All Will be well Once GW Leaves Office!

Obama does not seem to understand that protecting one's citizenry is the primal reason for government. (See 1 below.)

A sports fan puts Obama up to bat. He also disavowed his previous comment that he has no qualms about his decision making ability with respect to foreign policy. (See 2 below.)

It is amazing - GW is to blame for all the ills of the world as well as in our society. He is told, by union educators, his education program - No Child Left Behind - did not work. The world's pollution is because he did not sign The Kyoto Agreement yet, China has canceled industrial activity and car travel to de-smog Beijing. Guantanamo is a prison where we abuse terrorists and we have lost all of our personal freedoms because of GW's witch hunt against incoming terrorist call connections. We are paying through the nose at gas pumps because he wanted to drill for oil and despoil the environment and has been storing oil for a rainy day when Democrats say he should be using it.

France and Germany's previous leaders did not like GW but they were voted out by their own citizens and have been replaced by leaders who seem to agree with GW about most everything but America and GW remain unloved because we believe Islamic radicals want to destroy Western Civilization. So why do citizens of Europe, whose lives are threatened by these same terrorists, seek refuge here?

GW offered amnesty to illegals and is blamed for not building higher fences and protecting our borders. GW also favors world trade and is blamed by union bosses because their unions are losing members and jobs. The fact that union pay demands have cost American industry its competitive status is conveniently ignored.

GW tried to fix Social Security by permitting those who wished to invest part of their own savings in higher return equities so they would have more for retirement. He was accused of breaking the bank which, of course, is already broken.

GW can't even get a break regarding the success of the "surge" in Iraq because he won't commit to a specific date for troop withdrawal. Obama does a fanciful pirouette when it comes to admitting he was totally wrong regarding the success of the surge but the press and media are willing to cut Obama slack because, for them, he walks on water. If GW were a practicing OB doctor I guess he would lose all his patients because he would be unwilling to name the exact date of when his patient's water would break.

I will be glad when GW is no longer in office because all the world's ills, including pollution, will disappear. But, of course, he must be succeeded by Obama to reap the benefits of change. (See 3 below.)

Peter Zeihan does an amazingly interesting comparison of Russia and China in terms of why they are not more ardent allies. (See 4 below.)

An open letter to Obama as he prepares to visit Israel. A wide ranging explanation what is uppermost on Israeli minds. (See 5 below.)

McCain gets some credit for telling it like it is regarding schools.

Having said what he said he will get little support from black leadership who are continuing to stiff their own people regarding better education for the black community. (See 6 below.)

Dick

1) "Senator Obama in Jordan today said that terrorism makes 'Israelis want to dig in and simply think about their own security regardless of what's going on beyond their borders.' What Senator Obama fails to recognize is that the safety and security of its citizenry is the primary obligation of a country's leadership.
In essence, Senator Obama is asking Israelis and the American Jewish community to put terrorism in context. Senator Obama continues his rhetoric of moral equivalence by implying that measures taken by Israel to protect its citizens are on par with the Palestinians' frustration at border checkpoints. Senator Obama's attempt at even-handed diplomacy fails to hold Palestinians accountable for using terrorist tactics against innocent Israeli citizens as a means to achieve their ends."

2) Inside Today's Bulletin: Obama At The Bat
By: Abe Bernstein

Sports fans, always hopeful, are nevertheless realistic in their expectations about the home team's standings. They know that batting averages or pass completions and prior performance counts. Their passion doesn't override their objectivity.
But something happens to that objectivity when it comes to politics and politicians. In politics, we Americans tend not to look at batting averages, prior performance or history. A politician, however limited his experience, can come to the plate, point to center field and most of us will then stand up and cheer in advance of that certain home run.

It's particularly true today. Barack Obama has come to the plate with no batting average, no RBIs, no runs scored. His prior experience was as a utility infielder in a Class C minor league (community social worker and then Illinois legislator). But he has been called up to the majors, as a senator and now as the apparent Democratic nominee for president.

