Watch What Obama Does - Not What He Says!

This was sent to me by a friend and fellow memo reader who received same from his friend. It is a synopsis of a Dr. Charles Krauthammer Comments on the ‘New Economy’ & Barack Obama.

Krauthammer was a practicing psychiatrist before his tragic injury. Because of his training and background I find his articles quite insightful and revealing when it comes to human nature etc. (See 1 below.)

Sec. Clinton says strike Iran after the fact. In other words the U.S. will respond after Israel is destroyed. That should bring a great deal of comfort. (See 2 below.)

Caroline Glick draws some conclusions from Obama's Cairo speech. (See 3 below.)

Saudi King tells Obama to impose a solution. Obama says we should not impose a solution. Watch Obama try to impose a solution.

Krauthammer is correct - watch what Obama does not what he says. (See 4 below.)


I have never been a great fan of Tom Friedman though I recognize he is bright but this time he has written something that makes complete sense. What is strange is that he wrote it. (See 5 below.)

Meanwhile Michael Goodwin finds Obama experiencing a moral muddle.

Glick, Krauthammer and Goodwin seem to have some problems with Obama's Cairo speech and well they should. (See 6 below.)

William Safire sees 'straw men' I call them pinatas but they amount to the same thing.

Obama uses rhetoric because he has little else in his bags of tricks? (See 7 below.)

But, The Washington Post editorializes Netanyahu and Israel needed a shin kick because they have not yielded to Obama. What have the Palestinians, Hamas, Hezballah, Iran and Syria yielded? (See 8 below.)

An international law challenge to Obama's Cairo speech from a public citizen. (See 9 below.)

Dick




1) Charles Krauthammer lecture Sunday, June 7, 2009 1:07 PM


To my friends & associates:

Last Monday was a profound evening, hearing Dr. Charles Krauthammer speak to the Center for the American Experiment. He is a brilliant intellectual, seasoned & articulate. He is forthright & careful in his analysis, & never resorts to emotions or personal insults. He is NOT a fearmonger nor an extremist in his comments & views. He is a fiscal conservative, & has a Pulitzer prize for writing. He is a frequent contributor to Fox News & writes weekly for the Washington Post. The entire room was held spellbound during his talk. I have shared this w/ many of you & several have asked me to summarize his comments, as we are living in uncharted waters economically & internationally. Even 2 Dims at my table agreed w/ everything he said! If you feel like forwarding this to those who are open minded & have not ‘drunk the Kool-Aid’, feel free.

Here is his resume from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Krauthammer

A summary of his comments:

1. Mr. Obama is a very intellectual, charming individual. He is not to be underestimated. He is a ‘cool customer’ who doesn't show his emotions. It's very hard to know what's ‘behind the mask’. Taking down the Clinton dynasty from a political neophyte was an amazing accomplishment. The Clintons still do not understand what hit them. Obama was in the perfect place at the perfect time.

2. Obama has political skills comparable to Reagan & Clinton. He has a way of making you think he's on your side, agreeing w/ your position, while doing the opposite. Pay no attn. to what he SAYS; rather, watch what he DOES!

3. Obama has a ruthless quest for power. He did not come to Washington to make something out of himself, but rather to change everything, incl. dismantling capitalism. He can’t be straightforward on his ambitions, as the public would not go along. He has a heavy hand, & wants to ‘level the playing field’ w/ income redistribution & punishment of the achievers of society. He would like to model the USA to Great Britain or Canada.

4. His 3 main goals are to control ENERGY, PUBLIC EDUCATION, & NAT’L HEALTHCARE by the Fed. govt. He doesn't care about the auto or financial services industries, but got them as an early bonus. The cap & trade will add costs to everything & stifle growth. Paying for FREE college education is his goal. Most scary is healthcare program, because if you make it FREE & add 46,000,000 people to a Medicare-type single-payer system, the costs will go thru the roof. The only way to control costs is w/ massive RATIONING of services, like in Canada. God forbid.

5. He’s surrounded himself w/ mostly far-left academic types. No one around him has ever run even a candy store. But they’re going to try & run the auto, financial, banking & other industries. This obviously can’t work in the long run. Obama’s not a socialist; rather a far-left secular progressive bent on nothing short of revolution. He ran as a moderate, but will govern from the hard left. Again, watch what he does, not what he says.

6. Obama doesn’t really see himself as President of the USA, more as a ruler over the world. He sees himself above it all, trying to orchestrate & coordinate various countries & their agendas. He sees moral equivilency in all cultures. His apology tour in Germany & England was a prime example of how he sees America, as an imperialist nation that has been arrogant, rather than a great noble nation that has at times made errors. This is the 1st President ever who has chastised our allies & appeased our enemies!

7. He’s now handing out goodies. He hopes that the bill (& pain) will not ‘come due’ until after he’s reelected in 2012. He’d like to blame all problems on Bush from the past, & hopefully his successor in the future. He has a huge ego, & Mr. Krauthammer believes he is a narcicist.

8. Republicans are in the wilderness for a while, but will emerge strong. We’re ‘pining’ for another Reagan, but there’ll never be another like him. He believes Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty & Bobby Jindahl (except for his terrible speech in Feb.) are the future of the party. Newt Gingrich is brilliant, but has baggage. Sarah Palin is sincere & intelligent, but needs to really be seriously boning up on facts & info if she’s to be a legitimate candidate in the future. We need to return to the party of lower taxes, smaller govt., personal responsibility, strong nat’l defense, & states’ rights.

