Lost On the Road to Nowhere - Obama's Route to Peace

Who the fuck does Israel think they are? Sheesh, they are getting a USA complex. We can do it, but you can't. That is absolute bullshit. Why do we and our allies have the right to bear arms, but everyone else doesn't? How are they to protect themselves from us?
 
:gives:Damn, you make me laugh. You are constant form of amusement.


froggie said:
Who the fuck does Israel think they are? Sheesh, they are getting a USA complex. We can do it, but you can't. That is absolute bullshit. Why do we and our allies have the right to bear arms, but everyone else doesn't? How are they to protect themselves from us?
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The Bare Knuckled Pundit said:
In the wake of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's state visit to Washington, talk of the "road map" to Middle Eastern peace once again dominates the blogosphere and punditocracy. Though the imagery of his meeting with President Obama is one of respectfully resolute, though cordial statesmanship, one thing is strikingly clear. While the two leaders share a commitment to traveling the road to peace, they are navigating from distinctly different maps.

Indeed, President Obama's route begins in Jerusalem, with the first milestone nearby in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. For Netanyahu, however, the point of embarkation is Tehran, with follow-on stops at Iran's nuclear facilities at Bushehr and Natanz coming shortly thereafter. Regardless of which path is ultimately settled on, both are fraught with perils and potholes that may well derail the arduous journey. In addition to the treacherous political terrain itself, it is home to bandits and malcontents skulking in the shadows with malevolent intent. While some snares and pitfall are easily found, others though more subtle and less perceptible are no less dangerous. As the saying goes, forewarned is forearmed. So join me, if you will, as we take a look at a few of the dogged issues behind the headlines that will determine in large part where the road ultimately ends.

As previously noted, one of the first stops on the President's road map is the Israeli-occupied West Bank. While Obama believes that an immediate halt to the expansion of Israeli settlements in the territory is the first crucial step to jump-starting the journey towards peace, the Israelis point to their withdrawal from the Gaza Strip as a harbinger of things to come should they acquiesce to this request.

Not only did Israel fulfill it's commitment to surrender Jewish settlements in Gaza, but it sent Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in to forcibly remove those who would not comply with Jerusalem's order. To the Palestinian's delight, images of IDF personnel manhandling and dragging away kicking, screaming and crying settlers in restraints were broadcast across the globe. Heralded as a great victory by Hamas and the Arab street, the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) subsequently failed to keep their end of the bargain.

Not only were there no similar scenes of raids on weapons caches and Hamas members being led off in custody from clandestine munitions shops, the PA was eventually driven out of Gaza and replaced by the terrorist group. Having established their writ and dominion over the Strip, Hamas then set about turning it into a literal launch pad for it's corp of rocketeers. This set in motion an escalating series of events that culminated in Israel's weeks-long offensive immediately prior to Obama's inauguration. Given the Palestinian's track record and the transformation of seceded land into bases from which attacks are launched at Israel, it is natural that security guarantees designed to prevent a recurrence of this calamitous state of affairs would be a top precondition of Jerusalem and Netanyahu.

The issue of security in the wake of an Israeli withdraw from West Bank settlements is a doorway that leads to the more complex and intertwined issues of both long term Israeli security and the true extent of sovereignty a Palestinian state might expect to exercise.

For obvious reasons, Israel would prefer a militarily toothless Palestinian state that focused primarily on police, intelligence and security forces should one eventually be established. For similarly obvious reasons, a Palestinian state would want the ability to exercise it's sovereignty to the fullest extent. Part of that is the right to defend itself through the establishment and retention of military capabilities, however meager they may ultimately be.

The Palestinians will vehemently argue they have a right to defensive military capabilities. The Israelis will respond there is no need for anything more than police and security forces as a Palestinian state will have no natural predators against which it must defend itself. The unspoken rationale behind the Israeli position will be the desire to A) prevent the Palestinians from developing a credible and potentially threatening military capability and B) facilitate the retention of a balance of power that dramatically favors the Israelis and C) allows them the ability to militarily intervene in Palestinian affairs without fear of reciprocal military reprisals.

