Is Obama Capable of Learning?

Mike L.

The snippet below was written and published by Jerusalem Post staff:

US peace talks envoy Martin Indyk and his team have not taken part in any negotiating sessions between Israel and the Palestinians despite assurances that they would do so, senior Palestinian official Yasser Abed Rabbo charged on Thursday.

Abed Rabbo was quoted by official Palestinian news agency WAFA as saying that the the Americans had not participated in the talks because of "an Israeli stance and demand,” adding that “this is one sign of how and where the talks are heading if the US is not able now to assert itself in the peace process.”

An Israeli "stance and demand"?

What can that possibly even mean?

The "Palestinians" are going to derail the "peace process" and then blame it on the Jews.  In fact, that is the entire point of this miserable process.

Was that not obvious from the get-go?

Negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians restarted in Washington earlier this month after a prolonged push by US Secretary of State John Kerry for their resumption. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have met three times in Jerusalem since then, twice on Tuesday and once last week in Jerusalem.

“The Americans did not participate in any negotiating session so far in spite of assurances that they will play a direct role,” WAFA quoted Abed Rabbo as saying.

Indyk and his team were present in Jerusalem during the talks, but did not sit in on the negotiations, the PLO official said.

Y'know, I'm starting to think that Barack Obama might be a tad more intelligent than I have give him credit for.  The central argument, among those of us critical of Obama's foreign policy in the Middle East, revolves around the question of whether the man is malicious or merely blinded by ideological blinkertude.  I have tended to argue the latter, because I cannot bring myself to believe that any president of the United States, including this one, would actually want to see harm done to either the Jewish people or the Jewish state.

What the above indicates, however, is that maybe Barack Obama is a pretty intelligent fellow who can learn from mistakes.  If the report above is true, it means that the Obama administration, itself, is putting little credence into this bogus "peace process."

I do not believe for one second that even Barack Obama has any faith in these negotiations.  The main reason for that, quite clearly, is because the local Arabs do not want peace.  That is, they do not want a state for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one.  What they want is eventual victory and they are willing to sacrifice their children, and their children's children, on the bloody altar of conflict for generations to come.

The Obama administration insisted upon negotiations because all American administrations feel the need to address the issue for domestic political purposes.  Obama, who for some indiscernible reason received the Nobel Peace Prize, does not believe that he is going to actually accomplish anything, but wants to be seen as doing something.  Bill Clinton, prior to the Second Terror War (intifada), honestly believed that peace was possible between the parties.  Clinton was shocked when Yassir Arafat denied that the temple of the Jews actually ever resided in Jerusalem.  This is because he didn't quite understand at that time the nature of the Arab delegitimization campaign against the Jewish people and presumed that the local Arabs (who have absconded with the name "Palestinian") actually wanted peace for themselves and for their children.

This is clearly not the case and it is something that Barack Obama is only very slowly and very reluctantly learning.  He is learning this reluctantly because his ideological upbringing at the feet of people like Edward Said and Rashid Khalidi trained him to think of the Jews of the Middle East as terrible aggressors wherein the opposite is actually the case.

The bottom line is that the Obama administration is getting spanked on foreign policy and the reason for that is because Obama has been trained into a false and counterproductive ideological stance since he was a young man.

In truth, I almost feel bad for the guy.

He doesn't really know what he is doing and that is not entirely his fault.  His teachers and professors and mentors have tended to see the Arab-Israel conflict from within the lens of a post-colonial theory that blamed the conflict on the Jews.

If the Obama administration is backing away from the "peace process," as Yasser Abed Rabbo claims, it may be because of a long, slow learning curve.

Perhaps Barack Obama is not quite as stupid as I have sometimes thought that he is.