Obama - Voting Against His Own Policy!

As predicted, another day of Palestinian hatred likely to be displayed? (See 1 below.)
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It does not add up! But it makes for great theater!(See 2 below.)
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These are the questions media gurus should be asking but never do. Why? Because terror works. Arabs won the propaganda war a long time ago and were facts the basis of the argument the media would lose the drama which sustains their false reporting.

Being ignorant of history provides a wonderful cover when your agenda is not truth but drama. (See 3 below.)
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Terrorism is big business. The time is long overdue for error free investing. Once again, my friend, Avi Jorisch and a co-author have written a revealing article. (See 4 below.)
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Being the brilliant person he perceives himself to be, Obama thought an intellectual approach to the Middle East would solve the riddle. Consequently, because of freshman ignorance, arrogance and naivety, Obama has placed himself in the position of voting against his own policy.

In The Middle East, because of the tribal culture of Arabs the only thing understood is power. Obama's display of 'fairness' was taken as weakness and his efforts quickly became doomed. Whether Obama understands the errors of his way is doubtful because of his enormous ego and committed ideological bent based on his background and associations.

Hell is paved with good intentions and Obama's missteps means The Middle East will continue to be in for a devil of a time.

This op ed piece is sympathetic to Obama's desires but brilliantly lays out the errors of his way. A must read! (See 5 below.)


George Friedman's thoughts. Always o, incisive and worth reading! (See 5a below.)
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Yesterday Georgia put to death, after over 2o years of various and sundry appeals, a man who was convicted by his peers of killing a policeman in cold blood. The system gave the convicted killer every opportunity to escape the consequences of his action and execution.

Protests and LTE's against death sentences persist by those who believe it does not deter crime, is immoral and often innocent people are put to death.

I would submit the following:

The death penalty may not deter crime but it does deter the one who is put to death. People drink and kill while driving but I do not hear anyone suggesting we outlaw cars.

It is more immoral to kill an innocent person than to kill a convicted one.

Finally, mistakes are made and innocent people are put to death. DNA technology is
helping eliminate some unfortunate and mistaken accusations.The world and 'man' are not, nor ever will be, perfect. My advice to the protesters is suck it up, move on and devote your efforts to improving our terrible education system and help restore the broken family unit.
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Victor Davis Hanson has written a short article with an enormous amount of analysis. He spells out the situation with amazing clarity. The article is entitled: "Can Israel Survive?"

Hanson has written what I have been posing.

The fact that The West is no longer capable and/or willing to stand in opposition to tyrannical Arab and Muslim expressed hateful intentions and is willing to walk away from its own established values and laws is a tragedy in the making.

Israel's current and continuing plight and the abysmal hatred and virulence of Islamist extremism is more a cause of the pitiful state of Western Civilization than of Israeli intransigence.

A preventable nuclear war is in the making. The West is without leadership. Alas, the West is financially and morally bankrupt.(See 6 below.)
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Dick
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1)Israeli forces on high alert for Hamas-led anti-US Palestinian riots

Israel's military, Shin Bet security service and police went on elevated preparedness for trouble Wednesday night, Sept. 21, after receiving information that the Palestinian Hamas and other radical groups were preparing to stage violent confrontations with Israel on the West Bank, exploiting the anti-US mood sweeping Palestinian areas after President Barack Obama's UN speech

Western Middle East experts rate his address as the most supportive of Israel ever delivered at the world body by any US president. It has stirred powerful emotions of resentment and disappointment among the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Crowds gathered in Ramallah and the streets of West Bank towns Wednesday - originally to celebrate the Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' application for UN recognition of Palestinian statehood - instead shouted anti-US slogans and burned American flags.

Hamas and its radical allies determined to seize the moment for taking charge of the rallies set up by the Palestinian Authority and the rival Fatah for the rest of the week in the expectation of a UN victory.

The intelligence received in Israel reveals directions to all the extremist organizations close to Hamas, like for instance the Association of young Muslims on the West Bank, to go into action Thursday and build up to a climax Friday, Sept. 23

They were told to break into Jewish settlements to vandalize and torch homes, taking their model from the mass storming of the Israeli embassy in Cairo on Sept. 10.
Friday, Palestinians were told to mob the checkpoints guarding Jerusalem, make for Aqsa Mosque on Temple Mount. Riots and start a rampage there which would be sure to attract world attention to the Palestinian protest against President Obama and US support for Israel.

The Palestinian extremist groups will be venting their rage not just on the US but also Britain, France, Germany and the West at large.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian delegation and its leader Mahmoud Abbas, under extreme pressure to back away from their application for UN recognition, have informed Lebanese President Michel Suleiman who presides over the UN Security Council session Friday that their application will be filed on that day as planned. However, they will not insist on having it debated at once or put to vote.

