Archive for July, 2009

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G-8 Tightens Timetable on Iran

Friday, July 10th, 2009

Talk about a swing and a miss.

Coming out of the G-8 talks in Italy, much of the media seems intent on arguing that the summit didn’t go far enough on the issue of a nuclear Iran. See, for example, Time: “The G-8 Speaks Softly on Iran’s Nuclear Program.”

This completely ignores the fact that Russia, which in the past has been the stumbling block to a united front against Iran, signed on to what President Barack Obama today described as “a strong statement calling on Iran to fulfill its [nuclear non-proliferation] responsibilities without delay.”

And there seems to be a bigger, more fundamental point that the media is totally missing.

In May, when Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu met President Barack Obama in the White House, Obama said that while he would try to engage Iran, he wouldn’t do it indefinitely, saying the Islamic Republic had until the end of the year to respond on its nuclear program. At the time, the New York Post said the two leaders “agreed an aggressive timetable is needed to deal with Iran’s nuclear intentions.”

That timetable just got a whole lot more aggressive. The leaders of the G-8 nations, with Russia’s assent, said they would “take stock” of the situation again at another international meeting in Pittsburgh in just two months.

As Politico reported:

“What that does is provides a time frame,” Obama said. If Iran does not take up offers to resume talks over its nuclear program, “you have on record the G-8 to begin with [and] potentially a lot of other countries that are going to say you need to take further steps …”

Obama said a ‘door’ is open to Iran, but he warned that the patience of the world community is finite. “We’re not going to just wait indefinitely and allow for the development of nuclear weapons in breach of international treaties and wake up one day and find ourselves in a much worse situation and unable to act.”

As I write this, Haaretz is running an AP article on its homepage headlined: “Obama: U.S. Won’t Allow Iran to Develop Nukes.”

Here’s the lead:

U.S. President Barack Obama said Friday the world would not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons, a day after a senior Iranian official vowed his country would not back down “even one step” over its nuclear work …

“I think the real story here was consensus in that [G8] statement, including Russia, which doesn’t make statements like that lightly,” [Obama] said. “Now the other story there was the agreement that we will reevaluate Iran’s posture towards negotiating the cessation of a nuclear weapons policy.”

“We’ll evaluate that at the G20 meeting in September.”

Despite what Time says, I imagine the clerical leaders of Iran hear the message loud and clear.

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The Time is Right for Obama to Visit Israel

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

Reading the Akron Beacon Journal today, I came across this headline: “Obama tries to win over skeptical Russians.”

After reaching out to the Islamic world in speeches in Turkey and Egypt, President Barack Obama sought once more to speak directly to the hearts and minds of another audience that has been hostile to the United States: the Russian public. …

Just as the president sprinkled his speeches in the Middle East with references to the Quran and partnership with the Muslim world, Obama spoke knowledgeably to Russians about issues close to their hearts.

It was vintage Obama, reaching out directly to the people, speaking honestly — “he quietly criticized Russia’s increasingly authoritarian politics and aggressive foreign policy — without lecturing or accusing the Kremlin” — and earning their trust.

Several times, Obama made references that might sound like platitudes anywhere else — but which struck a powerful chord with Russians.

It’s time that Obama went to Israel, and made the same kind of appeal to skeptical Jews.

I understand why he didn’t start with Israel. Obama has reached out first to those — in Iran, the Arab world, and Russia — who are most suspicious of the United States and its foreign policy, after eight years of tough talk and sabre-rattling by George Bush. That makes sense.

Now, though, he has an Israel problem. According to a recent Jerusalem Post Poll – much discussed and emailed in the Jewish community — only 6 percent of Jewish Israelis consider Obama pro-Israel. A whopping 50 percent believe he is pro-Palestinian — up from only 14 percent in May.

This, about a president who went to Cairo – the heart of the Muslim world – and declared that America’s bond with Israel “is unbreakable.”

Clearly, there is a growing credibility gap.

There’s an article in Haaretz today by Aluf Benn, who I’m not prone to agree with, but who makes a good point. Benn notes that while many Israelis might actually support a settlement freeze, when Obama called for exactly that, absolutely no one on the political left in Israel sided with him over Netanyahu. One reason, Benn writes, is that:

Obama did not try to communicate with the Israeli public and convince them that freezing settlements will be an important and positive step to contribute to peace and a better future. Obama addressed the Arabs and Muslims, but not the Israelis.

For the Obama administration, it’s not just an issue of assuaging the Israeli public, and thus making American Jews feel better. If the Israeli public understood they had a true friend in the White House, a large segment might line up behind Obama, increasing pressure on their prime minister to compromise on settlements and other tough, intractable issues coming down the pike.

