So says Paul Richter in the Los Angeles Times:
The increasingly bloody conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip is threatening the Obama administration’s plans to reinvigorate its Middle East diplomacy, creating new obstacles across the region as the president prepares for his second term.
With negotiators struggling to craft a cease-fire agreement, diplomats and experts say the strife is hampering administration efforts to help resolve the civil war in Syria, improve relations with Egypt’s new government, support moderate Palestinian leaders and check Iran’s growing ambitions.
Talk about damning with faint praise.
This is nothing less than a laundry list of Obama’s first-term failures. More than 30,000 are dead in Syria with nary a worldwide protest, nor peace on the horizon; Egypt’s “new generation” of tech-savvy democracy bloggers now crowd Tahrir Square on Fridays and join along with everyone else in chanting “Death to Jews”; the definition of a “moderate Palestinian leader” is one who wants to obliterate the Jewish state by overrunning it with six million so-called refugees rather than murder every Jew outright; and Iran’s nuclear weapons program is now this far from success.
But by all accounts, the damage to U.S. influence in the region is likely to grow if Israel sends ground troops into Gaza to stop the Hamas militant group from firing rockets into Israel.
Hmm. The U.S. can’t prevent Hamas from firing 1,432 (and counting) rockets on Israel this year alone. But if Israel takes steps on its own to prevent the barrage, then America’s influence will be weakened. Define influence.
“The bottom line is that this will poison everything the United States is trying to do in the region,” said Shadi Hamid, research director at the Brookings Institution’s Doha Center in Qatar.
That reminds me of a joke Woody Allen tells in Annie Hall about two Jewish ladies at a Catskills resort. One says, “The food here’s terrible.” “Yeah,” says the second, “and such small portions.”
On another note, did you know the Brookings Institution has a satellite in Qatar? How utterly perfect.
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So, why do/did the overwhelming majority of Jews vote for Obama?
Jewish Americans recall their history, since Christianity took the drivers seat, has been peppered with persecution at the hands of Christian nations. Ergo, parties that side with more faithful Christianity scare them. They prefer apathetic half-assed, mass-at-major-holiday-only types, thinking those to be less threatening.
That, and Jew broads can’t live in a world without abortion. I could put it more delicately, but really, I think it’s their primary form of birth control.
Abortion is so prevalent in Japan that there are shrines with thousands of figurines representing aborted babies where the “mothers” come to pray for the children they aborted.
I find it sad and sickly ironic. But I certainly wouldn’t say, “Jap broads can’t live in a world without abortion.”
Talk about the price of bananas …
About half of the Jews in the US are Jews in name only — their liberalism is their religion, much like liberals of other religions who have abandoned their given faith for an idiotic and destructive feel-good fest.
And like any other liberal zombie, they’ll remain in rabid denial, even as their stare at the burning embers of what is left of our nation or of Israel — or them.
We can’t help them — we have to remain busy helping ourselves, and shunting them out of the way.
CANNOT possibly make this S**T Up!!
As if Pravda(..errr…LA-Times)weren’t idiotic enough, the priceless quote from the vapid Shadi Hamid is pluperfect. Those steeenkin’ Juden..Killing Bad Guys, protecting their civilian innocents and exercising their RIGHTS of Defense. In today’s Obama-Separate Universe, that’s sabotaging the(Cough, Spit..!)the Peace Process.
President Bush: Israel misses you HUGELY. So do I, Sir.
Reinvigorate, or resurrect?
Color me naive again: It seems to me that Obama’s middle east policy is working quite well, and that Israel defending itself is just a fly in Obama’s ointment.
Per your wish, Rick: You are colored NAIVE.
I think Rick’s point is probably that the results we’re seeing are the results Obama wanted: Less American influence; more Islamic aggression; more peril for Jews and for democracy.
Yeah..? I believe that too. WTF didn’t Rick say so,’Yo? (-:
You are correct. I should have written that it was working quite well “from Obama’s point of view.”
“On another note, did you know the Brookings Institution has a satellite in Qatar? How utterly perfect.”
I’m absolutely sure that the “Doha Center” wasn’t funded by an oil-rich Muslim autocrat.
“The center is funded by the State of Qatar.” Well look at that, the folks that brought us al Jazeera bring us the ever-so-impartial Doha Center. Good times.
How many commenters have actually BEEN to Israel? How many have seen or experienced the joy of watching an outdoor wedding? Anyone?
I have.
“‘But if Israel takes steps on its own to prevent the barrage, then America’s influence will be weakened.’ Define influence.”
So,
1) If Israel encourages the barrage … maybe helping Hamas adjust trajectories to help destroy key Israeli sites and increase Israeli civilian casualties, America’s influence will be strengthened!!
Or …
2) If, dissuaded from taking steps on its own to prevent the barrage, America agrees to Israel’s appeals to join the fray and levels key areas of Gaza with daisy cutters, America’s influence will be strengthened!!
“The bottom line is that this will poison everything the United States is trying to do in the region … That reminds me of a joke Woody Allen tells in Annie Hall about two Jewish ladies at a Catskills resort. One says, “The food here’s terrible.” “Yeah,” says the second, “and such small portions.”
And, speaking of poison and food, one just has to ask, exactly what does Paul Richter’s piece in the L.A. Times have to do with the price of poison bananas?
“The bottom line is that this will poison everything the United States is trying to do in the region.”
That last sentence is a repeat and should be deleted. Must’ve made a mistake in pasting.
30,000 dead in Syria, a reported hundred dead in Gaza. Perhaps the dead that were killed by fellow Muslims do not count?
Well, nobody wants to stop the slaughter for fear of “poisoning” their influence in the Middle East.
Tattoo on every hamas Member’s forehead: DEFACO ERGO SUM.
Just sayin’…