Tuesday, February 08, 2011

God in American Politics But In Front of Obama

From Ben Smith:

Former National Security Adviser Jim Jones seems to be speaking his mind these days:

“I’m of the belief that had God appeared in front of President Obama in 2009 and said if he could do one thing on the face of the planet, and one thing only, to make the world a better place and give people more hope and opportunity for the future, I would venture that it would have something to do with finding the two-state solution to the Middle East,” Jones said [at the Herzliya security conference in Israel].

Speaking to reporters after addressing the conference, Jones said Israel’s dispute with the Palestinians was the “knot that is at the center of mass.”


And Jonah Goldberg already knocked that down in the LATimes, quotiong Jones from 2009:

...critics and friends of Israel...agree...hat Israel is a special sort of nation. It represents a special idea; it is different. This is especially so for America's so-called realists...they are convinced U.S. support for Israel fuels hatred and instability. Hence their obsession with the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

For instance, when then-national security advisor Gen. James Jones spoke in 2009 to J Street — the "pro-Israel" lobby that isn't very pro-Israel — he said that if he could solve just one problem in the world, it would be the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the "epicenter" of U.S. foreign policy.

Such thinking falls somewhere between wild exaggeration and dangerous nonsense. Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. Al Qaeda remains dedicated to our destruction. Turkey, a once-staunch ally, is Islamifying. Russia is careening toward autocracy and China is on the march. Oh, and the United States is fighting two land wars. But the national security advisor's No. 1 priority was keeping Israelis from building houses in East Jerusalem? Really?

...Israel is not the source of the Middle East's problems, never mind the keystone to U.S. foreign policy challenges.

In Egypt, the popular uprising unfolding is not about Israel but about autocratic brutality, economic stagnation and skyrocketing prices. The same goes for Tunisia as well as the popular protests brutally crushed by Iran's mullahs in 2009. Turkey is not Islamifying because of the Palestinians. Al Qaeda surely hates Israel, but its roots lay in hatred of the Saudi royal family and the Islamist ambitions of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.


Jones was a geo-military strategist?

Poor America.

Poorer Israel, though.

^

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