrew-c-mccarthy?pg=1#
"The answer to this challenge is to take the Islamists head-on. It is to show them for what they truly are: enemies of civil rights, totalitarian tormentors of women and non-Muslims. The answer is not to arm them — as the Obama administration, with the maddening support of some leading Republicans, is arming Morsi’s regime — with a score of F-16 fighter jets and a couple of hundred Abrams tanks. "
Oh, and by the way, when Obama say "Never again" he is using terminology popularized by none other than the insidious Zionist demon Meir Kahane.
DeleteI do not know if Kahane coined the term, but he popularized it.