9. The current level of spending is irresponsible & outrageous. We’re spending trillions that we don’t have. This could lead to hyper inflation, depression or worse. No country has ever spent themselves into prosperity. The media is giving Obama, Reid & Pelosi a pass because they love their agenda. But eventually the bill will come due & people will realize the huge bailouts didn’t work, nor will the stimulus pkg. These were trillion-dollar payoffs to Obama’s allies, unions & the Congress to placate the left, so he can get support for #4 above.

10. The election was over in mid-Sept. when Lehman brothers failed. Fear & panic swept in, we had an unpopular President, & the war was grinding on indefinitely w/o a clear outcome. The people are in pain, & the mantra of ‘change’ caused people to act emotionally. Any Dim would have won this election; it was surprising it was as close as it was.

11. In 2012, if the unemployment rate is over 10%, Republicans will be swept back into power. If it's under 8%, the Dims could continue to roll. If it's between 8-10%, it’ll be a dogfight. It’ll all be about the economy.

I hope this gets you really thinking about what's happening in Washington & Congress. There’s a left-wing revolution going on, according to Krauthammer, & he encourages us to keep the faith & join the loyal resistance. The work will be hard, but we’re right on most issues & can reclaim our country, before it's far too late.

2) Clinton: If Iran strikes Israel, expect retaliation

United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Sunday that Iran must expect full retaliation from a "a battery of nuclear weapons countries" should it ever attack Israel.

When asked during an interview with ABC News whether America had set as policy envoy Dennis Ross' statement that an attack on Israel would be seen as an attack on the U.S. itself, Clinton said:

"I don't think there is any doubt in anyone's mind that were Israel to suffer a nuclear attack by Iran, there would be retaliation."


"I think part of what is clear is we want to avoid a Middle East arms race which leads to nuclear weapons being in the possession of other countries in the Middle East, and we want to make clear that there are consequences and costs," Clinton told interviewer George Stephanpoulos, though she would not elaborate on whether the U.S. would be part of said retaliation.

Meanwhile, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that a new report on Iran by the United Nations' nuclear watchdog shows that the global body cannot be trusted to monitor the Islamic Republic's nuclear program.

"These findings demonstrate that the international community, no more than Israel, cannot place its trust in IAEA monitoring in Iran," the ministry said in a statement.

The International Atomic Energy Agency report said Friday that Iran is continuing to expand its uranium enrichment, despite three sets of prohibitive UN Security Council sanctions.


The watchdog reported that Iran had increased its rate of production of low-enriched uranium, boosting its stockpile by 500 kg to 1,339 kg in the past six months.

Stating that the report showed the agency's inability to carry out full and effective monitoring due to Iran's lack of cooperation, the foreign ministry urged the world to take concete steps to thwart the Islamic Republic's nuclear ambitions.

"What is needed from the international community is immediate and determined action to ensure that Iran will not be able to produce nuclear weapons," the statement said.

"The weakness currently displayed by the international community allows a country like North Korea to pursue a policy of defiance, and Iran is an attentive student of this policy."

A separate IAEA report said Friday that the agency has discovered traces of processed uranium at a second site in Syria.

The IAEA has been examining U.S. intelligence reports that Syria had almost built a North Korean-designed nuclear reactor meant to yield weapons-grade plutonium before Israel bombed it to rubble in 2007.

On Sunday, the ministry said the report detailed many "suspicious findings," and criticized Syria's reluctance to let the watchdog visit the various suspected nuclear sites.

"This situation reinforces suspicions that Syria is trying to blur evidence of secret nuclear activity that took place at Dir a-Zur in eastern Syria," the statement said. "The Agency should condemn Syria for hiding the facts pertaining to this activity."

3) The End of America's Strategic Alliance with Israel?
By Caroline Glick

From an Israeli perspective, Pres. Barack Obama's speech today in Cairo was
deeply disturbing. Both rhetorically and programmatically, Obama's speech
was a renunciation of America's strategic alliance with Israel.

Rhetorically, Obama's sugar coated the pathologies of the Islamic world -
from the tyranny that characterizes its regimes, to the misogyny,
xenophobia, Jew hatred, and general intolerance that characterizes its
societies. In so doing he made clear that his idea of pressing the restart
button with the Islamic world involves erasing the moral distinctions
between the Islamic world and the free world.

In contrast, Obama's perverse characterization of Israel - of the sources of
its legitimacy and of its behavior - made clear that he shares the Arab
world's view that there is something basically illegitimate about the Jewish
state.

In 1922 the League of Nations mandated Great Britain to facilitate the
reconstitution of the Jewish commonwealth in the Land of Israel on both
sides of the Jordan River. The international community's decision to work
towards the reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty in Israel owed to its
recognition of the Jewish people's legal, historic, and moral rights to our
homeland.

Arab propaganda finds this basic and fundamental truth inconvenient. So for
the past 60 years, the Arabs have been advancing the fiction that Israel's
existence owes solely to European guilt over the Holocaust. As far as the
Arabs are concerned, the Jews have no legal, historic, or moral right to
what the Arabs see as Islamic land.

