--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "shempmcgurk" <shempmcg...@...>
wrote:
>
> Hillary's the sort of shoot-first, ask questions later kinda gal.
>
> I wish I could provide the citation for this but I remember
> hearing/reading somewhere that when Bill Clinton was dithering over
> whether to bomb the Serbs that it was Hillary who provided the
> impetus to him to go ahead with it.
>
> She and uber-Zionist Rahmstein will succeed in pushing Barack to
> bomb
> the hell out of Teheran, just you see.
>
> My president.
Let's hope not.
Meanwhile Obama Fiddles While Gaza Burns
The Nation by Robert Dreyfuss on 12/29/2008
Thanks to Hamas' stupid, provocative, and self-defeating rocket
assault on, well, nothing, in Israel, the Middle East that Barack
Obama will inherit from George W. Bush just got a lot more
complicated. And, sadly, Obama seems content to fiddle while Gaza burns.
Yesterday Obama got an official US intelligence briefing on the crisis
in Gaza, which may or may not have numbed his brain with data he
didn't need. Obama didn't need an intelligence briefing to tell him
anything he really needs to know: that, once again, the twin poles of
Israeli and Palestinian extremism have flared up in a way that will
only undermine, perhaps fatally, the chances of a negotiated accord
during Obama's first term in office.
The only useful intelligence Obama might have gained from the briefing
is that the Mossad knew, before Israel's massive attack on Gaza, that
Hamas was only trying to make a show of force. That is, Hamas'
not-too-bright leaders thought that they could get away with a few
hundred rocket attacks into Israel and then renegotiate a better
ceasefire deal. Like the less-than-brilliant strategists in Georgia,
who thought that they could attack Russia with impunity and who
instead got their heads handed to them last August, Hamas' own
armchair fanatics thought they could get away with it. Oops. The Wall
Street Journal reports today:
In recent weeks, Israeli intelligence officials have said they
believed Hamas doesn't want a full-scale confrontation, but rather
wants to make a show of force before seeking a renewed cease-fire on
more favorable terms.
If that's true, and there's little reason to think it isn't, it was
certainly within Israel's power to exercise restraint -- or perhaps to
engage in a little tit-for-tat counterattacks -- while waiting for
things to settle down. But, no. Hamas, for its part, should have known
that it was firing its rockets directly into Israel's pre-election
political mess, in which hardline extremists like Bibi Netanyahu are
gaining the upper hand. And the power of those extremists, playing on
Israeli public opinion and its fears, pushed the pathetic Olmert-Livni
government over the brink. (It's particularly disgusting that Olmert,
who in his various exit interviews and speeches has pretty much
acknowledged that Israel needs a deal involving the removal of Jewish
settlements and the partition of Jerusalem, would go along with the
overkill in Gaza.)
But the truly sad thing is see how Obama has opted out. He left the
commenting to David Axelrod, his political strategist, who said,
mouse-like: "I think he (Obama) wants to get a handle on the situation
so that when he becomes president on January 20 he has the advantage
of all the facts and information leading up to that point." To that
gobbledygook he added that now all-too-familiar nostrum that America
has "one president at a time."
It's long past time for the United States to have opened a dialogue
with Hamas. As stupid as they are, their leadership is divided and
they are not all religious fanatics (though many are) and they are not
all living in the fantasy that Hamas can defeat Israel. The same
Journal story today notes:
There are indications that the Hamas leadership is divided on how
forcefully to respond. When Hamas's traditionally hard-line
Damascus-based leader Mr. Meshal urged renewed attacks against Israel
earlier this month, local Hamas leaders in Gaza quickly distanced
themselves from his statements.
Those more sensible Gaza leaders of Hamas might be willing to
reconcile with Fatah and the Palestinian authority, and it's the least
that Obama could do to say so. It might be nice, too, if Obama would
gently (or not so gently) point out that Israel's ham-handed
overreaction needs to be reined in. (The Bush administration, which
cheer-led Israel's 2006 attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon, isn't going to
call for restraint.)
Meanwhile, just as Israel's attack on Lebanon strengthened that
country's band of religious fanatics -- Hezbollah -- the Gaza assault
is almost guaranteed to end up bolstering Palestine's own religious
extremists, including Hamas's more wild-eyed and terrorist-inclined
gangs. For some Israeli extremists, that may be exactly what they
want, because it pushes a two-state solution that much further away.
It would nice, too, if Obama would point that out.
During 2008, Obama never allowed any daylight between himself and the
Israeli lobby. Those inclined to believe that Obama had a secret plan
to break with AIPAC and its allies and to push for a solution in
Palestine in a manner that wouild involve twisting Israeli arms
discounted Obama's pro-Israel rhetoric as campaign posturing. We'll
see. But it now appears abundantly clear that we'll have to wait until
January 20, if not long afterwards, to find out.