The other day, a U.S. Congressman with unassailable pro-Israel and pro-Obama credentials put it this way: “[The Israeli] public needs to be predisposed to follow” the United States’ lead on peace talks.

The best way for that to happen is for Obama to go to the Jewish homeland and speak to Israelis directly, honestly, and from the heart.

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Obama Persuades Russia on Iran

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

The first day of President Barack Obama’s trip to Russia yielded an important agreement between Cold War foes to cut their strategic nuclear arsenals by at least a quarter.

That’s important — not only because, as The New York Times reported, it’s “a first step in a broader effort intended to reduce the threat of such weapons drastically and to prevent their further spread to unstable regions.” It’s also important for the security of Israel.

Prior to leaving for Moscow, Obama reiterated that Iran has a short window of opportunity — the “coming weeks and months” — to show it is serious about responding to his overtures for talks, or else face sanctions. Sanctions, though, have little teeth if Russia and China are not on board. As Zvi Bar-el wrote in Haaretz last September: “Iran assumes Russia and China will continue to protect it from embargoes.”

President Obama also said, as the Times reported, “the United States now has more leverage to pressure Iran because he had succeeded in getting ‘countries like Russia and China to take these issues seriously.’”

Flash-forward a day, and we already see tangible evidence of that success.

“After hours of meetings at the Kremlin,” the Times writes, ”the presidents agreed to conduct a joint assessment of any Iranian threat and presented a united front against the spread of nuclear weapons.”

The paper continues:

Mr. Obama hailed the arms agreement as an example for the world as he pursued a broader agenda aimed at countering — and eventually eliminating — the spread of nuclear weapons, a goal he hopes to make a defining legacy of his presidency.

While the United States and Russia together have 95 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons, Mr. Obama also views Russia as an influential player in deterring nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea.

“This is an urgent issue, and one in which the United States and Russia have to take leadership,” Mr. Obama said. “It is very difficult for us to exert that leadership unless we are showing ourselves willing to deal with our own nuclear stockpiles in a more rational way.”

Mr. Medvedev expressed willingness to help fight the proliferation of nuclear weapons in places like Iran and North Korea. “It’s our common, joint responsibility, and we should do our utmost to prevent any negative trends there, and we are ready to do that,” Mr. Medvedev said.

And the U.S. president is giving the Russians every incentive to follow through. As Haaretz reports:

Obama, on a visit to Moscow on Tuesday, called for the United States and Russia to overcome Cold War mistrust and forge a true global partnership, saying that the U.S. wouldn’t need to deploy a missile defense system in Europe, a move Russia opposes, if Russia helped to bring the Iranian nuclear threat to an end. 

“If the threat from Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile program is eliminated, the driving force for missile defense in Europe will be eliminated,” Obama said in remarks prepared for delivery to graduates from Moscow’s New Economic School. 

If President Obama didn’t look into Medvedev’s eyes and see his soul, it may be because he’s more focused on a geopolitical strategy for regional stability — with Israel as a prime beneficiary.

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‘Relish Your Life’

Friday, July 3rd, 2009

So a reporter walks into a newsroom …

Not exactly man bites dog type stuff.

But this reporter was David Rohde, who escaped from the Taliban last month after seven months in capitivity. He walked in to the New York Times newsroom Wednesday to “perhaps the most sustained ovation ever heard in the paper’s newsroom,” and so Clyde Haberman wrote about it for the City Room blog.

Rohde was abducted, along with a translator and escort, Tahir Ludin, in November, outside Kabul, where he was researching a book. The story of how he and Ludin escaped — as their hope for survival was fading fast – is pretty incredible. It involved waiting until dark, scaling a wall, and high-tailing it to a nearby base in Pakistan. You can read about it here. 

Rohde’s return to the newsroom, with his wife of only nine months at his side, was no less so.

He did not discuss details of his abduction or of his escape on June 19. But he allowed that Mr. Ludin had told the hostage takers that if they wanted to chop off Mr. Rohde’s head, they would have to chop off his own first. It was a chilling reminder of the dangers of reporting in Central Asia, where Daniel Pearl of The Wall Street Journal was murdered and beheaded in 2002.

Mr. Rohde spoke of Mr. Ludin’s bravery and said he represented true Islam and not the “twisted” form of their captors, whose hard-line interpretation of religion, he said, made them less humane.

Rohde seems like a pretty self-effacing guy. He joked that wandering into a danger zone just a few weeks after getting married “cemented my position as the worst newlywed husband ever.”