In his address, while Obama admonished the Arabs for their pervasive Jew
hatred and Holocaust denial, he effectively accepted and legitimized their
view that Israel owes its existence to the Holocaust when he said, "the
aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot
be denied," and then went on to talk about the Holocaust.

Just as abominably, Obama compared Israel to Southern slave owners and
Palestinians to black slaves in the antebellum south. He used the Arab
euphemism "resistance" to discuss Palestinian terrorism, and generally
ignored the fact that every Palestinian political faction is also a
terrorist organization.

In addition to his morally outrageous characterization of Israel and
factually inaccurate account of its foundations, Obama struck out at the
Jewish state through the two policies he outlined in his address. His first
policy involves coercing Israel into barring all Jewish construction in
Judea and Samaria (otherwise known as the West Bank), and Jerusalem.

Obama claims that this policy will increase prospects for peace. But this is
untrue. As Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas made clear in his
Washington Post interview last week, Obama's trenchant campaign against
Jewish construction in these areas has convinced the Palestinians they have
no reason to be flexible in their positions towards Israel. Indeed, Obama's
assault on Israeli construction and his unsubstantiated, bigoted claim that
the presence of Jews in Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem impedes progress
towards peace ensures that there will be no agreement whatsoever between
Israel and the Palestinians.

After all, why would the Palestinians make a deal with Israel when they know
that Obama will blame Israel for the absence of a peace agreement?

Even more strategically devastating than his castigation of Israel as the
villain in the Arab-Israel conflict is Obama's stated policy towards Iran.
In Cairo, Obama offered Iran nuclear energy in exchange for its
nuclear-weapons program. This offer has been on the table since 2003 and has
been repeatedly rejected by the Iranians. Indeed, they rejected it yet again
last week.

Obama must know that his policy will not lead to the hoped for change in
Iran's behavior. And since he must know this, the only rational explanation
for his decision to adopt a policy he knows will fail is that he is
comfortable with the idea of Iran becoming a nuclear power. And this is
something that Israel cannot abide by.

The only silver lining for Israelis from the president's speech in Cairo and
his general positions on the Middle East is that Obama has overplayed his
hand. Far from bending to his will, a large majority of Israelis perceives
Obama as a hostile force and has rallied in support of Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu against the administration. This public support gives
Netanyahu the maneuver room he needs to take the actions that Israel needs
to take to defend against the prospect of a nuclear armed Iran and to assert
its national rights and to defend itself against Palestinian terrorists and
other Arab and non-Arab anti-Semites who wish it ill.

Caroline B. Glick is the senior fellow for Middle Eastern affairs at the
Center for Security Policy and the senior contributing editor of The
Jerusalem Post.

4) Saudi king asks Obama to impose solution
By Roee Nahmias Published

Arab newspaper says Saudi leadership pressing Washington to take active role in solving Palestinian crisis, even if this means forcing a solution on both sides

Arab patience is wearing thin in regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Saudi King Abdullah bin Abd al-Aziz told US President Barack Obama during their meeting in Riyadh last Wednesday. According to a report in Saudi daily al-Hayat, the Saudi leader urged Obama to become actively involved in the process, to the point of "imposing a solution" on the two sides "if necessary."


Insider sources told the paper that President Obama could not hide how impressed he was with King Abdullah and that he "listened intently to everything said."


Saudi Arabia and other Arab states are seeking to have Washington take a tougher line with Israel both on accepting Palestinian statehood and freezing construction in the settlements.


Abdullah said that a solution of the conflict would be the "magic key" to all issues in the Middle East.

"We want from you a serious participation to solve the Palestinian issue and impose the solution if necessary," the paper quoted the Saudi monarch as telling Obama.


"We Arabs want to devote our time to building people, building a generation that is capable of handling the future through knowledge and action, we have a genuine desire for peace," Abdullah said.

5) After Cairo, It’s Clinton Time
By Thomas Friedman


It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry after reading the reactions of analysts and officials in the Middle East to President Obama’s Cairo speech. “It’s not what he says, but what he does,” many said. No, ladies and gentlemen of the Middle East, it is what he says and what you do and what we do. We must help, but we can’t want democracy or peace more than you do.

What should we be doing? The follow-up to the president’s speech will have to be led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. This will be her first big test, and, for me, there is no question as to where she should be putting all her energy: on the peace process.

No, not that peace process — not the one between Israelis and Palestinians. That one’s probably beyond diplomacy. No, I’m talking about the peace process that is much more strategically important — the one inside Iraq.

The most valuable thing that Mrs. Clinton could do right now is to spearhead a sustained effort — along with the U.N., the European Union and Iraq’s neighbors — to resolve the lingering disputes between Iraqi factions before we complete our withdrawal. (We’ll be out of Iraq’s cities by June 30 and the whole country by the close of 2011.)

Why? Because if Iraq unravels as we draw down, the Obama team will be blamed, and it will be a huge mess. By contrast, if a decent and stable political order can take hold in Iraq, it could have an extremely positive impact on the future of the Arab world and on America’s reputation.