Let's consider his voting record in the U.S. Senate as his batting record. In the last 90 days,(April through June) the Senate voted on 80 bills or amendments. Mr. Obama didn't cast a vote on 50 of them. That's consistent with his absentee record as an Illinois legislator. What were some of those bills he wasn't around for?
* He speaks of the sanctity of the environment but doesn't show up for a vote providing clean energy tax incentives (HR 3221).
* He's a no-show for a vote on renewable energy tax credits (Amndt 4387).
* He's not there for a vote on providing educational assistance for our armed forces (HR980).
* Missing in action for a vote holding oil companies responsible for price gouging (S3044).
* Nowhere in sight for a cloture vote on Medicare extensions (S3101).
* AWOL on promotions for Generals Petraeus and Odierno

And what does he do his first time at bat in the majors as the presumed Democratic nominee for president? He points to center field! He's the Babe Ruth of international diplomacy! By virtue of his charisma, he is going to reason with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and persuade Iran to stop building the bomb ... he's going to remove our troops from Iraq and convince the Shia, the Sunni and the Kurds to live in peace ... he is going to persuade the Sudanese government to stop the murder in Darfur and, while he is against murder, he nevertheless agrees with the NRA that the right to bear arms is a constitutional right ... and while he also supports a woman's right to choose, she may not choose in a late term pregnancy ... and most significant of all, he promises to turn out the entrenched Washington insiders but has refused to participate in public election funding (after first pledging that he would) and will continue to solicit contributions from these same Washington insiders.

His speeches are marked by a rhetorical art unlike any since the days of Adlai Stevenson. And he uses that art to convince Americans not to look at his batting average or his RBIs. With virtually no executive experience, no prior political leadership at a state or national level, no legislation with his name on it, no consistency or conviction in his recent policy declarations (he has flip-flopped on virtually every major issue), he wants to be president of the United States. And he has convinced millions of Americans to disregard his absentee voting record, disregard his lack of experience, disregard his choice of religious pastors, his choice of friends, his choice of big money contributors, disregard his inconsistencies ... and make him president of the United States!

And these same passionate citizens who would never tolerate a .150 hitter in the clean-up spot of their home team ... these savvy fans are going to vote for Obama for president! Holy cow!

3) Humanizing al Qaeda, Demonizing the Bush Team
By William McGurn

David Addington and Omar Khadr are two names that will forever be linked to the war on terror.

Mr. Addington is chief of staff to Vice President Richard Cheney and a former colleague of mine. He's the son of a West Point man who earned a bronze star in World War II and went on to become a general. Before coming to the White House, David put in stints at the CIA, at a congressional intelligence committee, and at the Pentagon -- all giving him an expertise on intelligence and national security issues only a handful of others can match.

Then there's Mr. Khadr. He is the son of a man who helped found and finance al Qaeda, and who died in a 2003 gun battle with Pakistani troops near the Afghan border.

So close were the family ties that the Khadrs lived for a while in the bin Laden family compound in Jalalabad, Afghanistan; and when Mr. Khadr's sister was married, bin Laden was an honored guest. Mr. Khadr himself went through weapons training at an al Qaeda training camp, and was captured in 2002 after a battle in which he is alleged to have killed a Special Forces medic. Ultimately he was brought to Guantanamo, where he awaits trial before a military commission for war crimes.

Guess who gets the sympathy in the press?

A few days ago, Mr. Khadr's attorneys released a videotape from February 2003 of their client being questioned by visiting Canadian officials. At first he was hopeful, but he quickly became sullen and withdrawn when he realized the Canadians were not going to get him out. The tape shows the young man, then 16, crying for his mother, and complaining about treatment for the wounds he suffered while fighting alongside al Qaeda.

The response has been illuminating. The Montreal Gazette calls him "a victim," "not a villain." Closer to home, our headlines run along the lines of "Tape shows 'frightened boy,'" "Teen on video: 'Help me, help me'" or "Teenage detainee pleads for help, tells of torture on video; Rights group seeks immediate release." About the only one willing to say anything unpleasant about Mr. Khadr is the soldier who lost an eye in the same firefight in which Mr. Khadr is alleged to have thrown the grenade that killed Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer.

