634 Obama and the Israel Lobby by Glenn Greenwald

This week's hysterical, reality-deprived reaction to President Obama's pronouncements on the Israel/Palestine conflict genuinely provoked laughter on several occasions.  That happened when I thought of the intense controversy triggered by publication of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer's The Israel Lobby, which examined the "loose coalition of individuals and organizations who actively work to steer U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction," a coalition driven by "a core consisting of organizations whose declared purpose is to encourage the U.S. government and the American public to provide material aid to Israel and to support its government's policies, as well as influential individuals for whom these goals are also a top priority."  This week's events underscore how remarkable it is that that book's argument was demonized as some sort of radical, hateful conspiracy tract rather than treated as what it was: a statement of the bleeding obvious (albeit a brave one, given that discussions of that reality had previously been taboo).  

President Obama meets with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel Friday at the White House. (AP)

Obama's call for a peace deal ultimately "based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps" is not even arguably a change from past American policy.  Though he's the first President to publicly call for such an outcome, that's been the working premise of American policy for decades.  It's controversial in one sense -- it unduly rewards Israel for its illegal seizures of land by suggesting they should be able to permanently keep West Bank settlements (the "land swap" aspect of the formula) -- but it does not remotely constitute a step in an anti-Israel direction.  When even Israel-devoted stalwarts such as former IDF CorporalJeffrey Goldberg and the ADL's Abe Foxman are dismissive of the condemnation of Obama's statements, it's crystal clear that they pose no challenge to the dominant pro-Israel orthodoxy that has shaped American policy (and political discourse) for decades. 

At most, Obama's public endorsement of this position was a symbolic gesture to chide Netanyahu for his overt indifference to U.S. interests (and, more so, belligerence toward Obama), and a small rhetorical fig leaf to the populist forces driving the Arab rebellion.  Yet even the most microscopic deviation from the dictates of the Israel Government produce shrill and ludicrous backlash from The inside-the-U.S. Israel Lobby.

The Right Wing Noise Machine all but accused Obama of trying to destroy Israel, with the GOP's leading presidential candidates condemning the President for the crime of "disrespecting" and "throwing Israel under the bus," Glenn Beck denouncing him for "betraying Israel," and Matt Drudge exploiting ignorance to screech in headlines that "Obama Sides With Palestinians."  Meanwhile, a former AIPAC spokesman demanded that Obama take a renewed public pledge of devotion to Israel, and circulated to the media statements of condemnation from numerous "pro-Israel" Democrats in Congress.  The neoconservative Israel-devotees at The Washington Post editorialized against Obama and predictably blamed him for the resulting tension with Netanyahu, siding (as usual) with this foreign government over their own.  And a Reuters article this morning claims that "some prominent Jewish Americans are rethinking their support for President Barack Obama's 2012 re-election bid" due to that speech:

The backlash after Obama's keynote speech on the Middle East has Democratic Party operatives scrambling to mollify the Jewish community as the president prepares to seek a second term in the White House. . . .

"I have spoken to a lot of people in the last couple of days -- former supporters -- who are very upset and feel alienated," billionaire real estate developer and publisher Mortimer Zuckerman said.

"He'll get less political support, fewer activists for his campaign, and I am sure that will extend to financial support as well."

But remember: it's so very heinous and hateful to suggest -- as Walt and Mearsheimer shamefully did -- that some Americans are driven by devotion to Israel as their primary political preoccupation and that, banded together, they exert substantial influence.  Perish the thought.

* * * * *

This is one area where I think President Obama deserves support and some modest credit.  From the start of his administration -- from appointing George Mitchell as his envoy to  demanding a settlement freeze in the West Bank -- the White House has appeared to recognize that tongue-wagging subservience to the Israeli Government is a counter-productive policy.  Of course, the movement away from such blind support has been extremely slow and cautious -- Obama was silent in the wake of the attack on Gaza, supportive after the flotilla assault, and recently vetoed a thoroughly uncontroversial U.N. Resolution calling for a settlement freeze -- but there have been signs of a genuine desire to push the Israelis in a direction they plainly do not want to go.

I don't believe Obama is guided in these efforts by any principled concern or moral empathy for the plight of Palestinians or the injustice of the 45-year-old occupation; it seems clear that he isn't ever driven by considerations of that sort.  But what he is, at least compared to the prior President, is a competent technocrat, a more calculating imperial manager, able to rationally assess costs and benefits with a ruthless analytical stoicism.  And Obama has been surrounded by top advisers -- such as Gen. James Jones and David Petraeus -- who clearly recognize, and have publicly said, that the festering Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and the (obviously accurate) perception in the Muslim world that the U.S. enables Israel, is harmful in numerous ways to U.S. interests in the region.  Especially with largely anti-Israel Arab public opinion starting to supplant easily manipulated, U.S.-serving Arab tyrants, it is vital -- for what the U.S. government perceives to be its interests in the region -- that Israel reach a peace agreement, and that in turn requires that the U.S. use its leverage to pressure Israel to do things it plainly does not want to do.