I have never bought the argument that Iraq was the bad war, Afghanistan the good war and Pakistan the necessary war. Folks, they’re all one war with different fronts. It’s a war within the Arab-Muslim world between progressive and anti-modernist forces over how this faith community is going to adapt to modernity — modern education, consensual politics, the balance between religion and state and the rights of women. Any decent outcome in Iraq would bolster all the progressive forces by creating an example of something that does not exist in the Middle East today — an independent, democratizing Arab-Muslim state.

“The reason there are no successful Arab democracies today is because there is no successful Arab democracy today,” said Stanford’s Larry Diamond, the author of “The Spirit of Democracy.” “When there is no model, it is hard for an idea to diffuse in a region.”

Rightly or wrongly, we stepped into the middle of this war of ideas in the Arab-Muslim world in 2003 when we decapitated the Iraqi regime, wiped away its authoritarian political structure and went about clumsily midwifing something that the modern Arab world has never seen before — a horizontal dialogue between the constituent communities of an Arab state. In Iraq’s case, that is primarily Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

Yes, in a region that has only known top-down monologues from kings, dictators and colonial powers, we have helped Iraqis convene the first horizontal dialogue to write their own social contract for how to share power.

At first, this dialogue took place primarily through violence. Liberated from Saddam’s iron fist, each Iraqi community tested its strength against the others, saying in effect: “Show me what you got, baby.” The violence was horrific and ultimately exhausting for all. So now we’ve entered a period of negotiations over how Iraq will be governed. But it’s unfinished and violence could easily return.

And that brings me to Secretary Clinton. I do not believe the argument that Iraqis will not allow us to help mediate their disputes — whether over Kirkuk, oil-sharing or federalism. For years now, our president, secretary of state and secretary of defense have flown into Iraq, met the leaders for a few hours and then flown away, not to return for months. We need a more serious, weighty effort. Hate the war, hate Bush, but don’t hate the idea of trying our best to finish this right.

This is important. Afghanistan is secondary. Baghdad is a great Arab and Muslim capital. Iraq has something no other Arab country has in abundance: water, oil and an educated population. It already has sprouted scores of newspapers and TV stations that operate freely. “Afghanistan will never have any impact outside of Afghanistan. Iraq can change minds,” said Mamoun Fandy, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

You demonstrate that Iraqi Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds can write their own social contract, and you will tell the whole Arab world that there is a model other than top-down monologues from iron-fisted dictators. You will expose the phony democracy in Iran, and you will leave a legacy for America that will help counter Abu Ghraib and torture.

Ultimately, which way Iraq goes will depend on whether its elites decide to use their freedom to loot their country or to rebuild it. That’s still unclear. But we still have a chance to push things there in the right direction, and a huge interest in doing so. Mrs. Clinton is a serious person; this is a serious job. I hope she does it.

6) President Obama's Cairo speech proves he's experiencing a moral muddle
By Michael Goodwin

The outlines of an Obama Doctrine are taking shape. Our President's world view can be summarized as "Everybody is a little bit guilty, especially Israel."

His demand in Cairo that Israel make major concessions before Palestinians recognize Israel's right to exist was a pander of the rankest sort. What a difference a year and the audience make.

Exactly a year before his Cairo speech, on June 4, 2008, candidate Obama told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee he would "never force Israel to the negotiating table" or to make "concessions."

He cited Iran's vow to eliminate Israel and said, "I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, everything."

In Cairo, he was vague at best and inviting at worst on the nuke issue, saying, "I understand those who protest that some countries have weapons that others do not. No single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons."

Feeling the mad mullah's pain won't mollify them. Nor was it a sign of courage to ignore Anwar Sadat, the brave Egyptian leader who made peace with Israel in 1979 and was later assassinated by Islamic extremists.

To judge from this speech and others, the Obama Doctrine holds that all guilt is morally equal and the solution is to split the difference and call it even.

Take women's rights, where he interchangeably indicted a debate in Europe about women wearing head coverings in school and the Taliban's whipping of women for going to school.

The result is the jarring sense he is equally offended. "I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal, but I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality," he said.

As if to show absolute even-handedness, he allowed that while some Islamic countries have had women as national leaders, "the struggle for women's equality continues in many aspects of American life."

That's rich coming from the man who defeated Hillary Clinton.

The moral muddle is a shame because the spectacle of this charismatic President on the global stage is stirring. It is always a point of pride for Americans when our President is admired abroad and there is no greater advertisement for our unrivaled openness than Obama's "Hussein" middle name and mixed-race parentage.

But the Obama Doctrine subverts the outcomes he envisions and the detachment from facts is striking for a man so highly educated. Unmolested by experience, he obliterates the truth of history in his desire to assign equal blame for it.

Again, Israel proves the point. He was brilliant in saying that denying the Holocaust "is baseless, it is ignorant and it is hateful." Then with a glib "On the other hand," he jumped from the 6 million Jewish dead to the lack of a Palestinian state.

"For more than 60 years they've endured the pain of dislocation," he said. "Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead."

But whose fault is that? Arab states refuse to absorb Palestinians (Egypt blockades Gaza, just as Israel does) and keep them caged up as a weapon against Israel.

Meanwhile, Palestinian leaders fumble every chance for a state, their corruption and violence the biggest obstacles to peace and land.

Obama acknowledged most of that, but minimized its impact and even suggested the Palestinian plight is akin to slavery in America and apartheid in South Africa. Shades of Jimmy Carter there.

Near the end, Obama said, "If we choose to be bound by the past, we will never move forward."