It would be easy to denounce the treatment of David Addington and Omar Khadr as an example of moral equivalence. But moral equivalence would be a step up for David.

While the operative for al Qaeda is humanized, the counsel for the vice president is demonized. Such is the temper of the times that Rep. William Delahunt (D., Mass.) felt free to joke during recent hearings that he was sure al Qaeda was watching -- and was "glad they finally have the chance to see you."

And so it goes. Reasonable people can disagree with David, and many did. But the aim here is not reasonable debate. The aim is to close debate by shouting accusations so often that they become accepted.

Thus memos that are mostly about a commander-in-chief's legal authority are now routinely described as "torture memos." Thus the drumbeat for hearings on "war crimes." And thus the Washington Post column on David's congressional testimony, where he is described "hunched" and said to have "barked," "growled" and "snarled" -- language you would use to describe an animal.

For these purposes, David makes a convenient villain. For one thing, outside the Beltway he is relatively unknown, which feeds the aura of conspiracy; one documentary presented his photo as though it were a rare shot of the Yeti.

More to the point, David does not leak to the press, in sharp contrast to many of his adversaries. I am thinking in particular of the "former high-ranking administration lawyer" who figures so prominently (and so anonymously) in the New Yorker profile that did so much to cast David as some sort of cartoon.

In his own book, Jack Goldsmith -- former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel and perhaps David's greatest critic -- put it this way: "Our sharp disagreement over the requirements of national security law and the meaning of the imponderable phrases of the U.S. Constitution was not a fight between one who loves the Constitution and one who wants to shred it." Mr. Goldsmith went on to say that "whether and how aggressively to check the terrorist threat, and whether and how far to push the law in so doing, are rarely obvious" -- and that for all their fights, David is a man is who acted "in good faith" to serve his country.

It's a tribute to our society that even amid a terrible war we are capable of seeing the humanity of an enemy raised and trained to hate and kill us. Some of us are still waiting for that same presumption of humanity to be extended to the good men and women doing their imperfect best to keep us safe.



4) China and Russia’s Geographic Divide
By Peter Zeihan


Since the Soviet fall, Russian generals, intelligence chiefs and foreign policy personnel have often waxed philosophic about the inevitability of a global alliance to hem in U.S. power — often using the rhetoric of a “multipolar world.” Central in all of these plans has been not only the implied leadership of Russia, but the implied presence of China. At first glance, the two seem natural partners. China has a booming manufacturing economy, while Russia boasts growing exports of raw materials. But a closer look at the geography of the two paints a very different picture, while the history of the two tells an extraordinarily different story. If anything, it is no small miracle that the two have never found themselves facing each other in a brutal war.
A Hostile Geography

Russia east of the Urals and the Chinese interior are empty, forbidding places. Nearly all of Russia’s population is hard up on its western border, while China’s is in snug against its eastern and southern coasts. There is an ocean’s worth of nothing between them. But while ships can ply the actual ocean cheaply, potentially boosting economic activity, trade between Russia and China does not come easy. Moscow and Beijing are farther apart than Washington and London, and the cost of building meaningful infrastructure between the two would run in the hundreds of billions. With the exception of some resource development and sales in the border region, integration between the two simply does not make economic sense.

Yet, distance aside, there are no real barriers between the two. Southwestern Siberia is a long stretch of flatness that flows seamlessly into the steppes of Central Asia and the highlands of western China. This open expanse is the eastern end of the old Silk Road — proof that luxury trade is often feasible where more conventional trade simply cannot pay the transport bill. But where caravans bearing spice and silk can pass, so can armies bearing less desirable “goods and services.”
China/Russia

Ominously for Russia, there is little to separate the Russian Far East — where most of the Russian population east of the Urals resides — from Manchuria. And not only is there a 15:1 population imbalance here in favor of the Chinese (and not only has Beijing quietly encouraged Chinese immigration across its border with Russia since the Soviet breakup), but the Russian Far East is blocked from easy access to the rest of Russia by the towering mountains surrounding Lake Baikal. So while the two parts of Russia have minimal barriers separating them from China, they do have barriers separating them from each other. Russia can thus only hold its Far East so long as China lacks the desire to take it.