This is the first crack in the Palestinian determination to go through with their UN initiative against all odds.

Have Palestinians finally begun to wake up to the virtual impossibility of their motion being carried by the Security Council?

Straight after the Obama speech, US diplomacy threw all its resources into persuading every Security Council member to oppose or at least abstain from endorsing the Palestinian motion. As of now, Nigeria, Gabon, India and Bosnia have agreed to consider withholding their support.

The key points President Obama highlighted in his address to the opening of the UN General Assembly Wednesday, Sept. 21 were:

- There are no short cuts to peace. It can only be achieved through negotiations - not statements and resolutions at the United Nations.

- Ultimately it is up to Israel and the Palestinians to agree on borders, security, refugees, Jerusalem.

- I also believe a genuine peace can be attained only between the Palestinians and Israelis themselves.

- The Palestinians deserve a territorial base for their state. (Ed: The 1967 borders were not mentioned.)

- But they must acknowledge the very real security concerns Israel faces every day.

- Israel is surrounded by neighbors who have repeatedly waged war against it. Its people are killed by missiles on its borders and suicide bombers. Other children are taught to hate them and far bigger nations want to wipe them off the map.

- They deserve a historical state in their historical land just as the Palestinians deserve a state for which they have waited too long.

- Peace depends on compromise. Each side has legitimate aspirations and both must learn to stand in the other's shoes.

- The US president stressed that the US is unshakably committed to Israel's security.

Ahead of his meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu, Obama stressed peace cannot be imposed on the parties and a UN resolution will not bring the Palestinians a state.
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2)Obama's Math: More Fuzz Than a Peach
By Mercer Tyson

He's looking more like a bobblehead every time he speaks. From left to right, nose in the air, all the while talking down to those of us he views as stupid. Well, we may be stupid, but we certainly can add, subtract, multiply, and divide better than the POTUS can.

In Obama's fist-pounding, finger-pointing, bellyaching repeat of many previous speeches, he put forth a "plan" to bring down the deficit. And what an original non-plan it was. Raise taxes, fake spending cuts -- just like all his other non-plans. Nothing written, you understand, just promises to cut out fraud and waste. And, of course, tax the rich. This time he prefaced his "tax the rich" part by saying, "This is not class warfare; it's math." Math? Mrs. Davies, my 1st-grade teacher, would probably take exception to that. Now, it seems, even arithmetic has joined the sciences taken over and rearranged by the liberal left.

The president: "They should have to defend that unfairness -- explain why somebody who's making $50 million a year in the financial markets should be paying 15 percent on their taxes, when a teacher making $50,000 a year is paying more than that -- paying a higher rate."

Since we all have a tendency (yes, even conservatives) to rush to judgment before we know the facts and what we are talking about (and because I admit I don't believe anything this guy says anymore), I forced myself to have a conversation with my accountant before I went on my rant. He e-mailed me this:

I ran a 2011 tax projection for the two situations he outlines and this is what it shows:

-Taxpayer earning $50K - pays $4,156 in federal income taxes, or 8.3% effective tax rate (not higher than 15% as erroneously bellowed by the illustrious campaigner)

-Taxpayer earning $50M - pays $17,466,318 in federal income taxes or 34.9% effective tax rate (considerably higher than, well, you know)

Two questions for our brilliant Prez:

1. Where did you learn math?

2. Who in your example is paying their "fair share"? (Note: there are two potentially correct answers here for those challenged by the obvious -- certainly "the taxpayer earning $50M" is correct, but "both taxpayers" is also a correct answer.)

Two observations:

1. Mr. Obama should be "called out" for being an idiot.

2. What the heck, man?

Now I am sure my accountant doesn't really want Obama and others like him to learn how to read a tax table -- after all, they might start doing their own taxes. However, it seems reasonable to expect the president to check with his accountant (like I did) before he goes on national television and makes a fool of himself.

But then, he's used to that.

What? Pardon me? You are saying I misrepresented the whole thing by counting only ordinary income? Click here if you don't know the difference between ordinary income and capital gain and don't trust my synopsis. Otherwise, please accept my brief explanation.

Ordinary income is money earned from your job. This can be wages from cleaning windows to being the CEO of a major corporation. There are other inclusions, but it is essentially as I have described. Capital gain, on the other hand, is profit from invested capital. What's the difference, and why is there different tax treatment for the two?

First off, invested capital is, in itself, the remains of earned income after taxes have been removed. Get it? Taxes have already been paid on the invested income before the capital was invested.

