Obama's decision to shun Palestine and block its bid for statehood within the UN turns a mega-mess into an environmental disaster. At the very least he commits the cardinal sin of coddling AIPAC -- an organization that ought, really, to be banned.
But here are two huge blunders that the rest of us are forced to put up with. In Steve Clemons' words:
Perhaps most disappointing is that President Obama, who in earlier years at the UN chastised Mahmoud Abbas, Benjamin Netanyahu, and George Mitchell for not getting more quickly on a constructive peace track, who felt that achieving an Israel-Palestine two state deal was of such strategic significance to the United States that he made it one of the very first out-of-the gate priorities of his administration, has not only offered nothing new to break the Israel-Palestine negotiations deep freeze but has acquiesced to the very narrative that on the negotiations that Israel embraces. For Israel at the moment, doing nothing is best.
Godawful. But then it gets even worse.
Obama -- who looked to so many early in his rock star style rise to the Presidency as a leader on the level of a Gandhi, or Martin Luther King, or Mandela -- has assured the rise of Hamas, the legitimation of violence in pursuit of Palestinian political goals, by yet again showing that peaceful, non-violent moderates like Mahmoud Abbas ultimately get nothing -- even if they play the role of the "good Palestinian," the one who listens to his masters, who doesn't get too disturbed when humiliated at Israel's border check points and at UN Security Council meetings.
Clemons kindly suggests that Obama "needs to get his groove back." But there are many out here who would respond, "What groove?"
America has seen its role in the Middle East as crucial to stability and, maybe someday, variations on democracy. I think many of us around the world see America as threatening to become the main stumbling block to stability in the Middle East. Our nation needs to find its way back to democracy and stability before it can stand tall enough again to act as mentor.