Geography also drives the two in different directions for economic reasons. For the same reason that trade between the two is unlikely, developing Russia would be an intimidating task. Unlike China or the United States, Russia’s rivers for the most part do not interconnect, and none of the major rivers go anywhere useful. Russia has loads of coastline, but nowhere does coast meld with population centers and ice-free ocean access. The best the country has is remote Murmansk.

So Russia’s development — doubly so east of the Urals — largely mirrors Africa’s: limited infrastructure primarily concerned with exploiting mineral deposits. Anything more holistic is simply too expensive to justify.

In contrast, China boasts substantial populations along its warm coasts. This access to transport allows China to industrialize more readily than Russia, but China shares easily crossed land borders with no natural trading partner. Its only serious option for international trade lies in maritime shipping. Yet, because land transport is “merely” difficult and not impossible, China must dedicate resources to a land-based military. This makes China militarily both vulnerable to — yet economically dependent upon — sea powers, both for access to raw materials and to ship its goods to market. The dominant naval power of today is not land-centric Russia, but the United States. To be economically successful China must at least have a civil and neutral relationship with the $14-trillion-economy-wielding and 11-aircraft-carrier-strike-group-toting United States. Russia barely even enters into China’s economic equation.

And the way Russia does figure into that equation — Central Asia — is not a positive, because there is an additional complication.

Natural gas produced in the Central Asian states until recently was part and parcel of overall Soviet production. Since those states’ infrastructure ran exclusively north into Russia, Moscow could count on this captive output to sign European supply contracts at a pittance. The Kremlin then uses those contracts as an anvil over Europe to extract political concessions.

“China” has been around a long time, but the borders of today represent the largest that the Chinese state has ever been. To prevent its outer provinces from breaking away (as they have many times in China’s past), one of Beijing’s geopolitical imperatives is to lash those provinces to the center as firmly as possible. Beijing has done this in two ways. First, it has stocked these outlying regions with Han Chinese to dilute the identity of the indigenous populations and culturally lash the regions to the center. Second, it has physically and economically lashed them to the center via building loads of infrastructure. So, in the past 15 years, China has engaged in a flurry of road, pipeline and rail construction to places such as Tibet and Xinjiang.

Merge these two seemingly minor details and it suddenly becomes clear that much of the mineral and energy riches of formerly Soviet Central Asia — resources that Russia must have to maintain its energy leverage over Europe — are now just as close to China’s infrastructure network as they are to Russia’s. And obtaining those resources is one of the few possible means China has of mitigating its vulnerability to U.S. naval power.

All that is needed are some pieces of connecting infrastructure to allow those resources to flow east to China instead of north to Russia. Those connections — road, pipe and rail — are already under construction. The Russians suddenly have some very active competition in a region they have thought of as their exclusive playground, not to mention a potential highway to Russia proper, for the past quarter millennia. Control of Central Asia is now a strategic imperative for both.
A Cold History

The history of the two powers — rarely warm, oftentimes bitter — meshes well with the characteristics of the region’s geography.

From the Chinese point of view, Russia is a relative newcomer to Asia, having started claiming territory east of the Urals only in the late 1500s, and having spent most of its blood, sweat and tears in the region in Central Asia rather than the Far East. Russian efforts in the Far East amounted to little more than a string of small outposts even when Moscow began claiming Pacific territory in the late 1700s. Still, by 1700, Russian strength was climbing while Chinese power was waning under the onslaught of European colonialism, enabling a still-militarily weak Russian force to begin occupying chunks of northeastern China. With a bit of bluff and guile, Russia formally annexed what is now Amur province from Qing China in the 1858 Treaty of Aigun, and shortly thereafter the Chinese-Russian border of today was established.