Next, there is a possibility of incurring a loss when you invest your money, not something readily occurring with your job. Very few of us go to work, perform our duties, and lose money as a result.

Aren't those two issues enough justification for a different tax rate on capital gains versus ordinary income right there? Add this: capital gains are taxed at a lower rate as an incentive to invest. Without investment, we have no new jobs, and no increased productivity, which raises everyone's standard of living. We have no way to prepare for our retirement (other than to depend on Social Security!), and no way to make things better for our succeeding generations.

Investment is a good thing. If you do your job well, save some money, and invest it, it is good for you, the economy, and our country. Please, oh please, invest some money. We all depend on it.

Certainly we remember Mr. Buffett's article stating that his secretary paid a higher tax rate than he did. I'd bet a prix-fixe dinner at Chez Panisse in Berkeley that his secretary has a few bucks invested in equities (maybe some in Berkshire-Hathaway), and I'd bet another dinner at the Clint Eastwood's Hog's Breath Inn down in Carmel-by-the-Sea that his secretary is paying no more taxes on her investment income than Mr. Buffett is -- and paying considerably less on her earned income than Buffet is. Buffet's argument was blatantly incorrect and deliberately misleading, which is surprising coming from a man with such seemingly good intentions as to leave large portions of his fortune to charitable causes when he croaks. And, just a hunch here, I'll go one more dinner anywhere that Buffett's capital employs more people than his secretary.

(By the way -- here's a tip for the IRS. Mr. Buffett's statements imply that he is really making more money from his job -- the managing of his money -- than he is claiming, preferring to receive his earnings as capital gains and not attributing a large enough amount to his labor and expertise. Do I get a reward for being a tax snitch?)

Here's the sad part: Obama doesn't know what to do. Neither do his advisors. They want to keep their jobs, but they have no idea what's going on. Obama's like a pitcher who has been lit up for 18 runs in one inning and thinks if he keeps throwing his fastball, eventually he'll get someone out. Unfortunately, the coach can't take him out until 2012, so he's going to keep on throwing that fastball.

And keep on bobbling that head
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3)The Questions Never Asked About Palestine
By Steve Feldman

As the Palestinian-Arabs and their friends make their latest push for "Palestinian" statehood at the United Nations this week, once again the wrong questions are being asked, while the pertinent questions every reporter, activist, and foreign minister should be asking never arise.

Why do "Palestinians" need a state of their own? Who are these "stateless" people? What is their history? Where have they been for all of these years?

In the spirit of "you don't know what you don't know," here are some Hansel-and-Gretel-like bread crumbs to guide journalists and others to the questions they might ask:

Where does the name "Palestine" come from and who have been the people who've lived there? Of course, it was coined by the conquering Romans to add insult to injury to a Jewish nation they sought to obliterate. The Romans conquered the land, but there was always a remnant of Jewish people living there.

While throughout the ages the land was under control of various powers, none called themselves "Palestinian," and there was never a nation with that name. It was that Jewish remnant and those Jews who joined them over time who became the "Palestinians."

In modern times, the Ottoman Turks controlled this territory and, following World War I, the British (under the auspices of the League of Nations). In this period, there were many "Palestinian" institutions, though all of them were Jewish in character and membership. The most famous of these was, perhaps, the Palestine Post, which lives on today as the Jerusalem Post. There were Palestine orchestras and chess teams and the like. But the names of the players were Jewish, not Arab.

As Jewish nationalism in the region gained strength, the Arabs and Muslims committed massacre after massacre of Jews throughout Palestine.

Meanwhile, in 1922, the British took 78% of territory that was promised for a Jewish homeland by the World War I victors and the League of Nations and gave it to the Arabs. The outcome was the heretofore nonexistent Arab nation of Transjordan. Transjordan later became simply Jordan.

This should be the end of the story, as the land of Palestine was divided (though quite unfairly) and an Arab state was created out of the Jewish homeland. "Two states for two peoples."

Being handed 78% of a territory would satisfy most people -- if their true interest were a state of their own. Instead, over the past seven decades, what the world refuses to see is the desire by the Arabs to obliterate Jewish nationalism, and later the Jewish nation that was its culmination.

Violence and terrorism by the Arabs against Jews continued, and as the Arabs stepped up their pressure on the British and the League of Nations, in an attempt to appease the Arabs, the remaining 22% of the land left for the Jews was divided further. The Arabs again got the bigger portion. The Jews accepted the offer and, when the mandate expired, declared independence as the nation of Israel.

The Arabs declared war.

Though they were unable to defeat the Israelis, the Arabs did gain more territory. The Jordanians expanded into what they renamed "the West Bank" so as to erase the Jewish connection to Judea and Samaria (as those areas were called for millennia), while Egypt grabbed the Gaza Strip.

