The ultimate folly in foreign policy and why Israel,(and the Czechs, Poles, Hondurans, etc) are distrustful of Obama.

http://tinyurl.com/meok7m
FRIENDS AND FOES Clifford D. May 07/30/2009
Historian Bernard Lewis has observed that a nation can make few mistakes worse than this: to be "harmless as an enemy, and treacherous as a friend." Is that a fair characterization of American foreign policy under the Obama administration?
Start with Honduras... President Manuel Zelaya attempted to subvert his country's laws and democratic institutions... as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Cuba's Raul Castro and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega. Honduras' Supreme Court stood up to Zelaya...Nevertheless, President Obama was quick to denounce Zelaya's ouster and -- echoing Chavez, Castro and Ortega - ...Contrast that with the White House response to the massive election fraud that recently took place in Iran: President Obama said he did not want to be seen as "meddling."He eventually did express his preference for Iran's dissidents over those beating, arresting and killing them -- though many saw his support as a day late and a dollar short....These are not the only examples of what Mackubin Thomas Owens, editor of Orbis, the quarterly journal of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, calls Obama's "disturbing propensity to curry favor with our adversaries at the expense of our friends."The Czechs and Poles are now "are rightly concerned that they will be sacrificed ..."And the Israelis fear that the Obama administration's desired opening to the Muslim world will be achieved at their expense."...Obama has been pressing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make unilateral concessions to Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority. The predictable result: Abbas has hardened his stance. One of his deputies, Kifah Radaydeh, said in a recent television interview: "[O]ur goal has never been peace. Peace is a means; and the goal is Palestine. I do not negotiate in order to achieve peace." And PA Member of Parliament Muhammad Dahlan this month said in another TV interview that Palestinians have a "legal right" to terrorism. "Change" was one of Obama's principal campaign themes, so he was bound to try new foreign policy approaches. He may have been misinformed ... in these and other cases, Obama's policies have collided with harsh realities. If Obama is as smart as advertised, he'll learn, and he'll adjust. If not, America's friends will grow colder while its enemies will grow bolder. And, over time, we will have fewer of the former and many more of the latter.
//Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism.//
http://tinyurl.com/l7xstw
Why Israel Is Nervous Tension is escalating between the U.S and Israel. The problem: The administration views the Israeli-Palestinian issue as the root of all problems, while Israel is focused on Iran’s nuclear threat, says Elliott Abrams. The tension in U.S.-Israel relations was manifest this past week as an extraordinary troupe of Obama administration officials visited Jerusalem. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, National Security Advisor James Jones, special Middle East envoy George Mitchell and new White House adviser Dennis Ross all showed up in Israel’s capital in an effort to…well, to do something. It was not quite clear what. Since President Obama came to office...the main motif in relations between the two governments has been friction. While nearly 80% of American Jews voted for Mr. Obama,... But last month, despite...reassurances, both the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Anti-Defamation League issued statements critical of the president’s handling of Israel. Given the warm relations during the Bush years and candidate Obama’s repeated statements of commitment to the very best relations with Israel, why have we fallen into this rut? ***Simple...he lied. He doesn't believe the U.S. was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, he thinks Islam is as good, if not better, as a guide to political governance and he doesn't seem to approve of either the Constitution ( he criticizes it as only "negative"--i.e. concerned with liberty-- with no positive injunctions for government--e.g. concerned with redistribution and equal results), or Western Civilization and certainly not American exceptionalism****
U.S.-Israel relations are often depicted as an extended honeymoon, but that’s a false image. Harry Truman,...defied the secretary of state he so admired, George C. Marshall,... by recognizing the new state 11 minutes after it declared its independence in 1948. Relations weren’t particularly warm under Eisenhower...The real alliance began in 1967, after Israel’s smashing victory in the Six Day War, and it was American arms and Nixon’s warnings to the Soviet Union to stay out that allowed Israel to survive and prevail in the 1973 war. Israelis are no fans of President Carter and, as his more recent writings have revealed, his own view of Israel is very hostile. During the George H.W. Bush and Clinton years, there were moments of close cooperation, but also of great friction—...occasional friction over American pressure for what Israelis viewed as endless concessions to the Palestinians ...Yet no other administration, even among those experiencing considerable dissonance with Israel, started off with as many difficulties as Obama’s. ...Mr. Obama and his team wish former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni had won the top job...But the Obama administration has managed to win the mistrust of most Israelis, not just conservative politicians. Despite his great popularity in many parts of the world, in Israel Obama is now seen as no ally. A June poll found that just 6% of Israelis called him “pro-Israel,” when 88% had seen President George W. Bush that way....The deeper problem—and the more complex explanation of bilateral tensions—is that the Obama administration,... is in fact following a highly ideological policy path. Its ability to cope with, indeed even to see clearly, the realities of life in Israel and the West Bank and the challenge of Iran to the region is compromised by the prism through which it analyzes events...a policy of outreach and engagement, especially with places like Syria, Venezuela, North Korea and Iran. Engagement with the Muslim world is a special goal, which leads not only to the president’s speech in Cairo on June 4 but also to a distancing from Israel so as to appear more “even-handed” to Arab states. Seen from Jerusalem, all this looks like a flashing red light: trouble ahead.Iran is the major security issue facing Israel, which sees itself confronting an extremist regime seeking nuclear weapons and stating openly that Israel should be wiped off the map....many Israelis believe a military strike on Iran may in the end be unavoidable. The Obama administration, on the other hand, talks of outstretched hands; on July 15, even after Iran’s election, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said “we understand the importance of offering to engage Iran….direct talks provide the best vehicle….We remain ready to engage with Iran.”