What made this last week significant is that it underscores how politically difficult such an undertaking is for any American President: precisely because of the obsessive, relentless Israel Lobby that Walt and Mearsheimer invented in their conspiratorial, bigoted heads.  If even the tiniest step provokes the backlash that we saw this week, imagine the domestic political upheaval which a true effort would engender.  The New Yorker's Hendrick Hertzbergput it this way:

The President wants to make peace and presumably knows that it won't happen without a huge and politically brutal American effort. Such an effort would probably provoke the Israel lobby (a better name for which would be the Likud lobby) into an all-out fight against his reëlection. 

Andrew Sullivan added:  "To achieve this, he has to face down the apocalyptic Christianist right, the entire FNC-RNC media machine, a sizable chunk of his party's financial base, and the US Congress."

It's far from clear that Obama's commitment to this outcome is genuine.  I've seen very little evidence that the President is willing to sacrifice his political self-interest in pursuit of a deeply held conviction, and ample evidence that he isn't.  But whatever else is true, even these minimal applications of presidential pressure open up the discussion about our Israel policy wider than it's ever been, trigger very rare criticisms of the Israeli government in U.S. political discourse (from the President's loyalists, angry at Netanyahu), and shine a much-needed light on the multiple ways that U.S. policy toward Israel is so harmful to the national interest (aside from being morally unjust).    

Regardless of Obama's intentions here -- and that remains unclear -- a prerequisite to any meaningful change in U.S./Israel policy is the defeat of those who want to suppress the debate entirely.  Those are the people now wildly demonizing the President for his tepid Middle East speech, and it's why it is incumbent upon anyone who desires real change in this area to defend him from those attacks.  At the very least, the notion that defying the Israeli Government is some sort of supreme evil -- and, conversely, that loyalty to that government is a solemn duty -- needs to be demolished.

Read more at Salon.com

© 2011 Salon.com

Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act?," a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, "A Tragic Legacy", examines the Bush legacy. His next book is titled "With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful."

Europe's Obamaphilia says More about its Own Weakness than the US President Europeans see in Barack Obama the possibility of intelligent, public-spirited leaders, a far cry from their own, and ignore his actual record by Gary Younge

In his book Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama described himself as a Rorschach test – the famous psychological experiment where people are shown a series of ink blots and asked to identify what they see in them. There is no right answer. But each response in its own way, is thought to reveal the patient's obsessions and anxieties.

So it is with Obama. In the last week he has been disparaged as the "most successful food stamp president in history" by Newt Gingrich and a spineless "black mascot" of Wall Street by the prominent black academic Cornel West.

"I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views," he said. "As such I am bound to disappoint some if not all of them."

But one of the most curious things about those who support him most is not their disappointments – given their high hopes for him, that's to be expected – but their enduring devotion in the face of those disappointments. It's as though each single disillusionment is consumed as its own discrete letdown. String them together and you have not a narrative of failing to deliver on promises, but a litany of isolated, separate chapters – each with its own caveats, exceptions and explanations.

This has long been true of black voters in the US, who somehow manage to feel more optimistic about America than ever, even as they are doing worse in it. Unemployment, poverty and foreclosure rates have risen to rates far higher than under George Bush, and the gap in opportunities between blacks and whites increases. Nonetheless, black Americans remain Obama's most loyal base. They are suffering from 16% unemployment, but they continue to give him 80% approval.

The same apparent contradictions underpin European attitudes to Obama, which have barely changed since his emergence as a credible presidential candidate. A Pew research poll published in July 2008, before the elections, revealed that Obama was more popular in Europe than any other continent, including North America.

In Germany, France, Spain and Britain, more than 70% said they trusted Obama "to do the right thing in world affairs" and more than half believed a new president would change US foreign policy for the better. While just 19% of Europeans interviewed in a German Marshall Fund survey in 2008 supported Bush's handling of international affairs, 77% approved of Obama's foreign policy a year later.

In September 2009 Craig Kennedy, the fund's president, argued: "I suspect that, as real political decisions have to be made, we will see 'Obama euphoria' fade as the Europeans begin to see him more as an American and less like themselves." But that hasn't happened. Three years later he leaves home – where, even after Osama bin Laden's assassination, approval ratings hover around 50% – and lands in a continent where more than 70% think he's doing a good job.

The strange thing is that much of what Europeans loathed about the Bush era remains intact even as Obama prepares to run for a second term. Guantánamo is still open, rendition continues, there are more troops in Afghanistan and still troops in Iraq.

This could be overstated. Obama's statement on the Middle East last Friday shifts US policy on the region closer to Europe's than it has been for more than a decade. But that wouldn't be the first time he's delivered an impressive speech and then failed to follow through.

Moreover, Europe is implicated in many of the areas where foreign policy has stalled. Part of the problem with Guantánamo is that European governments refused to take many of the prisoners. Some applauded America's intensification of the war in Afghanistan even as they planned to unilaterally draw down their own troops.

"The problem is he's asking for roughly the same things President Bush asked for and President Bush didn't get them, not because he was a boorish diplomat or a cowboy," Peter Feaver, a former adviser to Bush now at Duke University, told the New York Times in 2009. "If that were the case, bringing in the sophisticated, urbane President Obama would have solved the problem. President Bush didn't get them because these countries had good reasons for not giving them."