The Arabs who lived in those areas never cried out for independence or claimed to be oppressed, nor threatened to go to the United Nations. Why? Because they were part of, rather than distinct from, the Arab Nation.

Instead, there were incessant terror attacks. In 1964, the Arabs formed the "Palestine Liberation Organization" -- three years before Israel would gain control over the Gaza Strip and Judea and Samaria (aka "the West Bank"). So: what were the Arabs bent on liberating, and whom were they liberating it from? Did they demand a state from Egypt and Jordan? This is the same PLO that today controls the Palestinian Authority -- and has never renounced its appetite for all of what was once dubbed "Palestine."

It was only after Israel's miraculous victory in 1967 that "the West Bank" and "Gaza Strip" suddenly had relevance to their Arab inhabitants, and it was then that the Arab propaganda machine revved up. It eventually inverted much of the world's perception of the Middle East: transforming tiny Israel from its natural role of "David" against the massive Arab population and lands, to one of "Goliath" against the "stateless," "oppressed," and "occupied" "Palestinians." It made the notion of changing straw into gold seem like child's play. And it worked.

That the Palestinian-Arabs have spilled much innocent blood to get their "cause" out there -- murdered Olympics athletes, airline passengers, bus riders, diners -- seems to have faded from memory. But it was these headline-grabbing crimes that got them to the head of the line.

The lesson: crime pays. Terror works.

So, journalists, activists, and foreign ministers of the world: you still have time to ask yourselves and others these questions; still have time to prevent a great wrong from being done; still have time to save untold lives; still have time to avoid a terrible precedent; still have time to prevent the creation of another terrorist state. Will you?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4) Investing terror free
By Mark Langerman and Avi Jorisch


Most people have no idea that many of the companies they do business on a daily basis also do business with terrorists or those who support terrorism.

Unwitting investors also are unaware that their money is invested in the stocks and bonds of companies that indirectly fund terrorism, nuclear proliferation and genocide.

A decade after the September 11 attacks, terror-free investing is an innovative way to fight back against the enemies of liberal democracies. Terror-free investing, in concert with measures such as global sanctions, can have a measurable policy impact.

Terror-free investing is based on the idea that publicly traded companies should be accountable for their business dealings with our nation's adversaries, specifically, state sponsors of terrorism. Information available to all institutional investors indicate that, as of March 31, there were approximately 625 publically traded companies around the globe operating in Iran, Syria, North Korea and Sudan.

It is time for investors to start calling on these companies to pull out of those countries.

The terror-free investment strategy is based on two broad principles: First, encourage public firms to freeze their activities in countries that aid and abet terrorism or are trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction. Second, damage the economies of state sponsors of terrorism, which are highly dependent on foreign public firms for their economic survival, ultimately forcing these governments to change their behavior.

This model is very similar to the successful South African divestment campaign of the 1980s, which contributed to the eventual downfall of the apartheid regime, showing that investor activism can make a huge impact.

For years, the debate has focused on which countries to involve and where to draw the bright line. In fact, many state governments in the United States have tended to set their own policy by divesting from companies that do business in the energy sector of Iran. But that model is far too narrow to effectively combat the threats faced by liberal Western democracies worldwide.

Those who advocate terror-free investing believe it is time to think bigger than just Iran and include rogue regimes such as Syria, Sudan and North Korea.

Terror-free investing marks an evolution from divestment to pre-screened, sophisticated investment options that are available to just about everyone in the market.

As the terror-free investing movement grows, public companies are excluded from pools of responsible investor capital. The companies that continue to do business with state sponsors of terror will increasingly lose access to billions of dollars capital and face growing public scrutiny, providing a significant disincentive for them to maintain their business ties with these regimes.

But what does this mean for the everyday investor? Historically, investing terror-free has had little impact on returns and can actually lower portfolio risk. This means that you can get an equivalent return on your investments while ensuring your funds aren't supporting rogue regimes and sponsors of terrorism.

The war on terror takes many forms, including diplomatic, military and economic efforts. Those of us lucky enough to live in free societies have the ability to take financial steps to support this war.

It is time to change our operating paradigm and prevent funds from reaching terrorists and their state sponsors. At the very minimum, international lawmakers, and members of the U.S. Congress in particular, should consider passing legislation that bars public pension funds from being invested in companies that support these states.

We need to strenuously apply every tool in our possession to ensure we choke off the supply of funds to countries that threaten us.