A more fitting line is "those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it."

7) On Language:Straw-Man Issue
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

Accepting the Democratic nomination in a huge football stadium way back in the presidential campaign of ’08, Senator Barack Obama displayed his oratorical talent by using one of his favorite tried-and-true devices in argument: “Don’t tell me that Democrats won’t defend this country!”

Who was telling him that? To be sure, his opponents were claiming that a Republican administration would be stronger on defense, but nobody was telling him or the voters that Democrats preferred abject surrender. At the time, reviewing that speech, I noted the rhetorical technique: “By escalating criticism, he knocked down a straw man, the oldest speechifying trick in the book.”

Encouraged by his reviews for eloquence, President Obama has embraced the straw man frequently (as F.D.R. liked to emphasize it, “again and again and again”) with nary a peep of criticism. Two weeks ago, the Times correspondent Helene Cooper dared to note this president’s repeated use of digs like “I know some folks in Washington and on Wall Street are saying we should just focus on their problems.” Some folks, like those who, are never named but are always wrongheaded extremists. Her “White House Memo” was headlined “Some Obama Enemies Are Made Totally of Straw”; its subhead was “Setting them up to have someone to knock down.” Cooper, as the objective reporter, gave examples of conservative politicians who speak straw-manese, although none with such fluency.

I’ve had experience in this form of rhetorical attack as analyst, as victim and as perpetrator. President Bill Clinton told a foreign-policy audience in 1995 that “the new isolationists would have us face the future alone.” I wondered in print: Who were those nuts proposing “America — let’s face the future alone”?

The same year, when the Serbs were imposing “ethnic cleansing” on the Muslims in Bosnia and the world was wringing its hands, op-ed columnists urged the supply of arms and NATO air support to the besieged Bosnians in their homeland. Gen. Colin Powell told The New Yorker: “William Safire and Tony Lewis say this will only take a little bit of bombing and it will work . . . and Safire . . . just says, ‘Air power can do it.’ Forget it.” Rather than whine about his misrepresentation of my position, I counterattacked: “That’s the straw-man trick: Take your opponent’s argument to a ridiculous extreme and then attack the extreme.” (U.S. air power helped force the Serbs out and also led to today’s independent Kosovo.)

Now for my own perp walk: Such mid-1990s straw-manese reminded me of a speech I drafted for President Nixon to give at the Air Force Academy in 1969. Handing over my draft, I carefully advised the president in these words: “Take the easy way.” He looked surprised but understood when he read the line “It would be easy for a president of the United States to buy some popularity by going along with the new isolationists.” For years afterward, Nixon could then truthfully use the “some say” straw man: “Some of my advisers say I should ‘take the easy way’ — but I have rejected that course. . . .”

THE REAL STRAW MAN

We know the technique; but what’s the source of straw man? A poet in the 18th century responded to critical judgment with “Critics, who like the scarecrows stand/upon the poet’s common land.” The best guess about the trope’s origin is the farmer’s scarecrow — an old coat and hat set up on a pole and stuffed with straw to resemble a human sentry and frighten hungry blackbirds away from vegetable seedlings.

Though it appeared in a somewhat sexist 17th-century English saying — “A man of straw is worth a woman of gold” — in U.S. politics it was made famous in 1912 by President William Howard Taft, who had been set in place by the retiring Theodore Roosevelt four years earlier but who was being savaged by Teddy’s campaign to get his old job back: “I was a man of straw; but I have been a man of straw long enough. Every man who has blood in his body, and who has been misrepresented as I have . . . is forced to fight.” Taft won renomination, but Roosevelt ran as a “Bull Moose” independent, splitting Republicans and helping elect Woodrow Wilson, the Democrat.

Early in the 2008 primary season, The New York Post — not inclined to support most Democrats — surprised readers with the front-page headline “Post Endorses Obama.” David Carr, media reporter for The Times, asked rhetorically, “Why did The Post kick Senator Clinton to the curb?” While noting that the relationship between Rupert Murdoch of The Post and the Clintons was complicated, he wrote that the endorsement “invited suggestions that Mr. Murdoch was using The New York Post to set up a straw man for the Republicans to mow down in the fall.”

The noun phrase straw man, now used as a compound adjective as in “straw-man device, technique or issue,” was popularized in American culture by “The Wizard of Oz.” Dorothy (played by Judy Garland in the 1939 movie), backed up by the Tin Man (Jack Haley) and the Scarecrow (Ray Bolger), slaps the paw of the Cowardly Lion (Bert Lahr) for frightening her dog Toto and says, “It’s bad enough picking on a straw man, but when you go around picking on poor little dogs. . . .” The meaning is clear: a figure of a man stuffed with a cheap material may appear scary but is really weak and defenseless.

In the late 20th century, the metaphor was challenged by empty suit, but that was directed mainly at male business executives; as suits lose their fashion dominance, the old straw man endures both as a noun phrase and a compound adjective, scaring off flights of speechwriting fantasies.

8) The Settlement Rift: President Obama has delivered a necessary shock to Israel's right-wing government. Will he now compromise?