In addition to this, the Israelis will insist on three non-negotiable security concessions the Palestinians will chafe at. First, they will demand the Palestinians forgo the development of any militarized air capabilities, including both fixed and rotating winged craft. Next, they will seek to restrict Palestinian airspace to commercial use only. Finally, Jerusalem will attempt to constitutional prohibit the Palestinians from entering into military-to-military mutual cooperation agreements and alliances. The Palestinians will view these demands not only as intolerable, but also as an infringement on their sovereignty - a de facto extension of the Israeli political yoke.

Again the Israeli rationale is obvious - maintenance of unchallenged military superiority and prevention of the transformation of a Palestinian state into a base of operations for Iranian Quds Forces.

The unspoken fear in Jerusalem is that should the Israelis acquiesce to Obama's preferred route, the time necessary to resolve the Palestinian issue will allow Iran to obtain their long sought after nuclear capability. Even more frightening is the thought that the birth of a Palestinian state will be accompanied by a declaration from Tehran that not only is Iran the latest member of the nuclear club, but they are extending their nuclear umbrella over Israel's newborn neighbor. Depending on the alignment of the political stars at the time, Tehran might likewise extend it's strategic shield to encompass both a Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon and their clients in Damascus as well. This would leave Israel facing Tehran's nuclear-protected proxies on four fronts, an unacceptable and potentially untenable strategic position for Jerusalem. That being the case, one wonders if Netanyahu and the Israelis can convince the President his route is not the road to peace, but will ultimately leave them all lost on the road to nowhere.

We're on a road to nowhere, come on inside, faithful readers. Takin' that ride to nowhere, we'll take that ride.

Stay tuned for further updates as events warrant and we see if the White House has the common sense to pull over and ask directions when it gets lost.
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OK, Who's to stop Iran if they are truely determined to have nuclear weapons? Irans nuclear facilities are hardened, dispersed and too near major Iranian population centers. At best a military option would only buy a few years time and the price to be paid would be killing a lot of innocent Iranian civilians and if you bomb the facilities, even if there is no plutonium or weapons grade uraniaum, and containment is breached then you have an environmental disaster with international implications not to mention making the land around which they sit uninhabitable for the next few millenia.

Now if the Israelis were to strike an Iranian nuclear facilty, which is questionable to me that they have that capability to strike from that distance, but even if they do, and did, it would be nothing short of a political disaster for the Israeli's. The Iranian's would only have to set up the nuclear facility stricken as a "glow in the dark" museum and bring people from all over the world to see it and even if the USA had no involvement in this at all, we would still be blamed for it by much of the world and don't think for a second that the rest of the world wouldn't turn on us either. I'm sure the Islamic extremist would actually love to see this happen for just this sort of propaganda victory.

Talk about a lose/lose situation? The Israeli's get to buy a few years of relative security at the price of a thousand years of enmity and the Arab world gets it's very own Hiroshima and a monument to Israeli aggression and US Imperialism. And the people who live near those facilities? Well they just get to die.

In all honesty, the best U.S. Policy is to say absolutely, positively no to any Israeli move against Iran's nuclear program, and we need to back it up by blocking such a move with force if necessary. That might be a game changer with regard to much of the Arab world. It might even help the Israelis by keeping them from making a major fuck-up.

But still, your point remains. Sometimes the hardest thing for a politician to do is to do nothing when there are no good alternatives and to act would be to fuck-up and for Netanyahu, or any Israeli PM, that may just be a politically untenable position for them. Their constituents may require them to act!

Doesn't that thought give you a warm fuzzy and make you sleep well at night?

PS - Major props to my old friend Hemingway for showing some light to this padawan.
 