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(Mark Langerman is chief executive officer of Empowerment Financial Group. Avi Jorisch, a former U.S. Treasury official, is president of the Red Cell Intelligence Group and the author of "Tainted Money: Are We Losing the War on Money Laundering and Terrorism Finance?")
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5) President Obama’s mistake
Op-ed: Obama meant well but forgot that in Middle East one must first carry a big stick
By Orly Azoulay

America is about to vote against its very own policy. When President Obama will be asked to raise his hand and impose a veto on the Palestinians’ request to recognize their state, he will in fact be voting against himself and against everything he believed in from the day he entered office.

Leading Republican candidate takes Israel's side ahead of Palestinian UN bid. 'We would not be here today…if the Obama policy in the Middle East wasn't naive, arrogant, misguided and dangerous,' Rick Perry says


Obama did not expect to get to this junction. The man who believes that in the modern world there is no place for tyrants and dictators, oppressors and oppressed, occupiers and occupied, the man who truly wanted to bring an end to the occupation and conflict and whose worldview espouses the notion that there will be no calm in the Mideast without a Palestinian state – will now have to impose a veto on the Palestinian request.

Obama meant well, but failed in the execution. Nobody promised him a rose garden in the Middle East, yet nobody also prepared him for the rules of play prevalent in the grand bazaar.

Netanyahu and Abbas made a long series of mistakes, deliberately or not, yet the greatest error was made by Obama himself. He was elected as the first African-American president and made history. When he entered office, he rode an immense wave of sympathy and hope, bringing with him a new spirit and a refreshing air of goodwill and openness.

He won a majority in order to implement innovative policy and bring a new world order, not just talk about them.

A well-known dictum asserts that what a president fails to do in his first two years in office cannot be done later because elections are in store. Obama had two years to bring peace to the Middle East, but he wasted too much time on understanding the playing field. It isn’t easy to leap from the post of rookie senator to the Oval Office, and when the world reaches boiling point there are no 100 hours of mercy even.

We all lost

Obama wanted to bring the world the polar opposite of President George W. Bush’s policy: He did not seek the sheriff’s car or the cowboy boots; he believed that words touch more and that gestures of reconciliation have a way to reach and melt hearts.


The president is not naïve and most certainly not stupid; otherwise he would not have reached his position. However, he should have known that in the Middle East, if you reach out your hand first it means you are weak. The strong ones pull out a gun or at least threaten with a fist.


American President Theodore Roosevelt developed a policy doctrine premised on the following: “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.” Obama did not hold a big stick, or even a whip. He did not threaten Netanyahu, in a substantive way at least, and failed to scare Mahmoud Abbas. He tiptoed, and now he shall be walking on eggshells, because elections are in store and this is the finest hour of Jewish voters, whom Obama fails to appease regardless of how much he flatters them.


The president thought that ultimately wisdom would win out, yet wisdom lost. Obama lost along with it, and all of us lost as well.



5a)Obama's Dilemma: U.S. Foreign Policy and Electoral Realities
By George Friedman of Stratfor


STRATFOR does not normally involve itself in domestic American politics. Our focus is on international affairs, and American politics, like politics everywhere, is a passionate business. The vilification from all sides that follows any mention we make of American politics is both inevitable and unpleasant. Nevertheless, it’s our job to chronicle the unfolding of the international system, and the fact that the United States is moving deeply into an election cycle will affect American international behavior and therefore the international system.

The United States remains the center of gravity of the international system. The sheer size of its economy (regardless of its growth rate) and the power of its military (regardless of its current problems) make the United States unique. Even more important, no single leader of the world is as significant, for good or bad, as the American president. That makes the American presidency, in its broadest sense, a matter that cannot be ignored in studying the international system.

The American system was designed to be a phased process. By separating the selection of the legislature from the selection of the president, the founders created a system that did not allow for sudden shifts in personnel. Unlike parliamentary systems, in which the legislature and the leadership are intimately linked, the institutional and temporal uncoupling of the system in the United States was intended to control the passing passions by leaving about two-thirds of the U.S. Senate unchanged even in a presidential election year, which always coincides with the election of the House of Representatives. Coupled with senatorial rules, this makes it difficult for the president to govern on domestic affairs. Changes in the ideological tenor of the system are years in coming, and when they come they stay a long time. Mostly, however, the system is in gridlock. Thomas Jefferson said that a government that governs least is the best. The United States has a vast government that rests on a system in which significant change is not impossible but which demands a level of consensus over a period of time that rarely exists.


This is particularly true in domestic politics, where the complexity is compounded by the uncertainty of the legislative branch. Consider that the healthcare legislation passed through major compromise is still in doubt, pending court rulings that thus far have been contradictory. All of this would have delighted the founders if not the constantly trapped presidents, who frequently shrug off their limits in the domestic arena in favor of action in the international realm, where their freedom to maneuver is much greater, as the founders intended.

