As I have stated before, I am impressed by this columnist's commentaries.
Even though he is of Jewish descent, he tends to be very fair-minded, and is
not afraid to point out the errors of his own race when they are at fault.

While, as Christians, we may not agree with some of Obama's positions --
such as regarding the gay and lesbian agenda, abortion, embryonic stem cell
research, etc. -- you have to give the guy credit for the way that he has
aggressively pursued some recent issues.

For example, the way that Obama finally put pugnacious Netanyahu in his
place by down-keying his recent visit to the USA is fabulous. Netanyahu had
it coming. The guy is a hawk and a jerk. The way that Obama has stood up to
Karzai in Afghanistan is also great. His willingness to be more diplomatic
towards Iran is also a wise move. And finally, Obama's victory in extending
health care to more of the country's poor and elderly is also laudable. I
just hope that he keeps pressing on both Netanyahu and Karzai, and doesn't
buckle under pressure.

Of course, on the other hand, I fully disagree with Obama's decision to send
more troops to Afghanistan, and the fact that he will more than likely not
have all U.S. troops out of Iraq by the scheduled timetable. In fact, every
indication is that the U.S. Government is looking for reasons to keep U.S.
troops in Iraq even longer; and the key reason they are now trying to use is
that the results of the recent Iraqi election spell more trouble ahead while
the three sides fight it out -- meaning the Shi'ites, the Kurds and the
Sunnis.

Anyway, the following is a rather interesting read, and I can personally
agree with a lot of it.


Lo, the Mideast Moves

By ROGER COHEN - NYT

March 29, 2010


BRUSSELS -- The passage of the U.S. health care bill is a major foreign
policy victory for President Barack Obama.

It empowers him by demonstrating his ability to deliver. Nowhere is that
more important than in the Middle East.

All the global mutterings about the "Carterization" of Obama, and the talk
(widespread in Israel) of kicking the can down the road and so getting
through the "garbage time" of a one-term president -- that is suddenly
yesterday's chatter.

The reminder was timely: This man is no softie. He's a politician tough
enough to watch his rivals auto-destruct on his cool, and principled enough
to set the right long-term objectives, including "comprehensive diplomatic
contacts and dialogue" with Iran, as he said in his second Nowruz, or New
Year, greeting to Iranians.

It fell to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to play the role
Khrushchev once played in toughening a young American president.

The former Soviet leader thought he could browbeat Kennedy only to discover,
in Vienna, that the Kennedy charm was not unalloyed to steel ("It will be a
long, cold winter.") Netanyahu was the first foreign leader to think he
could steamroll Obama. He earned a frosty comeuppance.

The Israeli leader toyed with Obama's unequivocal call in Cairo last June
for a "stop" to Israeli settlements. He allowed the ill-timed announcement
that 1,600 apartments for Jews will be built in East Jerusalem. Then, rather
than scrap that, Netanyahu chose cheap cheers from the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee with "Jerusalem is not a settlement."

(I say cheap because everyone knows Jerusalem is not a settlement. That's
not the issue. The issue is that the Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem is
rejected by the rest of the world and any peace agreement will involve an
inventive deal on its status. To build is therefore to provoke.)

Obama was not amused. He airbrushed Netanyahu's White House visit. The
message was clear: The Middle East status quo does not serve the interests
of the United States (or Israel). When Obama says "stop," he does not mean
"build a bit."

Sometimes mistakes are needed. Through the law of unintended consequences
they open new avenues.

So it is with the East Jerusalem housing fiasco. Nothing will happen in the
Middle East unless the United States is seen as an honest broker able to
criticize both sides when needed. Obama's anger sped a needed clarification
and freed debate.

As Andrew Sullivan has observed, a cultural shift is underway with respect
to Israel: "The critics have been called 'self-hating Jews' if they are
Jewish, or anti-Semites if they are not, but these barbs -- once sufficient
to end someone's career -- have failed to have an effect this time."

Yes, indeed.

I can't foretell the consequences of the Obama-Netanyahu spat, but it might
speed a new, more centrist Israeli government including Kadima. That would
help. It will bolster Obama next time he has to get tough with the
Palestinians, who must curb incitement, renounce violence and clarify their
end goals.

Obama's stance has also demonstrated that his focus on Israel-Palestine will
not be diverted by Netanyahu's push to place the Iranian nuclear program
front and center. This is critical: Iran cannot be a Palestine-postponing
pawn.

Already, there are shifts in Israeli attitudes as a result of the new
American clarity. Last year, Netanyahu described Iran's leaders as "a
messianic apocalyptic cult," which was silly. Of late we've had Ehud Barak,
the Israeli defense minister, setting things right: "I don't think the
Iranians, even if they got the bomb, are going to drop it in the
neighborhood. They fully understand what might follow. They are radical but
not total 'meshuganas.' They have a quite sophisticated decision-making
process."

Yes, as I've argued, the Iranian regime is not nuts, one reason it has
survived. It's intermittently ruthless -- consistently since June 12 -- but
proceeds by calculation, much of it about survival. Moving from nuclear
brinkmanship, a habit, to testing a weapon would be a high-risk endeavor
involving the reverse-engineering of thousands of centrifuges.

Realism is needed all around. America cannot afford a third Muslim war.
Israel cannot afford to open an unprecedented Persian front. The Arab world
will always regard Israel as a bigger problem than Iran.

So there are no quick fixes. Deterrence and containment, which must be
strengthened by U.S. bolstering of gulf state defenses, can defang Iran over
time. They must be complemented by outreach to Tehran and a balanced U.S.
push on Israel-Palestine.

Barak also got it right when he said that, absent a two-state solution,
Israel would be "either non-Jewish or non-democratic."

Obama is now insisting Israel act to avert that unhappy outcome. Americans,
prodded by a report from Gen. David Petraeus, are beginning to see the link
between terror recruitment and a festering Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Planning in Washington on Iran has shown a "marked shift in thinking away
from the war strategy," as Nicholas Burns, a former top State Department
official, put it to me.

These are real shifts. They are prerequisites for the rapprochement with the
Muslim world Obama rightly seeks. Lo, even the Middle East moves.



Jeff Snyder, SysOp - Armageddon BBS  Visit us at endtimeprophecy.org port 23
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