To the Israelis this seems unrealistic, even naïve, while to U.S. officials an Israeli attack on Iran is a nightmare that would upset Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world. ... likely that Iran will forge ahead toward building a weapon, and U.S.-Israel tension will grow as Israel watches the clock tick and sees its options narrowed to two: live with an Iranian bomb, or strike Iran soon to delay its program long enough for real political change to come to that country.
Israel believes the only thing worse than bombing Iran is Iran’s having the Bomb, but the evidence suggests this is not the Obama view. If Iran is the most dangerous source of U.S.-Israel tension, the one most often discussed is settlements: The Obama administration has sought a total “freeze” ...The Israelis years ago agreed there would be no new settlements and no physical expansion of settlements, just building “up and in” inside already existing communities. Additional construction in settlements does not harm Palestinians, who in fact get most of the construction jobs. The West Bank economy is growing fast and the Israelis are removing security roadblocks so Palestinians can get around the West Bank better.... “continuation of the relaxation of restrictions could result in real GDP growth of 7% for 2009 as a whole.” That’s a gross domestic product growth rate Americans would leap at, so what’s this dispute about?
It is, once again, about the subordination of reality to pre-existing theories...that every problem in the Middle East is related to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute....“merely” improving life for Palestinians and doing the hard work needed to prepare them for eventual independence isn’t enough. Nor is it daunted by the minor detail that half of the eventual Palestine is controlled by the terrorist group Hamas....in keeping with its “yes we can” approach and its boundless ambitions, it has decided to go not only for a final peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, but also for comprehensive peace in the region.... In order to achieve that we have asked all involved to take steps.” The administration (pocketing the economic progress Israel is fostering in the West Bank) decided that Israel’s “step” would be to impose a complete settlement freeze, which would be proffered to the Arabs to elicit “steps” from them. But Israelis notice that already the Saudis have refused to take any “steps” toward Israel, and other Arab states are apparently offering weak tea...Mr. Mitchell was in Syria last week, smiling warmly at its repressive ruler Bashar Assad and explaining that the administration would start waiving the sanctions on Syria...the Syrian dissident Ammar Abdulhamid told the Wall Street Journal, “The regime feels very confident politically now. Damascus feels like it’s getting a lot without giving up anything.”.....any concerns we might have are counterbalanced by the desire to get Mr. Assad to buy in to new negotiations with Israel. (Is the new “information technology” we’ll be offering Mr. Assad likely to help dissidents there, or to help him suppress them?)Future stability in Egypt is uncertain because President Hosni Mubarak is nearing 80, reportedly not in good health, and continues to crush all moderate opposition forces, but this is all ignored...
Israelis have learned the hard way that reality cannot be ignored and that ideology offers no protection from danger.... A policy based in realism would help the Palestinians prepare for an eventual state while we turn our energies toward the real challenge ...: what is to be done about Iran as it faces its first internal crisis since the regime came to power in 1979.... the tension with Israel shows the administration is—up to now—following the old script that attributes every problem in the region to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while all who live there can see that developments in Iran are in fact the linchpin of the region’s future. The Obama administration’s “old formulas” have produced the current tensions with Israel. They will diminish only if the administration adopts a more realistic view of what progress is possible, and what dangers lurk, in the Middle East.