THE BURDEN OF THE PAST
The point of this is that all U.S. presidents live within the framework in which Barack Obama is now operating. First, no president begins with a clean slate. All begin with the unfinished work of the prior administration. Thus, George W. Bush began his presidency with an al Qaeda whose planning and implementation for 9/11 was already well under way. Some of the al Qaeda operatives who would die in the attack were already in the country. So, like all of his predecessors, Obama assumed the presidency with his agenda already laid out.

Obama had a unique set of problems. The first was his agenda, which focused on ending the Iraq war and reversing social policies in place since Ronald Reagan became president in 1981. By the time Obama entered office, the process of withdrawal from Iraq was under way, which gave him the option of shifting the terminal date. The historic reversal that he wanted to execute, starting with healthcare reform, confronted the realities of September 2008 and the American financial crisis. His Iraq policy was in place by Inauguration Day while his social programs were colliding with the financial crisis.

Obama’s campaign was about more than particular policies. He ran on a platform that famously promised change and hope. His tremendous political achievement was in framing those concepts in such a way that they were interpreted by voters to mean precisely what they wanted them to mean without committing Obama to specific policies. To the anti-war faction it meant that the wars would end. To those concerned about unilateralism it meant that unilateralism would be replaced by multilateralism. To those worried about growing inequality it meant that he would end inequality. To those concerned about industrial jobs going overseas it meant that those jobs would stay in the United States. To those who hated Guantanamo it meant that Guantanamo would be closed.


Obama created a coalition whose expectations of what Obama would do were shaped by them and projected on Obama. In fact, Obama never quite said what his supporters thought he said. His supporters thought they heard that he was anti-war. He never said that. He simply said that he opposed Iraq and thought Afghanistan should be waged. His strategy was to allow his followers to believe what they wanted so long as they voted for him, and they obliged. Now, this is not unique to Obama. It is how presidents get elected. What was unique was how well he did it and the problems it caused once he became president.

It must first be remembered that, contrary to the excitement of the time and faulty memories today, Obama did not win an overwhelming victory. About 47 percent of the public voted for someone other than Obama. It was certainly a solid victory, but it was neither a landslide nor a mandate for his programs. But the excitement generated by his victory created the sense of victory that his numbers didn’t support.

Another problem was that he had no programmatic preparation for the reality he faced. September 2008 changed everything in the sense that it created financial and economic realities that ran counter to the policies he envisioned. He shaped those policies during the primaries and after the convention, and they were based on assumptions that were no longer true after September 2008. Indeed, it could be argued that he was elected because of September 2008. Prior to the meltdown, John McCain had a small lead over Obama, who took over the lead only after the meltdown. Given that the crisis emerged on the Republicans’ watch, this made perfect sense. But shifting policy priorities was hard because of political commitments and inertia and perhaps because the extremities of the crisis were not fully appreciated.

Obama’s economic policies did not differ wildly from Bush’s — indeed, many of the key figures had served in the Federal Reserve and elsewhere during the Bush administration. The Bush administration’s solution was to print and insert money into financial institutions in order to stabilize the system. By the time Obama came into power, it was clear to his team that the amount of inserted money was insufficient and had to be increased. In addition, in order to sustain the economy, the policy that had been in place during the Bush years of maintaining low interest rates through monetary easing was extended and intensified. To a great extent, the Obama years have been the Bush years extended to their logical conclusion. Whether Bush would have gone for the stimulus package is not clear, but it is conceivable that he would have.

Obama essentially pursued the Bush strategy of stabilizing the banks in the belief that a stable banking system was indispensable and would in itself stimulate the economy by creating liquidity. Whether it did or it didn’t, the strategy created the beginnings of Obama’s political problem. He drew substantial support from populists on the left and suspicion from populists on the right. The latter, already hostile to Bush’s policies, coalesced into the Tea Party. But this was not Obama’s biggest problem. It was that his policies, which both seemed to favor the financial elite and were at odds with what Democratic populists believed the president stood for, weakened his support from the left. The division between what he actually said and what his supporters thought they heard him say began to widen. While the healthcare battle solidified his opposition among those who would oppose him anyway, his continuing response to the financial crisis both solidified opposition among Republicans and weakened support among Democrats.

A FOREIGN POLICY PROBLEM
This was coupled with his foreign policy problem. Among Democrats, the anti-war faction was a significant bloc. Most Democrats did not support Obama with anti-war reasons as their primary motivator, but enough did make this the priority issue that he could not win if he lost this bloc. This bloc believed two things. The first was that the war in Iraq was unjustified and harmful and the second was that it emerged from an administration that was singularly insensitive to the world at large and to the European alliance in particular. They supported Obama because they assumed not only that he would end wars — as well as stop torture and imprisonment without trial — but that he would also re-found American foreign policy on new principles.