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froggie said:
Who the fuck does Israel think they are? Sheesh, they are getting a USA complex. We can do it, but you can't. That is absolute bullshit. Why do we and our allies have the right to bear arms, but everyone else doesn't? How are they to protect themselves from us?
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Because we have a 2nd Amendment and they don't. :cof1:
 
Damocles said:
Probably these ones:

socw06navy.jpg
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LOL thanks! And now we can go on pretending that Toppy didn't insinuate that I am a sailor. Granted, I know some cool people in the Navy and Coast Guard, and will actually be attending a friend's wedding in mid-June. He got stationed in San Diego and met a HOT Latina girl. Don't know anything about her yet except for the picture of her on the invite.
 
froggie said:
Who the fuck does Israel think they are? Sheesh, they are getting a USA complex. We can do it, but you can't. That is absolute bullshit. Why do we and our allies have the right to bear arms, but everyone else doesn't? How are they to protect themselves from us?
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Israel thinks they are a nation with a clear sense and understanding of their national interests - first and foremost among them, it's survival.

They see themselves living in a region populated with nations whose views of them range from annoyance to antagonism to unmitigated rage and hatred. For decades they have been the target of verbal, military and terrorist assaults. Viewing an Iranian nuclear weapon as an existential threat, they see themselves in a struggle for the very survival of the Jewish state. In the midst of that struggle, they view themselves increasingly isolated and alone, as the West, the UN Security Council or their traditional ally and benefactor, America, appears to be less than serious about addressing Iran's nuclear weapons program in their view. Accordingly, they feel as if time and options are quickly diminishing.

That, as you so eloquently asked, is who Israel thinks they are.
 
The Bare Knuckled Pundit said:
Israel thinks they are a nation with a clear sense and understanding of their national interests - first and foremost among them, it's survival.

They see themselves living in a region populated with nations whose views of them range from annoyance to antagonism to unmitigated rage and hatred. For decades they have been the target of verbal, military and terrorist assaults. Viewing an Iranian nuclear weapon as an existential threat, they see themselves in a struggle for the very survival of the Jewish state. In the midst of that struggle, they view themselves increasingly isolated and alone, as the West, the UN Security Council or their traditional ally and benefactor, America, appears to be less than serious about addressing Iran's nuclear weapons program in their view. Accordingly, they feel as if time and options are quickly diminishing.

That, as you so eloquently asked, is who Israel thinks they are.
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That's not completely true. The west's alienation with Israel has a lot to due with Israels own intransigence in dealing with the Palestinian issue and the only solution that will work, the two State solution. Any compromise that actually gives the Palestinians any real form of autonomy and sovereignty is viewed as a security threat, certainly with a lot of justification, and has been strongly opposed by the Israeli's for some reasons that are legitimate and some that are not. Now don't misconstrue my comments as being pro-Palestinian as my official stance is "A pox on both houses" and that Israelis national interest are not always analogous to US national interest.

Also, as I pointed out, Israel's perception of the west being less than serious about the Iranian nuclear program is just that. A perception. The US and western powers have very serious interest in containing Iranian nuclear programs in order to assure security, including Israel's, in the region. But Israel's taking military action against Iranian nuclear facilities is a lose/lose situation and is not in US national interest and the US should block any attempts by Israel at a military strike against those facilities with force if necessary.
 
Mottleydude said:
That's not completely true. The west's alienation with Israel has a lot to due with Israels own intransigence in dealing with the Palestinian issue and the only solution that will work, the two State solution. Any compromise that actually gives the Palestinians any real form of autonomy and sovereignty is viewed as a security threat, certainly with a lot of justification, and has been strongly opposed by the Israeli's for some reasons that are legitimate and some that are not. Now don't misconstrue my comments as being pro-Palestinian as my official stance is "A pox on both houses" and that Israelis national interest are not always analogous to US national interest.