IN THE WEEKS before President Obama's Cairo address to the Muslim world, his administration opened a striking public breach with the Israeli government of Binyamin Netanyahu. Even aside from any possible usefulness for courting Arab opinion, this was probably necessary. Mr. Netanyahu, who has refused to publicly support Palestinian statehood and insisted that Israeli settlement expansion will continue, was in need of a wake-up call. So the president has said repeatedly that he expects Israel to start moving toward a two-state solution, and he and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton have bluntly insisted that all Israeli settlement activity stop. The medicine has had its effect: Israeli media are full of talk of the "crisis" between Washington and Jerusalem and of the fateful choice that Mr. Netanyahu must make between good relations with Washington and the hard-line ideology of his Likud party.

The question is whether the administration will allow Mr. Netanyahu the room to side with Mr. Obama, should he choose to do so. According to some officials in his government, there is much the Israeli leader may be willing to do to mend the rift. What he almost certainly will not do, however, is abandon the position of previous Israeli governments -- accepted in practice by both the Bush and Clinton administrations -- that some "natural growth" must be allowed in existing settlements.

Mr. Obama's Middle East envoy, George J. Mitchell, first called for an end to "natural growth" in 2001, when he headed a Middle East commission. Ms. Clinton publicly committed the Obama administration to the demand in a recent interview with al-Jazeera, saying "we want to see a stop to settlement construction, additions, natural growth -- any kind of settlement activity." There are some good reasons for this position: Previous Israeli governments have violated their own rules about the limits of "natural growth"; they have also failed to fulfill repeated promises to dismantle those settlements that Israel itself has deemed illegal.

The problem is that no Israeli government -- not Mr. Netanyahu's, not even one led by the current opposition -- is likely to agree to a total construction ban. By insisting on one, the administration risks bogging itself down in a major dispute with its ally, while giving Arab governments and Palestinians a ready excuse not to make their own concessions. Meanwhile, the practical need for a total settlement freeze is debatable. Palestinian negotiators have already conceded that many of the towns will be annexed to Israel in any final deal; so did former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

A good compromise is achievable. Mr. Netanyahu should publicly acknowledge that the peace process will lead to Palestinian statehood, and should adopt a series of measures curtailing settlements. He should quickly dismantle those deemed illegal, end all government subsidies, prohibit the territorial expansion of all settlements, stop new construction in those outside Israel's West Bank fence and agree to a monitoring mechanism that will prevent cheating. Mr. Obama can reasonably accept that as a freeze, while not requiring that not a single brick be laid in any of the more than 120 West Bank communities. Then he can turn to the equally important task of pressing Palestinian leaders and Arab states for measures that match Israel's actions.


9) Jack de Lowe writes:


In your speech in Cairo last week, you spoke of the claim of occupation of the Arabs in Palestine. Below you will find a article by Judge of the Internaitonal Court of Justice, Stephen Schwebel. The article goes into some detail about territory acquired in offensive and defensive wars. However there are two parts I would like to point your attention to as to why Israel's claim to the disputed areas is stronger than any other party:



1. "As between Israel, acting defensively in 1948 and 1967, on the one hand and her Arab neighbors, acting aggressively in 1948 and 1967 on the other hand, Israel has the better title in the territory of what was Palestine, including the whole of Jerusalem."



2. "A State acting in lawful exercise of its right of self-defense may seize and occupy foreign territory as long as such seizure and occupation are necessary to its self defense." It goes on to state "As a condition of its withdrawal from such territory, that State may require the institution of security measures reasonably designed to ensure that that territory shall not again be used to mount a threat or use of force against it of such a nature as to justify exercise of self -defense."



Despite the fact that legally Israel is entitled to retain the territories in question, our governments have made a concerted effort to help establish a peaceful neighbor in most of the lands in question. The fact is that at every opportunity, our neighbors have not only rejected outright the offer made, but have, as their response, instituted acts of terror against the Israeli civilian population.



Until such time as our neighbors are prepared to simply utter the words "We accept the right of the Jewish state of Israel to exist," there can be and will be no peace in our region. It is a horrible reality, but one that we must live with. Failure to do so would be at the risk of our very existence.

Jack de Lowe (Raanana, Israel)

A registered voter in California



Justice In International Law

Selected Writing of (not written in any of his former official capacity)

Stephen M. Schwebel: Judge of International Court of Justice


Judge Schwebel has served on the Court since 15 January 1981. He was Vice-President of the Court from 1994 to 1997 and has been President since 6 February 1997. A former Deputy Legal Adviser of the United States Department of State and Burling Professor of International Law at the School of Advanced International Studies of The John Hopkins University (Washington), Judge Schwebel is the author of three books and some 150 articles on problems of international law and organization. See:



What Weight to Conquest? AGGRESSION, COMPLIANCE, AND DEVELOPMENT

Pages 521-526


In his admirable address of December 9, 1969, on the situation in the Middle East, Secretary of State William P. Rogers took two positions of particular international legal interest, one implicit and the other explicit. (1) Secretary Rogers called upon the Arab States and Israel to establish "a state of peace ... instead of the state of belligerency, which has characterized relations for over 20 years." Applying this and other elements of the American approach to the United Arab Republic and Israel, the Secretary of State suggested that, "in the context of peace and agreement [between the UAR and Israel] on specific security safeguards, withdrawal of Israeli forces from Egyptian territory would be required." (2)

Secretary Rogers accordingly inferred that, in the absence of such peace and agreement, withdrawal of Israeli forces from Egyptian territory would not be required. That is to say, he appeared to uphold the legality of continued Israeli occupation of Arab territory pending "the establishment of a state of peace between the parties instead of the state of belligerency." (3) In this Secretary Rogers is on sound ground. That ground may well be based on appreciation of the fact that Israel's action in 1967 was defensive, and on the theory that, since the danger in response to which defensive action was taken remains, occupation - though not annexation - is justified, pending a peace settlement. But Mr. Rogers's conclusion may be simply a pragmatic judg­ment (indeed, certain other Permanent Members of the Security Council, which are not likely to share the foregoing legal perception, are not now pressing for Israeli withdrawal except as an element of a settlement).