Obama’s decision to dramatically increase forces in Afghanistan while merely modifying the Bush administration’s timeline for withdrawing from Iraq caused unease within the Democratic Party. But two steps that Bush took held his position. First, one of the first things Obama did after he became president was to reach out to the Europeans. It was expected that this would increase European support for U.S. foreign policy. The Europeans, of course, were enthusiastic about Obama, as the Noble Peace Prize showed. But while Obama believed that his willingness to listen to the Europeans meant they would be forthcoming with help, the Europeans believed that Obama would understand them better and not ask for help.

The relationship was no better under Obama than under Bush. It wasn’t personality or ideology that mattered. It was simply that Germany, as the prime example, had different interests than the United States. This was compounded by the differing views and approaches to the global financial crisis. Whereas the Americans were still interested in Afghanistan, the Europeans considered Afghanistan a much lower priority than the financial crisis. Thus, U.S.-European relations remained frozen.

Then Obama made his speech to the Islamic world in Cairo, where his supporters heard him trying to make amends for Bush’s actions and where many Muslims heard an unwillingness to break with Israel or end the wars. His supporters heard conciliation, the Islamic world heard inflexibility.

The European response to Obama the president as opposed to Obama the candidate running against George Bush slowly reverberated among his supporters. Not only had he failed to end the wars, he doubled down and surged forces into Afghanistan. And the continued hostility toward the United States from the Islamic world reverberated among those on the Democratic left who were concerned with such matters. Add to that the failure to close Guantanamo and a range of other issues concerning the war on terror and support for Obama crumbled.

A DOMESTIC POLICY FOCUS
His primary victory, health-care reform, was the foundation of an edifice that was never built. Indeed, the reform bill is caught in the courts, and its future is as uncertain as it was when the bill was caught in Congress. The Republicans, as expected, agree on nothing other than Obama’s defeat. The Democrats will support him; the question is how enthusiastic that support will be.

Obama’s support now stands at 41 percent. The failure point for a president’s second term lurks around 35 percent. It is hard to come back from there. Obama is not there yet. The loss of another six points would come from his Democratic base (which is why 35 is the failure point; when you lose a chunk of your own base, you are in deep trouble). At this point, however, the president is far less interested in foreign policy than he is in holding his base together and retaking the middle. He did not win by a large enough margin to be able to lose any of his core constituencies. He may hope that his Republican challenger will alienate the center, but he can’t count on that. He has to capture his center and hold his left.

That means he must first focus on domestic policy. That is where the public is focused. Even the Afghan war and the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq are not touching nerves in the center. His problem is twofold. First, it is not clear that he can get anything past Congress. He can then argue that this is Congress’ fault, but the Republicans can run against Congress as well. Second, it is not clear what he would propose. The Republican right can’t be redeemed, but what can Obama propose that will please the Democratic core and hold the center? The Democratic core wants taxes. The center doesn’t oppose taxes (it is merely uneasy about them), but it is extremely sensitive about having the taxes eaten up by new spending — something the Democratic left supports. Obama is trapped between two groups he must have that view the world differently enough that bridging the gap is impossible.

The founders gave the United States a government that, no matter how large it gets, can’t act on domestic policy without a powerful consensus. Today there is none, and therefore there can’t be action. Foreign policy isn’t currently resonating with the American public, so any daring initiatives in that arena will likely fail to achieve the desired domestic political end. Obama has to hold together a coalition that is inherently fragmented by many different understandings of what his presidency is about. This coalition has weakened substantially. Obama’s attention must be on holding it together. He cannot resurrect the foreign policy part of it at this point. He must bet on the fact that the coalition has nowhere else to go. What he must focus on is domestic policy crafted to hold his base and center together long enough to win the election.

The world, therefore, is facing at least 14 months with the United States being at best reactive and at worst non-responsive to events. Obama has never been a foreign policy president; events and proclivity (I suspect) have always drawn him to domestic matters. But between now and the election, the political configuration of the United States and the dynamics of his presidency will force him away from foreign policy.

This at a time when the Persian Gulf is coming to terms with the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and the power of Iran, when Palestinians and Israelis are facing another crisis over U.N. recognition, when the future of Europe is unknown, when North Africa is unstable and Syria is in crisis and when U.S. forces continue to fight in Afghanistan. All of this creates opportunities for countries to build realities that may not be in the best interests of the United States in the long run. There is a period of at least 14 months for regional powers to act with confidence without being too concerned about the United States.