Also, as I pointed out, Israel's perception of the west being less than serious about the Iranian nuclear program is just that. A perception. The US and western powers have very serious interest in containing Iranian nuclear programs in order to assure security, including Israel's, in the region. But Israel's taking military action against Iranian nuclear facilities is a lose/lose situation and is not in US national interest and the US should block any attempts by Israel at a military strike against those facilities with force if necessary.
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I concur wholeheartedly, Dude. I was attempting to answer Froggie's question, not endorse the Israeli position. As I strongly stated in Emotions Vs Interests - America's Bipolar Foreign Policy, America should follow Israel's lead and place it's national interest first and foremost in the development and implementation of it's foreign policy.

As I said in the original piece, bully when those interests coincide with those of others, particularly our allies. However, we must be similarly willing to acknowledge and accept those occasions and areas where they do not. A parting of the ways in a limited number of specific instances should not undermine the bedrock of mutual interests and respect that is the foundation of healthy, long term bilateral relations and enduring alliances. This applies to Israel, Japan, Germany, Great Britain, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Poland, Canada and the myriad of other nations we consider to be "allies" to one degree or another.

So, I hate to break it to Asshat, but I fall far short of the mark for being a Zionist, much less a deranged one.
 
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The Bare Knuckled Pundit said:
I concur wholeheartedly, Dude. I was attempting to answer Froggie's question, not endorse the Israeli position. As I strongly stated in Emotions Vs Interests - America's Bipolar Foreign Policy, America should follow Israel's lead and place it's national interest first and foremost in the development and implementation of it's foreign policy.

As I said in the original piece, bully when those interests coincide with those of others, particularly our allies. However, we must be similarly willing to acknowledge and accept those occasions and areas where they do not. A parting of the ways in a limited number of specific instances should not undermine the bedrock of mutual interests and respect that is the foundation of healthy, long term bilateral relations and enduring alliances. This applies to Israel, Japan, Germany, Great Britain, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Poland, Canada and the myriad of other nations we consider to be "allies" to one degree or another.

So, I hate to break it to Asshat, but I fall far short of the mark for being a Zionist, much less a deranged one.
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I doubt it.
 
The Bare Knuckled Pundit said:
I concur wholeheartedly, Dude. I was attempting to answer Froggie's question, not endorse the Israeli position. As I strongly stated in Emotions Vs Interests - America's Bipolar Foreign Policy, America should follow Israel's lead and place it's national interest first and foremost in the development and implementation of it's foreign policy.

As I said in the original piece, bully when those interests coincide with those of others, particularly our allies. However, we must be similarly willing to acknowledge and accept those occasions and areas where they do not. A parting of the ways in a limited number of specific instances should not undermine the bedrock of mutual interests and respect that is the foundation of healthy, long term bilateral relations and enduring alliances. This applies to Israel, Japan, Germany, Great Britain, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Poland, Canada and the myriad of other nations we consider to be "allies" to one degree or another.

So, I hate to break it to Asshat, but I fall far short of the mark for being a Zionist, much less a deranged one.
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Don't take AssHat to serious. He has mad cow disease from eating to many brains. That's why he's convinced that there's a zionist fascist conspiracy to conquer the world.

We've been trying to ween him off of brains by giving him pudding but that brings up the damage that could be done by him (particularly to himself) if armed with a spoon.
 
Mottleydude said:
I agree. BKP is the only conservative on this board that can clearly articulate a policy position with out coming off as....well....insane. Keep up the good work dude. I don't alway agree with your positions but they are informative and well thought out and clearly written.
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Which is a step ahead of the liberals on this site, most of whom cannot spell worth shit (Jarod, USC, Evince, etc....)
 
Socrtease said:
Anyone that says anything even remotely neutral about Israel is a Zionist and serves ZOG.
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Thanks for blowing my well-crafted, finely-tuned, years-in-the-making non-official cover, Soc! Oy vey, I hate it when that happens!

You and AssHat can now look forward to a visit from the MIY soon - Men In Yarmulkes. Look closely at the dreidel, you won't remember a thing.....

Don't fret, though, Ass. They'll bring pudding. Kosher pudding, mind you, but pudding nonetheless.
 
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