More questionable, however, is the Secretary of State's explicit conclusion on a key question of the law and politics of the Middle East dispute: that "any changes in the pre-existing [1949 armistice] lines should not reflect the weight of conquest and should be confined to insubstantial alterations required for mutual security. We do not support expansionism." Secretary Rogers refer­red approvingly in this regard to the Security Council's resolution of November 1967, which,

Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war (4) and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security,

Emphasizing further that all Member States in their acceptance of the Charter of the United Nations have undertaken a commitment to act in accordance with Article 2 of the Charter,

1. Affirms that the fulfillment of Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both the following principles:

(i) Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict; (5)

(ii) Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force; ..." (6)

It is submitted that the Secretary's conclusion is open to question on two grounds: first, that it fails to distinguish between aggressive conquest and defensive conquest; second, that it fails to distinguish between the taking of territory which the prior holder held lawfully and that which it held unlawfully. These contentions share common ground.

As a general principle of international law, as that law has been reformed since the League, particularly by the Charter, it is both vital and correct to say that there shall be no weight to conquest, that the acquisition of territory by war is inadmissible. (7) But that principle must be read in particular cases together with other general principles, among them the still more general principle of which it is an application, namely, that no legal right shall spring from a wrong, and the Charter principle that the Members of the United Nations shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State. So read, the distinctions between aggressive conquest and defensive conquest, between the taking of territory legally held and the taking of territory illegally held, become no less vital and correct than the central principle itself.

Those distinctions may be summarized as follows: (a) a State acting in lawful exercise of its right of self-defense may seize and occupy foreign territory as long as such seizure and occupation are necessary to its self ­defense; (b) as a condition of its withdrawal from such territory, that State may require the institution of security measures reasonably designed to ensure that that territory shall not again be used to mount a threat or use of force against it of such a nature as to justify exercise of self-defense; (c) where the prior holder of territory had seized that territory unlawfully, the State which subsequently takes that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense has, against that prior holder, better title.

The facts of the June 1967 "Six Day War" demonstrate that Israel reacted defensively against the threat and use of force against her by her Arab neighbors. This is indicated by the fact that Israel responded to Egypt's prior closure of the Straits of Tiran, its proclamation of a blockade of the Israeli port of Eilat, and the manifest threat of the UAR's use of force inherent in its massing of troops in Sinai, coupled with its ejection of UNEF. It is indicated by the fact that, upon Israeli responsive action against the UAR, Jordan initiated hostilities against Israel. It is suggested as well by the fact that, despite the most intense efforts by the Arab States and their supporters, led by the Premier of the Soviet Union, to gain condemnation of Israel as an aggressor by the hospitable organs of the United Nations, those efforts were decisively defeated. The conclusion to which these facts lead is that the Israeli conquest of Arab and Arab-held territory was defensive rather than aggressive conquest.

The facts of the 1948 hostilities between the Arab invaders of Palestine and the nascent State of Israel further demonstrate that Egypt's seizure of the Gaza Strip, and Jordan's seizure and subsequent annexation of the West Bank and the old city of Jerusalem, were unlawful. Israel was proclaimed to be an independent State within the boundaries allotted to her by the General Assembly's partition resolution. The Arabs of Palestine and of neighboring Arab States rejected that resolution. But that rejection was no warrant for the invasion by those Arab States of Palestine, whether of territory allotted to Israel, to the projected, stillborn Arab State or to the projected, international­ized city of Jerusalem. It was no warrant for attack by the armed forces of neighboring Arab States upon the Jews of Palestine, whether they resided within or without Israel. But that attack did justify Israeli defensive measures, both within and, as necessary, without the boundaries allotted her by the partition plan (as in the new city of Jerusalem). It follows that the Egyptian occupation of Gaza, and the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank and Jerusalem, could not vest in Egypt and Jordan lawful, indefinite control, whether as occupying Power or sovereign: ex injuria jus non oritur.

If the foregoing conclusions that (a) Israeli action in 1967 was defensive and (b) Arab action in 1948, being aggressive, was inadequate to legalize Egyptian and Jordanian taking of Palestinian territory, are correct, what follows?