China attempted to resist even after Aigun — lumping the document with the other “unequal treaties” that weakened Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity — and indeed the Russians had more or less swindled China out of a million square miles of territory. But Beijing simply had too many other issues going on to mount a serious resistance (the Opium Wars come to mind). Once the Trans-Siberian Railway was completed early in the 20th century, Russia was able to back up its claims with troops, and the issue definitively moved to the back burner — especially as the rising colonial aspirations of Japan occupied more attention than China had to spare.

The bilateral relationship warmed somewhat after the end of World War II, with Russian energy and weapons critical to Mao’s consolidation of power (although notably, Stalin originally backed Mao’s rival, Chiang Kai-shek). But this camaraderie was not to last. Stalin did everything he could first to egg on the North Korean government to invade South Korea, and then to nudge the Chinese into backing the North Koreans against the U.S.-led U.N. counterattack. But while the USSR provided weapons to China in the Korean War, Moscow never sent troops — and when the war ended, Stalin had the temerity to submit a bill to Bejing for services rendered.

Sino-Soviet relations never really improved after that. As part of Cold War maneuvers, Russia allied with India and North Vietnam, both longtime Chinese rivals. Therein lay the groundwork of a U.S.-Chinese rapprochement, and rapid-fire events quickly drove the Chinese and Soviets apart. The United States and China both backed Pakistan in the Indo-Pakistani wars. Some 60,000 Uighurs — a Muslim minority that the Chinese still fear hold separatist aspirations — fled across the Soviet border in 1962. In 1965, the Chinese energy industry matured to the point that Soviet oil was no longer required to keep the Chinese economy afloat. Later, Washington turned a blind eye to the horrors of the Chinese-bankrolled Khmer Rouge in Cambodia to destabilize Soviet-backed Vietnam. When all was said and done, the Soviet Union faced a foe to its south every bit as implacable as those on its w estern and eastern flanks.

But the seminal event that made the Sino-Soviet split inevitable was a series of military clashes in the summer of 1969 over some riverine islands in the Amur.
Today

China and Russia are anything but natural partners. While their economic interests may seem complementary, geography dictates that their actual connections will be sharply limited. Moreover, in their roles of resource provider versus producer, they actually have a commercial relationship analogous to that of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries versus the United States — with all the angst and distrust that suggests.

Strategically, the two tend to swim in different pools, but they still share a borderland. Borderlands — where one great state flows into another — are dangerous places, as their precise locations ebb and flow with the geopolitical tides. And the only thing more likely to generate borderland friction than when one side is strong and the other weak is when both sides are strong. Currently, both China and Russia are becoming more powerful simultaneously, creating ample likelihood that the two will slide toward confrontation in regions of overlapping interest.

So why Stratfor’s interest in the topic? The primary reason the United States is the most powerful state in the international system is that it faces no challengers on its continent. (Canada is de facto integrated into the United States, and Mexico — even were it stable and rich — would still be separated from the United States by a sizable desert.) This allows the United States to develop in peace and focus its efforts on projecting its power outward rather than defending itself. For the United States to be threatened, a continental-sized power or coalition of similar or greater size would need to arise. So long as China and Russia remain at odds, the United States does not have to work very hard to maintain its position.

Which brings us back to the island battles that cemented the Sino-Soviet split: Russia is giving them back.

On July 21, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov put Russia’s final signature — in a deal already signed and ratified by both sides — to a deal that commits Russia to the imminent removal of its forces from 67 square miles of territory on a series of Amur riverine islands. The Russians call them Tarabarov and Bolshoi Ussuriysky, the Chinese call them Yinlong Dao and Heixiazi Dao. These are two of the islands over which the Chinese and Soviets battled in 1969, formalizing the Sino-Soviet split. The final pullout of Russian forces is expected within a month.

When two states enter into alliance, the first thing they must do is stop treating each other as foes. There is a bit of wiggle room if the two states do not border each other as the United States and Soviet Union did not during World War II. But in cases of a shared land border, it is devilishly difficult to believe that those on the other side of the line have your back if they are still gunning for a piece of your backyard. If China and Russia are going to stand together against the United States — or really, anyone — in any way, shape or form, the first thing they have to do is stop standing against each other. And that is just about to happen.