The point of this analysis is to try to show the dynamics that have led the United States to this position, and to sketch the international landscape in broad strokes. The U.S. president will not be deeply engaged in the world for more than a year. Thus, he will have to cope with events pressed on him. He may undertake initiatives, such as trying to revive the Middle East peace process, but such moves would have large political components that would make it difficult to cope with realities on the ground. The rest of the world knows this, of course. The question is whether and how they take advantage of it.
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6)Can Israel Survive?
By Victor Davis Hanson


Will Israel survive? That question hasn't really been asked since 1967. Then, a far weaker Israel was surrounded on all sides by Arab dictatorships that were equipped with sophisticated weapons from their nuclear patron, the Soviet Union. But now, things are far worse for the Jewish state.

Egyptian mobs just tried to storm the Israeli embassy in Cairo and kill any Israelis they could get their hands on. Whatever Egyptian government emerges, it will be more Islamist than before -- and may renounce the peace accords with Israel.

One thing unites Syrian and Libyan dissidents: They seem to hate Israel as much as the murderous dictators whom they have been trying to throw out.

The so-called "Arab Spring" was supposed to usher in Arab self-introspection about why intolerant strongmen keep sprouting up in the Middle East. Post-revolutionary critics could freely examine self-inflicted Arab wounds, such as tribalism, religious intolerance, authoritarianism, endemic corruption, closed economies and gender apartheid.

But so far, "revolutionaries" sound a lot more like reactionaries. They are more often retreating to the tired conspiracies that the Israelis and Americans pushed onto innocent Arab publics homegrown corrupt madmen such as Bashar Assad, Muammar Gadhafi and Hosni Mubarak.

In 1967, the more powerful periphery of the Middle East -- the Shah's Iran, Kemalist Turkey, a military-run Pakistan and the Gulf monarchies -- was mostly uninvolved in the Israel-Arab frontline fighting.

Not now. A soon-to-be-nuclear Iran serially promises to destroy Israel. The Erdogan government in Turkey brags about its Ottoman Islamist past -- and wants to provoke Israel into an eastern Mediterranean shooting war. Pakistan is the world's leading host and exporter of jihadists obsessed with destroying Israel. The oil-rich Gulf states use their vast petroleum wealth and clout to line up oil importers against Israel. The 21st century United Nations is a de facto enemy of the Jewish state.

Meanwhile, the West is nearly bankrupt. The European Union is on the brink of dissolving, its population shrinking amid growing numbers of Islamic immigrants.

America is $16 trillion in debt. We are tired of three wars. The Obama administration initially thought putting a little "light" into the once-solid relationship between Israel and the United States might coax Arab countries into negotiating a peace. That new American triangulation certainly has given a far more confident Muslim world more hope -- but it's hope that just maybe the United States now cannot or will not come to Israel's aid if Muslim states ratchet up the tension.

It is trendy to blame Israel intransigence for all these bleak developments. But to do so is simply to forget history. There were three Arab efforts to destroy Israel before it occupied any borderlands after its victory in 1967. Later, it gave back all of Sinai and yet now faces a hostile Egypt. It got out of Lebanon -- and Hezbollah crowed that Israel was weakening, as that terrorist organization moved in and stockpiled thousands of missiles pointed at Tel Aviv. Israel got out of Gaza and earned as thanks both rocket showers and a terrorist Hamas government sworn to destroy the Jewish state.

The Arab Middle East damns Israel for not granting a "right of return" into Israel to Palestinians who have not lived there in nearly 70 years. But it keeps embarrassed silence about the more than half-million Jews whom Arab dictatorships much later ethnically cleansed from Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo, and sent back into Israel. On cue, the Palestinian ambassador to the United States again brags that there will be no Jews allowed in his newly envisioned, and American subsidized, Palestinian state -- a boast with eerie historical parallels.

By now we know both what will start and deter yet another conflict in the Middle East. In the past, wars broke out when the Arab states thought they could win them and stopped when they conceded they could not.

But now a new array of factors -- ever more Islamist enemies of Israel such as Turkey and Iran, ever more likelihood of frontline Arab Islamist governments, ever more fear of Islamic terrorism, ever more unabashed anti-Semitism, ever more petrodollars flowing into the Middle East, ever more chance of nuclear Islamist states, and ever more indifference by Europe and the United States -- has probably convinced Israel's enemies that finally they can win what they could not in 1947, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982 and 2006.

So brace yourself. The next war against Israel is no longer a matter of if, only when. And it will be far more deadly than any we've witnessed in quite some time.

Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and military historian, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal.
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