Before leaving the newsroom, he offered some advice — a few words that I think pretty well put all the politics, all the petty things that distract us, in perspective:

“Over the next day,” he said, “hug your spouse, kiss your child, call your relatives, watch the sunset, watch the sunrise, thank your God and relish your life.”

Happy Fourth of July, everyone. And Shabbat Shalom. I’ll be back next week.

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A Final Thought on Norm Coleman

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

In the end, Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman bowed out powerfully, turning political defeat into education.

“Ours is a government of laws, not men and women,” he said, conceding yesterday to Al Franken. “The Supreme Court of Minnesota has spoken, and I respect its decision and will abide by the result. It’s time for Minnesota to come together under the leaders it has chosen and move forward. I join all Minnesotans in congratulating our newest United States senator — Al Franken.”

I know this is the kind of thing people say, when they lose elections in this country. But, still, there’s something about Coleman’s formulation — pointing out the primacy of law over the individual — that really moved me, particularly now, when, half-way around the word, a different country has told its people, at the barrel of a gun: Ours is a government of men, not laws.

Coleman is a an observant Jew. Of all the things I read during the protracted fight for the Minnesota Senate seat, the most indelible image might have been this one, from an April article in the New York Times:

[Coleman] said that every morning, he puts tefillin — black leather boxes containing scrolls — on his arm as part of a morning Jewish prayer ritual. “I bind myself every morning,” he said. “I bind myself to God every morning because it’s in his hands.”

I have almost nothing in common with Coleman, politically. Among other things, he has been a strategic advisor and consultant for the Republican Jewish Coalition, the political archenemy of the National Jewish Democratic Council, on whose board I serve. But over the last few months, I’ve started putting on tefillin, too – once a week. It’s a powerful but strange ritual, one that political leaders rarely speak openly about.

“David Letterman will make fun of me for this,” Coleman said, after revealing his religious practice.

Maybe. But I appreciated Coleman’s candor. Like his concession speech, it took a certain amount of courage.

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The Liberal Supermajority

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

Eight months later, the final verdict has been rendered on the Bush-Cheney era. Al Franken has defeated Norm Coleman in Minnesota. Democrats have achieved the seemingly impossible: a filibuster-proof majority in the U.S. Senate.

Dare to dream.

I’ll leave it to others to explain why 60 seats in the Senate does not mean that Democrats will be able to jam through any and all legislation. (See, for example, Roll Call’s article, “Franken’s Victory Gets Democrats to 60, Sort of.”)

I’d just like to point out that it’s the first time since 1977, when Democrats held 61 seats, that either party has had enough votes to cut off debate and force a vote, a powerful procedural tool.

True, it took a Minnesota Supreme Court ruling and a defection to the Democratic party by Senator Arlen Specter to get there. Nonetheless, in this era of red states and blue states – of Fox News, Conservative talk radio, and hyperpartisanship – hitting this threshold represents about as thorough a repudiation of Republican leadership and policies as one might imagine.

Now, the fun starts.

Before the election, the Wall Street Journal predicted that if the Democrats had 60 seats, the new ”liberal supermajority” would take the country straight off a cliff.

The current financial panic may give today’s left another pretext to return to those heydays of welfare-state liberalism. Americans voting for “change” should know they may get far more than they ever imagined.

Conservative columnist Mona Charen piled on:

In the first place, the Democrats can, with a super-majority, change the rules of the game. They can make the District of Columbia the 51st state with two new senators (guaranteed to be Democrats in perpetuity). They can reinstitute the so-called Fairness Doctrine that required radio stations to provide equal time to all political viewpoints … [which] would kill one of the principal irritants to liberals and Democrats [Conservative talk radio] – to say nothing of disemboweling the First Amendment.

To elect a super-majority of Democrats at a time of economic dislocation is to flirt with depression. Nearly all economists agree that two moves by the Hoover administration deepened and prolonged the panic of 1929 and turned it into the Great Depression. One was raising taxes and the other was imposing protectionist trade policies. Senator Obama proposes to do both of those things.

Now hang on a sec, Mona. While it’s too early to draw any definitive conclusions, aren’t there already indications that the economy may be improving under Obama? And didn’t Obama just yesterday come out against a provision in the historic climate change bill that would impose trade sanctions on countries that don’t accept global warming limits?

” … We’ve seen a significant drop in global trade,” Obama told the New York Times, “I think we have to be very careful about sending any protectionist signals out there.”

It’s sheer paranoia. Hysterical conservative fantasy.

Although … now that you mention it … two more Democratic senators in perpetuity from  ”New Columbia”?  The elimination of Rush Limbaugh and his ilk?

Hmmmmm.

Welcome to the Senate, Al. Let the voting begin.

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