There are still plenty of reasons to doubt the durability of this development. In terms of modern warfare, the islands are strategic irrelevancies, so their surrender is not exactly a huge gesture of trust. Achieving any semblance of economic integration between the two powers still would be more trouble and expensive than it would be worth, making any deepening of the bilateral relationship difficult. Russia’s demographic slide instills a perfectly logical paranoia in the Kremlin; Russians are outnumbered 7 to 1 by their “partner” in terms of population and 3 to 1 in terms of economic size — something that Russian pride will find far harder to accept than merely handing over some islands. There is no substitute to the American market for China. Period. Sharing Central Asia is simply impossible because both sides need the same resources to achieve and maintain their strategic aims. And neither power has a particularly sterling reputation when it comes to confidence building.

Yet while Moscow is known for many, many things, sacrificing territory — especially territory over which blood has been shed — is not on that list. Swallowing some pride to raise the prospect of a Chinese-Russian alliance is something that should not pass unnoticed. Burying the hatchet in the islands of the Amur is the first step on the improbable road to a warmer bilateral relationship, and raises the possibility of a coalition of forces with the geographic foundation necessary to challenge the United States at its very core.

Such a Chinese-Russian alliance remains neither natural nor likely. But, with the territory handover, it has just become something that it was not a week ago: possible.

5) Dear Barack Obama
By Yossi Klein Halevi

A letter from an anxious Israeli to the presidential candidate on the eve of his visit to Jerusalem

West JERUSALEM — Dear Senator Obama,

Welcome to Israel. When you arrive here today, you will encounter a people intrigued by your candidacy and, given the current crisis of Israeli leadership, envious of your capacity to inspire. Issues that have worried some Americans about your background have scarcely been noted here. The whispering campaign labeling you a Muslim wasn't taken seriously by mainstream Israelis. Nor are we fazed by your middle name: Half of Israel's Jewish population has origins in Muslim cultures. Despite black-Jewish tensions in America, your color evokes little concern here; Israel rescued tens of thousands of African Jews and turned their arrival into a national celebration. Even Rev. Wright didn't cause much of a stir, maybe because we're used to being embarrassed by our own religious leaders.

Still, as much as Israelis want to embrace you, there is anxiety here about your candidacy. Not that we doubt your friendship: Your description of Israeli security as "sacrosanct," and your passionate endorsement of Israel's cause at the annual AIPAC conference in Washington, were greeted with banner headlines in the Israeli press. Instead, Israelis worry that, as president, you might act too hastily in trying to solve the Palestinian problem, and not hastily enough in trying to solve the Iranian problem.

On the surface, the Israel you will encounter is thriving. The beaches and cafes are crowded, the shekel is one of the world's strongest currencies, our high-tech companies are dominating NASDAQ, our wineries are winning international medals, and we even export goat cheese to France.

But beneath the exuberance lies a desperate nation. The curse of Jewish history — the inability to take mere existence for granted — has returned to a country whose founding was intended to resolve that uncertainty. Even the most optimistic Israelis sense a dread we have felt only rarely — like in the weeks before the Six Day War, when Egyptian President Gammal Abdul Nasser shut down the Straits of Tiran, moved his army toward our border, and promised the imminent destruction of Israel. At the time, Lyndon Johnson, one of the best friends Israel ever had in the White House, was too preoccupied with an unpopular war to offer real assistance.

We feel our security unraveling. Terror enclaves have emerged on two of our borders, undoing a decades-long Israeli policy to deny terrorist bases easy reach to our population centers. The cease-fire with Hamas is widely seen here as a defeat — an admission that Israel couldn't defend its communities on the Gaza border from eight years of shelling, and an opportunity for Hamas to consolidate its rule and smuggle in upgraded missiles for the inevitable next round of fighting. The unthinkable has already happened: missiles on Haifa and Ashkelon, exploding buses in Jerusalem, hundreds of thousands of Israelis transformed into temporary refugees. During the first Gulf War in 1991, when Tel Aviv was hit with Scud missiles, residents fled to the Galilee. During the Second Lebanon War in 2006, when the Galilee was hit with Katyushas, residents fled to Tel Aviv. In the next war, there will be nowhere to flee: The entire country is now within missile range of Iran and its terrorist proxies.

