Priorities

President-elect Barack Obama spoke to the American people last week about the urgency of passing an economic recovery plan. He explained in some detail what can be done and should be done and what will likely be the outcome if it’s not done.

Not surprisingly, there were objections by one or another member of Congress to this or that particular of his plan – too much, too little, too late, too soon -- because that’s how politics works. Still, I have a hard time understanding why, when Barack Obama won the election so handily, when the populace clearly wants dramatic measures taken in order to right the ship of state, we have members of Congress fussing about this tax cut or that bailout instead of getting down to business.

The feeling I had after listening to Obama’s speech about his plan was that if ever there was a time for Americans to write their congressmen it is now. I sent off a letter to Barton, Cornyn and Hutchison as follows:

I urge you to pass President-Elect Barack Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan immediately. Do not allow the bill to be weakened by delaying tactics on either side of the aisle. We need a big and bold plan of strategic, substantial and sustained public investment to create jobs now, generate clean energy, modernize our infrastructure and expand access to health care and education. Our economy is hemorrhaging and urgent action is needed. Thank you.

And, you know what? It’s not just about our economy. It’s about world peace and about our national security.

The world outside our borders is blowing up, and we need to get this matter of our economy under control so that soon-to-be President Obama can re-direct his attention to places like Israel and Gaza, Pakistan, India, Iraq and Iran, because he is our best hope, if there is hope, and we need him now.

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Over the course of the last several years, some 8,000 rockets have been fired into Israel from Gaza, destroying homes, injuring and killing innocent people and driving families to bomb-shelter living. The world has taken little notice. A “cease fire” between Israel and Hamas, the Islamic militants who took over Gaza by force in a bloody coup against the Palestinian Authority a while back, ended just before Christmas. Hamas fired some 80 rockets into Israel that day and continued the bombardment daily thereafter -- and Israeli parents and children returned to the bomb-shelters.

When Israel finally said “Enough!” and fought back, Hamas deliberately drew deadly fire on its fellow citizens, with predictable results. Now there was outrage in the international community.

There’s a problem here, I think. And someone needs to deal with it. The United States is the one force that has any hope of mediating a solution in this dreadfully complex situation, but we can’t do it while we’re fighting our own economic demons.

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We are in a situation the likes of which none of us has ever experienced. We don’t have a model for resolving the mixture of economic and international crises in which we find ourselves in this year 2009, so the best option is to trust those whom, after all, we have elected.

And tell those members of Congress to get on board.

On the Middle East

At the Israel-Lebanon border last week, two Israeli soldiers were brought home for burial in exchange for Israel’s release of five Hezbollah prisoners, including the unspeakable terrorist Samir Kuntar who, in 1979, crushed the skull of a 4-year-old girl before whom he had just murdered her father.

The mourning of the hundreds of Israelis who were there to accept the coffins stood in sharp contrast to the celebration and dancing in the streets of Lebanon, where Kuntar and his fellow unspeakables were greeted with a red carpet and kisses and honored as heroes.

In a tiny country where almost every citizen is required to serve in the Defense Force, every soldier is a member of the family and every death is taken personally, and despite the indisputable strategic downside of handing terrorists back to their countries in exchange for the release of kidnapped Israelis — too many of whom are dead by the time the deal is struck — it’s never been possible to say no.

Still in captivity, though, is Gilad Shalit, the young soldier kidnapped by Hamas. Though he is believed to still be alive, there really doesn’t seem to be any release in the works for him, even though the Egyptians have been trying as mediators to bring it about; but when you are dealing with Hamas you might as well be dealing with quicksilver.

And of course there’s the larger problem of Hamas itself and the way it chooses to interact with Israel. Which is to say, not at all, really.

There are some signs of progress toward a peaceful resolution with the Palestinian Authority, headed by Abbas, but that cannot include all of the lands under the Palestinian Authority unless and until control of Gaza is no longer with Hamas.
And the problem with agreeing to talk to Hamas, right off the bat, is deciding which Hamas to talk to. The head honcho lives in Syria, but the street activists are in Gaza.

So, when you sit down for a cup of chai with some Hamas folks, for whom will they be authorized to speak? Who is in charge?

And would Abbas and the West Bank folks even want a separate negotiation with Hamas? After all, they were basically thrown from power in a Hamas coup in Gaza.

Anyway, let’s say you offer to explore ways of arriving at a peaceful solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Let’s say you will talk about all kinds of things if they will accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. You will not get an unequivocal answer, so right there you have an insurmountable problem.

But perhaps they can be persuaded to quit lobbing missiles into Israel in exchange for economic aid. Perhaps if we could stop the violence and begin a kind of Marshall Plan for the whole of Gaza and the West Bank, if we could help establish a thriving economy there, bring quality to life there, even Hamas might be persuaded to give peace a chance.

A seldom-mentioned part of the problem, too, is that you have to get past the reality that the Palestinian predicament is a useful foil for all kinds of other actors in the region, like Hezbollah, or Fatah in Pakistan, who will sabotage, or at least impede, any such effort.

