The arrogance of impotence, Obama style
Barack Obama likes to complain about American "arrogance" during the Bush years. In fact, our alleged arrogance is his pretext for wanting to negotiate directly and without pre-condition with some of the world's worst and most virulently anti-American dictators, a move that even Hillary Clinton opposes.
Yet it would be difficult to find a more arrogant foreign policy proposal than the one his key foreign policy adviser Samantha Power spoke favorably of in 2002, namely inserting a large military force into Israel and its territories for the purpose of imposing a Palestinian state. The arrogance (and stupidity) of this concept is so self-evident that Power now not only disavows it, but purports to find it incomprehensible.
Obama, to my knowledge, has never advocated anything like military intervention to create a Palestinian state. However, Ed Lasky reports that Obama and Power are contemplating the promotion of ethnic cleansing in Iraq. During a BBC broadcast, Power revealed that when President Obama retreats from Iraq, his plans might very well include "moving potentially people from mixed neighborhoods to homogenous neighborhoods" if that is their choice. Power acknowledged that this action would be the “equivalent of facilitating ethnic cleansing."
You can understand the logic of this idea from the Power-Obama perspective. Power made her name on the issue of genocide and, specifically, by advocating that the U.S. do more to prevent it. In fact, I understand that it was her book on this subject that brought her to Obama’s attention. She and Obama understand that if the U.S. abandons Iraq, the ensuing chaos could produce genocide or something approaching it. Thus, she contemplates ethnic cleansing as a fig leaf. (No "mammoth protection force" of the kind she contemplated for the new Palestine this time).
Still, it strikes me as arrogant and anti-humanitarian for the U.S. to ratify the results of sectarian terrorism, unleashed following our intervention and subsequent failure to assert control, by moving people from their neighborhoods based on their religion. Although Power says the U.S. would not force people to move, we would be handing them an ultimatum -- abandon your home or face the consequences of violence that we have the power to prevent. The idea of staying in Iraq to preserve and enhance the increasingly favorable status quo – and thereby virtually ensure the absence of anything like genocide – apparently is a non-starter for Power and Obama. Maybe they think this would be arrogant.
Arrogance is a pretty malleable concept, and Power and Obama may subscribe to the traditional leftist view that actions taken by the U.S. during a craven retreat by definition cannot be arrogant. Otherwise it's difficult not to affix that label to a course of action under which we snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and offer the victims moving expenses as they flee from the consequences.
UPDATE: Notice the parallel way in which Power prefaces her case for invading Israel and for facilitating ethnic cleansing in Iraq. First Israel:
Unfortunately, imposition of a solution on unwilling parties is dreadful. It’s a terrible thing to do, it’s fundamentally undemocratic.
Now Iraq:
[M]oving potentially people from mixed neighborhoods to homogenous neighborhoods [is] tragic. . .it's the equivalent of facilitating ethnic cleansing, which is terrible.
So why do such dreadful, terrible, and tragic things? In the case of Israel it's because the leaders in question, to whom she refers as "Sharafat” [Sharon-Arafat], "have been dreadfully irresponsible." Note the slanderous, anti-Israel equation of Sharon (who later would unilaterally disengage from portions of the disputed territory) with Arafat.
In the case of Iraq it has something to do with being able "to focus on Afghanistan [where only a small portion of the withdrawn troops would head] and in quotes [why "in quotes"?] deal with al Qaeda." It also has to do with "learn[ing] to live with insecurity in the way that people in [Great Britain] have lived with it," [you can say that again] plus "restor[ing] American standing longterm."
Translation: Tragedy is a small price to pay for bowing to trendy leftist talking points .
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