Above all else, we dread a nuclear Iran. With few exceptions, the consensus within the political and security establishment is that Israel cannot live with an Iranian bomb. In the U.S., a debate has begun over whether the Iranian regime is rational or apocalyptic. In truth no one knows whether the regime, or elements within it, would be mad enough to risk nuclear war. But precisely because no one knows, Israel will not place itself in a position to find out. As we contemplate the possibility of an Israeli military strike, we worry about the extent of support from you at what could be the most critical moment in our history. When Israelis discuss the timing of a possible attack, they often ask: If Obama wins the election, should we hit Iran before January?

True, you told AIPAC that "we should take no option, including military action, off the table." But that was the one moment in your speech that failed to convince. Last December you appeared to endorse the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which broadly hinted that Iran may not be seeking a nuclear bomb after all — a claim that may have soothed Americans worried about Dick Cheney launching another preemptive war, but appalled not only Israeli intelligence but also French and British intelligence (and that has since been at least partially retracted). In the Iowa debate, you responded to a question about the NIE by stating that "it's absolutely clear that this administration and President Bush continues to not let facts get in the way of his ideology...They should stop the saber-rattling, should have never started it, and they need now to aggressively move on the diplomatic front."

From where Israelis sit, it's clear that Iran temporarily suspended its weaponizations program — which is, in fact, the least important part of its effort to attain nuclear power — for the same reason that Muamar Qadaffi abandoned his nuclear program: fear of America after the Iraq invasion. A senior European Union official told me last year how grateful he was to America and Israel for raising the military threat against Iran. "You make our job easier," he said, referring to European-Iranian negotiations.

I am convinced that you regard a nuclear Iran as an intolerable threat, as you put it to AIPAC, and that, under your administration, negotiations with Iran would be coupled with a vigorous campaign of sanctions. And you've made the convincing argument that you could summon international goodwill far better than the current administration. No nation would be more relieved by an effective sanctions campaign than Israel. We know what the consequences are likely to be of an attack on Iran — retalitory missiles on Tel Aviv, terrorism against Jewish communities abroad, rising anti-semitism blaming the Jews for an increase in oil prices.

We worry, though, that the sanctions will be inadequate and that the Iranians will exploit American dialogue as cover to complete their nuclearization. Unless stopped, Iran's nuclear program will reach the point of no return within the early phases of the next administration. We need to hear that under no circumstances would an Obama administration allow the Iranian regime to go nuclear — that if sanctions and diplomacy fail, the U.S. will either attack or else support us if we do.

The rise of Hamas has only confirmed what Israelis have sensed since the violent collapse of the peace process in September 2000: that the Palestinian national movement is dysfunctional. The bitter joke here is that we're well within reach of a two-state solution — a Hamas state in Gaza and a Fatah state in the West Bank.

In your speech to AIPAC, you intuited an understanding of the Israeli psyche — hopes for peace, along with wariness. But our wariness isn't only a response to terrorism. More profoundly, we fear being deceived again by wishful thinking, by our desperation for peace, as we allowed ourselves to be during the years of the Oslo process. At that time, many Israelis began a painful, necessary process of self-reckoning, asking ourselves the crucial question of how Palestinians experienced this conflict, in effect borrowing Palestinian eyes. Many of us forced ourselves to confront the tragedy of a shattered people, one part dispersed, another part occupied, yet another uneasy citizens in a Jewish state.

Most of all, we allowed ourselves the vulnerability of hope. We lowered our guard and empowered Yasser Arafat, convincing ourselves that he had become a partner for peace. The subsequent betrayal wasn't Arafat's alone: Even now Fatah continues to convey to Palestinians the message that Israel is illegitimate and destined to disappear. Many Israelis have become so wary of being taken for fools again — which this generation of Jews had vowed would never happen to us — that talk of hope seems like unbearable naivete.