Right now, the bad guys are in the driver’s seat. The Israelis would accept a peaceful resolution in a heartbeat, but it will take more than promises for them to open a road here, take down a barrier there, close a settlement over there, for their experience is that every time they let down their guard they get slaughtered in their own streets.

Can you imagine how Americans would behave if they experienced something like 9/11 several times a year?

Lucy got Charlie Brown to try for the kick every time, but the Israelis are done with the game.

Maybe the solution will ultimately come from the outside. Imagine, for example, that (now that we seem to be talking to them) our diplomacy gets us into a working relationship with Iran. Imagine that Iran is persuaded to call off the Syria/Hamas/Hezbollah dogs in exchange for, say, energy technology.

Ah, yes, a dream. Maybe just a dream, but maybe even possible.

An Israeli leader said, approximately, “When the Palestinians come to love life more than they hate us we will finally have a chance for peace.”

Originally published June 20, 2008

Peace for our time?

A couple of weeks back, President Bush traveled to Israel to join that determined-to-survive and thriving little country in celebrating its 60th birthday. In a speech to the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, Mr. Bush somehow found it appropriate to lash out at “some” who suggest that talking to one’s enemies may be a good beginning idea.

Whoever he meant by “some,” the perfect irony is where he said it, because the concept of the importance of talking not just to our friends but also to our enemies is old hat to Israelis. It was none other than Yitzhak Rabin, speaking as Prime Minister of Israel back in 1993, who said, “One does not make peace with one's friends. One makes peace with one's enemy.”

However Mr. Bush might choose to characterize the notion of talking to people whose behavior we don’t like, there is no arguing with the truth stated by one of Israel’s greatest statesmen —someone who was in a position to know whereof he spoke.

And just in case the reference to “some” went right over people’s heads, the ever-helpful John McCain tag-teamed with Mr. Bush to make sure everyone understood what Mr. Bush had said and then linked it to the campaign by first expounding on the idea of “talking = appeasement” and then cleverly declining to say whether he thought Barack Obama’s suggestion that we should talk to Iran would make him an appeaser.

But history is on the side of Rabin and Obama. Israel’s peace-making efforts since 1967 have succeeded with Egypt, an enemy they chose to talk to, and with Jordan, another enemy turned friend by talking. Not to mention the Palestinian Liberation Organization, now the Palestinian Authority, and Rabin’s willingness to talk to Yassir Arafat, because of which the old enemies began the long hard road to a two-state solution.

Mr. Bush himself apparently thought it was okay to talk to Muammar Qadaaffi, of Libya, notwithstanding that dictator’s support of terrorism (Pan Am 103), and he proudly says it was his administration’s negotiations that brought about Libya’s agreement to abandon pursuit of nuclear arms.

And don’t forget North Korea, where Mr. Bush’s emissaries have been engaged with a clearly dangerous despot, Kim Jong Il, in an effort to end his nuclear weapons program, an effort that seems on its way to paying off.

So it was puzzling when Mr. Bush veered away from the celebration at hand to suggest that anyone who even suggested talking to the enemy was pretty much in the same league as Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister whose actions in the run-up to WWII have established him, in the eyes of some, as the model for appeasement.

In his speech in Israel, Mr. Bush said, “Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. … We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

Never mind that Mr. Chamberlain talked to the enemy and gave the enemy what it wanted, namely, a big bite out of Czechoslovakia, in exchange for nothing more than a worthless promise by Hitler to behave himself.

And never mind that the American Heritage dictionary definition of appeasement is “to pacify or placate (someone) by acceding to their demands.”

Well, never mind the facts. Mr. Bush and Mr. McCain clearly intended to label as an appeaser and bad-as-Chamberlain anyone who dares suggest even talking to an enemy. After all, this is modern American politics, and the faster you can paste a nasty label onto your opponent, the better.

Well, Mr. Obama jumped on it “like a duck on a June-bug,” as Ernie Ford used to say:

“George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists,” said Obama, “and the president's extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel. …

“Instead of tough talk and no action, we need to do what Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan did and use all elements of American power — including tough, principled, and direct diplomacy — to pressure countries like Iran and Syria.”

“I am happy to have a debate with John McCain and George Bush about foreign policy,” Obama said. “I believe that there is no separation between George Bush and John McCain when it comes to our Middle East policy, and I think their policy has failed.”

Somewhat inconveniently, it was only the day before all this that Defense Secretary Robert Gates had said, "We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage . . . and then sit down and talk with them." Oops! Another appeaser, right there in Mr. Bush’s cabinet.

And the day after was just as inconvenient. A new video hit YouTube and newscasts across the country: Here was John McCain, back in 2006, live and in color, interviewed by James Rubin for SkyNews:

RUBIN: "Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?"

McCAIN: "They're the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another… it's a new reality in the Middle East.”

Beautiful.