Author Archives: Tony

Following a weekend of reports that Vice President Joe Biden’s comments on the possibility of Israel bombing Iran amounted to a “green light”, President Obama underscored on Tuesday that he had NOT given Israel any such “green light” and had instead told it to allow diplomacy to work. Biden, he said, had simply “stated a fact”, i.e. that Israel is a sovereign country that will make its own security decisions.

Unfortunately, Obama’s “sovereignty” argument is not good enough. Unless the White House declares loudly and clearly not only that it opposes any attack on Iran by Israel, but also that it will do whatever is in its power to prevent such an attack, the Obama Administration will be read as having made a plausibly-deniable but nonetheless real threat that Iran faces military action. The Great Sage of Statecraft, Dennis Ross (wait, what exactly are his achievements, again?) may think such ambiguity is devilishly clever, but it’s more likely to bring closer a war Obama obviously doesn’t want, helping him bring about through act and omission a strategic catastrophe that would dwarf Bush’s Iraq misadventure. Continue reading →

The breakdown between the U.S. and “the Muslim world” is not a misunderstanding of values, or a communication failure; it’s entirely about U.S. actions and policies, rather than the rhetoric in which they’re wrapped. People in Muslim countries understand American values, or the values America professes to uphold, and many are passionately attached to some of those same values. What they expect of America is that it apply its own values when dealing with the Middle East. They would like very much, for example, the U.S. to act on that basis of Lincoln’s “self evident truth” that Palestinian men and women were created equal to Israeli men and women — an approach Obama’s own Administration has yet to demonstrate. Continue reading →