Either way, Obama's principal defence abroad, as it is at home, is that things were bad when he arrived and would be worse if he went. This is true. But it falls far short of the inspiring rhetoric that accompanied his rise to power. Not so much "Yes we can" as "Could be worse".

European political elites have long been frustrated. "Maybe this is an overstatement, but I see this [European tour] as an opportunity for a reset of the European relationship," Heather Conley, director of the Europe programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, told the Washington Post. "European leaders have really been struggling with where they fit. They had enormous expectations for this president, but they're now wondering, 'Is it that different after all?'"

But this has yet to filter down in any discernible way. So when he has delivered so little, why do Europeans love him so much? Many of the original reasons still stand. He still isn't George Bush, although how long that negative qualification remains meaningful is a moot point. He also emerged at a moment when European political leadership has been in a particularly parlous state. Europeans don't just love Obama more than Americans do. They love him more than they love the people they have elected themselves. One reason Obama is so popular in Europe is partly because he has emerged at a time when European leadership is in such a parlous state. Less than a third of the Italians and French, respectively, approve of Silvio Berlusconi and Nicolas Sarkozy, only half the Germans find Angela Merkel credible. David Cameron does not fare much better.

Smart, charismatic, telegenic and unencumbered by sleaze Obama still, by comparison, represents the possibility of a popular form of electoral politics led by intelligent and public-spirited citizens as opposed to opportunists, egomaniacs and sleazemongers. It's as though his proven ability to articulate the source and scope of problems has enabled some people to look past his inability to provide a solution for them.

But in many ways Europe's Obamaphilia has always been as much a reflection of its weaknesses as his strengths. Like royalists in search of a benevolent monarch in whom they could invest great hopes but over whom they had no democratic control, they have sought not to leverage their own power but instead to trust in somebody else's.

And those weaknesses have grown. In the continuing fallout of the financial crisis, the continent is struggling to keep itself together. Greece and Ireland are on the brink of default, Portugal is up for a bailout and Spain is in revolt. The fate of the euro has been openly questioned.

And while many of the problems that dogged transatlantic relationships remain, almost everything else has changed. The Arab spring laid bare both the US's and Europe's waning influence on the world, while demands to retain the chairmanship of the IMF smack of anachronistic entitlement against the rising power of more dynamic developing economies.

European's attitudes towards Obama tell us more about Europe than they do about the US president. And what they say about both is not particularly impressive.

© 2011 Guardian News and Media

633 Published on Monday, May 23, 2011 by OtherWords Big Oil's Free Ride Instead of working for the American people, many lawmakers are shilling for Big Oil. by Kate Colarulli

Over Memorial Day weekend, tens of millions of Americans will take road trips, emptying their wallets at the pump.

The oil industry hardly needs the boost this year. Just in the first quarter of 2011, oil companies posted billions of dollars in profits. They're raking it in while working families are shelling out their earnings to pay at the pump. On top of those massive profits, the oil industry also benefits from tax breaks of $4 billion each year.

Outrageously, Big Oil believes that it somehow deserves this special treatment. ConocoPhillips CEO Jim Mulva recently went as far as to call repealing oil industry tax breaks "un-American."

Adding insult to injury, lawmakers in the Senate have been unable to get the 60 votes they need to end these tax breaks. GOP leaders blocked altogether a recent attempt to bring up the issue for a vote in the House of Representatives. At a time when Americans are struggling to support their families, put food on the table, and fill up their gas tanks, giveaways to Big Oil make no sense.

As Congress continues to pass bills favorable to Big Oil — from accelerating the issue of off-shore drilling permits to shelling out oil industry tax breaks — we continue to see signs that our leaders are more interested in helping campaign contributors than average Americans.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, House members who voted to continue oil subsidies received, on average, five times more money in 2010 from oil and gas interests. Instead of working for the American people, many of these members of Congress are shilling for Big Oil.

Public support for ending oil industry subsidies is overwhelming. A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal pollfound that 74 percent of voters support eliminating oil company tax breaks. It's clear that we need leaders who will stand up to Big Oil and support the American people's call to eliminate its tax loopholes.

We can't afford the status quo. America's leaders need to act immediately to break our nation's dangerous dependence on oil and end the industry's grip on our political system. We can begin by eliminating billions of dollars in tax giveaways to oil companies and using these funds to support transportation choices and deficit reduction.

It's time to invest more in modern, clean, efficient vehicles and smart transportation. We need to build a modern transportation infrastructure, make cars that get at least 60 miles per gallon by 2025, and invest in electric cars.

Domestic manufacturing of these cars and trucks and a modern transportation network won't only end our dependence on oil. It will also save consumers thousands of dollars at the pump, create good jobs here at home, and restore America's manufacturing might.

We're tired of the special interests calling the shots for Congress. It's high time our leaders represented the interests of the people, not Big Oil.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

Kate Colarulli is the associate campaign director for Sierra Club's Beyond Oil Campaign.

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