It follows that the application of the doctrine of according no weight to conquest requires modification in double measure. In the first place, having regard to the consideration that, as between Israel, acting defensively in 1948 and 1967, on the one hand, and her Arab neighbors, acting aggressively in 1948 and 1967, on the other, Israel has better title in the territory of what was Palestine, including the whole of Jerusalem, than do Jordan and Egypt (the UAR indeed has, unlike Jordan, not asserted sovereign title), it follows that modifications of the 1949 armistice lines among those States within former Palestinian territory are lawful (if not necessarily desirable), whether those modifications are, in Secretary Rogers's words, "insubstantial alterations required for mutual security" or more substantial alterations - such as recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the whole of Jerusalem. (8) In the second place, as regards territory bordering Palestine, and under unquestioned Arab sovereignty in 1949 and thereafter, such as Sinai and the Golan Heights, it follows not that no weight shall be given to conquest, but that such weight shall be given to defensive action as is reasonably required to ensure that such Arab territory will not again be used for aggressive purposes against Israel. For example - and this appears to be envisaged both by the Secretary of State's address and the resolution of the Security Council - free navigation through the Straits of Tiran shall be effectively guaranteed and demilitarized zones shall be established.

The foregoing analysis accords not only with the terms of the United Nations Charter, notably Article 2, paragraph 4, and Article 51, but law and practice as they have developed since the Charter's conclusion. In point of practice, it is instructive to recall that the Republic of Korea and indeed the United Nations itself have given considerable weight to conquest in Korea, to the extent of that substantial territory north of the 38th parallel from which the aggressor was driven and remains excluded - a territory which, if the full will of the United Nations had prevailed, would have been much larger (indeed, perhaps the whole of North Korea). In point of law, pro­visions of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties are pertinent. Article 52 provides that: "A treaty is void if its conclusion has been procured by the threat or use of force in violation of the principles of international law embodied in the Charter of the United Nations" - a provision which clearly does not debar conclusion of a treaty where force has been applied, as in self-defense, in accordance with the Charter. And Article 75 provides that: "The provisions of the present Convention are without prejudice to any obligation in relation to a treaty which may arise for an aggressor State in consequence of measures taken in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations with reference to that State's aggression."

The state of the law has been correctly summarized by Elihu Lauterpacht, who points out that

territorial change cannot properly take place as a result of the unlawful use of force. But to omit the word "unlawful" is to change the substantive content of the rule and to turn an important safeguard of legal principle into an aggressor's charter. For if force can never be used to effect lawful territory change, then, if territory has once changed hands as a result of the unlawful use of force, the illegitimacy of the position thus established is sterilized by the prohibition upon the use of force to restore the lawful sovereign. This cannot be regarded as reasonable or correct. (9)

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© Judge Stephen Myron Schwebel *

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Notes

First published in American Journal of International Law (1970), 64



(1) The text is published in full in New York Times, December 11, 1969, p. 16.

(2) Ibid.

(3) Ibid

(4) The resolution's use of the word "war" is of interest. The June 1967 hostilities were not marked by a declaration of war. Certain Arab States have regarded themselves at war with Israel - or, at any rate, in a state of belligerency - since 1948, a questionable position under the law of the Charter. In view of the defeat in the United Nations organs of resolutions holding Israel to have been the aggressor in 1967, presumably the use of the word "war" was not meant to indicate that Israel's action was not in exercise of self-defense. It may be added that territory would not in any event be acquired by war, but, if at all, by the force of treaties of peace.

(5) It should be noted that the resolution does not specify "all territories" or "the territories" but "territories." The subparagraph immediately following is, by way of contrast, more comprehensively cast, specifying "all claims or states of belligerency."

(6) Resolution 242 (1967) of November 22, 1967; 62 AJIL 482 (1968). President Johnson, in an address of September 10, 1968, declared:

We are not the ones to say where other nations should draw the lines between them that will assure each the greatest security. It is clear, however, that a return to the situation of June 4, 1967, will not bring peace. There must be secure and there must be recognized borders ...

At the same time, it should be equally clear that boundaries cannot and should not reflect the weight of conquest. Each change must have a reason which each side, in honest negotiation, can accept as part of a just compromise. (59 Department of State Bulletin 348 [1968])

(7) See, however, Kelsen (2nd ed. by Tucker), Principles of International Law (1967), pp. 420-433.

(8) It should be added that the armistice agreements of 1949 expressly preserved the territorial claims of all parties and did not purport to establish definitive boundaries between them.

(9) Elihu Lauterpacht, Jerusalem and the Holy Places, Anglo-Israel Association, Pamphlet No. 19 (1968), p. 52.



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* Since 1947 Stephen M. Schwebel has written more than 100 articles, commentaries and book reviews in legal and other periodicals and in the press. This volume republishes 36 of his legal articles and commentaries of continuing interest. The first Part treats aspects of the capacity and performance of the International Court of Justice. The second addresses aspects of international arbitration. The third examines problems of the United Nations, especially of the authority of the Secretary-General, the character of the Secretariat, and financial apportionment. The fourth deals with questions of international contracts and taking of foreign property interests. The fifth discusses diverse aspects of the development of international law and particularly considers the central problem of international law, the unlawful use of force. This collection does not include Judge Schwebel's judicial opinions, nor (with one exception) papers written in his former official capacities as a legal officer of the US Department of State or as a special rapporteur of the International Law Commission of the United Nations. Together with his unofficial writings, his judicial opinions as of July 1993 are cataloged in the list of publications with which this volume concludes.







Justice in international law: selected writings of Judge Stephen M. Schwebel

Par Stephen Myron Schwebel

Édition: illustrée

Publié par Cambridge University Press, 1994

ISBN 0521462843, 9780521462846

630 pages