Most Israelis want a solution to the Palestinian problem as keenly as does the international community, and understand, no less than our critics abroad, that the occupation is a long-term disaster for Israel. The Israeli irony is that we have shifted from dreading the creation of a Palestinian state to dreading its failure. Fulfilling the classical Zionist hopes for a democratic Israel with a Jewish majority, at home in the Middle East and an equal member of the international community, ultimately depend on resolving the Palestinian tragedy. The Jewish return home will not be complete until we find our place in the Middle East.

But empowering the Palestinians requires renewing the trust of the Israeli public toward them. And that, in turn, requires some sign from Palestinian leaders that Israel's legitimacy is at least being debated within Palestinian society rather than systematically denigrated. Repeating a commitment to "peace" is meaningless: Peace, after all, can include a Middle East without a Jewish state.

For many years, Israelis denied the right of the Palestinians to define themselves as a nation, considering Palestinian nationalism an invention by the Arab world to undermine Israel. We experienced our conceptual breakthrough in the 1990s. Now it's the Palestinians' turn. Admittedly, Israelis, as the powerful protagonists, could more readily develop a nuanced understanding of the conflict. Psychologically, though, we too are the underdog: Israel may be Goliath to the Palestinian David, but we are David to the Arab world's (and Iran's) Goliath. We cannot empower the Palestinians while fearing our consequent diminishment.

You can be a crucial voice in encouraging the transformation of Palestinian consciousness. Perhaps parts of Palestinian society and of the broader Arab world would be able to hear from you what it cannot hear from us: that the Jews aren't colonialist invaders or crusaders but an indigenous people living in its land. Perhaps you can help the Middle East reconcile itself to our existence, and in so doing, help us complete our return home.

As you go through the requisite visits to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and the President's House, the Israeli public will be hoping to hear, beyond affirmations of your commitment to Israeli security, that America under President Obama will understand what maintaining that security involves. We hope that you will insist on a peace based on acceptance of the permanent legitimacy of a Jewish state, and on a Middle East free of the apocalyptic terror of a nuclear Iran. We, too, need the hope that you have promised America.

6) Editorial: McCain’s straight talk on D.C. schools

In the course of a bold speech to the NAACP last week, presidential candidate John McCain strongly endorsed the District of Columbia’s Opportunity Scholarship Program. McCain has no chance of winning D.C.’s three electors in November, so it was especially heartening that he is paying serious attention to the District’s education problems.

McCain touted the District’s scholarship program in specific language, noting that “more than 7,000 more families have applied for that program. What they all have in common is the desire to get their kids into a better school.”

“Parents ask only for schools that are safe, teachers who are competent, and diplomas that open doors of opportunity,” he said. “When a public system fails, repeatedly, to meet these minimal objectives, parents ask only for a choice in the education of their children. Some parents may choose a better public school. Some may choose a private school.

“Many will choose a charter school. No entrenched bureaucracy or union should deny parents that choice and children that opportunity.”


In endorsing the Opportunity Scholarships, McCain is joining with a host of local officials, including Mayor Adrian Fenty and former Mayors Anthony Williams and Marion Barry.

And he is responding to empirical evidence that the program already can boast some real successes: In addition to successfully promoting voluntary racial integration, the program has made parents more engaged in their children’s education, more confident in their safety, and more focused on academic performance, according to studies by the U.S. Department of Education and Georgetown University.

McCain’s support for the District’s program was part of a broader endorsement of school choice nationwide, along with funding for recruitment of teachers and bonus payments for superior ones — including through sources such as Teach for America and the New Teacher project, private organizations that welcome smart and committed teachers regardless of whether they are “certified” by government bureaucracies.

His stances put him at odds with the powerful education unions, but on the side of parents and on the side of excellence in education.

The fact is that almost everywhere school choice has been tried — with or without private school options — it has proved popular and enduring.

Yet so powerful are the education unions that politicians who support school choice have often found that they have reaped a whirlwind.

McCain’s straight talk, in front of an audience that politely but overwhelmingly supported McCain’s opponent, was just the sort of thing needed in order to give hope to poor families trapped in failing schools.