Obama's Cairo Speech

[BRAVEONAWARPATH]

I'm not denying its the truth, I'm just saying it's unwise is all

Why do you think it's unwise?

[twa]

I don't think it's wise to antagonize your allies in the region, especially when it really doesn't get you anywhere.

That's nothing ,he has already held up weapon shipments and put a hold on military tech deals.

O want's to play hardball...with the Israeli's anyway.

[Burgold]

I'm not denying its the truth, I'm just saying it's unwise is all

As a Jew and a supporter of Israel, I think I can say with confidence that almost no one thinks that Israel is beyond reproach or has been a perfect neighbor. Both sides have dirty hands and both sides are guilty of terrible acts. I do believe that if we take a twenty year time horizon or even a forty year time horizon, Israel is far less guilty and responsible for the failure to find peace, and far less guilty of murder or attrocity but that doesn't make them guiltless or immune to criticism.

Edit: Like twa brings up, there are reasons to feel skittish with Obama relative to the issue of Israel. My hope is that he is trying to even the perception a bit... so that the U.S. can play the role of peacemaker and arbiter again. It is almost impossible to be seen as a fair arbiter if you are wholy on one side and that may be a small part of the reason (a very small part) of why Bush and Rice were so unsuccessful in egging on Palestine/Israel relations.

[skinfan133]

Why do you think it's unwise?

its like when Obama snuffed the britts when he first got into office. there's certain things you do in an alliance. criticizing your ally publicly in front of their quote unquote 'enemies' is not one.

maybe handling it behind the scenes is a better approach? idk, I'm currently not calling the shots so it doesnt really matter.

[skinfan133]

As a Jew and a supporter of Israel, I think I can say with confidence that almost no one thinks that Israel is beyond reproach or has been a perfect neighbor. Both sides have dirty hands and both sides are guilty of terrible acts. I do believe that if we take a twenty year time horizon or even a forty year time horizon, Israel is far less guilty and responsible for the failure to find peace, and far less guilty of murder or attrocity but that doesn't make them guiltless or immune to criticism.

again, not saying it isn't true. just not appropriate in the context.

[Burgold]

See, the edit above.

Although, I'll admit there's part of me that is a bit unsettled as to how Obama's approaching this. I also think that Israel is by and large smart enough to understand the PR and diplomacy game and takes more seriously what is said to them through private chanels than what is said in a tv speech made for public consumption.

[BRAVEONAWARPATH]

See, the edit above.

Although, I'll admit there's part of me that is a bit unsettled as to how Obama's approaching this. I also think that Israel is by and large smart enough to understand the PR and diplomacy game and takes more seriously what is said to them through private chanels than what is said in a tv speech made for public consumption.

From what I've read, President Obama has told the Israeli's the same things in private. Very emphatically.

[Predicto]

its like when Obama snuffed the britts when he first got into office. there's certain things you do in an alliance. criticizing your ally publicly in front of their quote unquote 'enemies' is not one.

maybe handling it behind the scenes is a better approach? idk, I'm currently not calling the shots so it doesnt really matter.

We are never going to be able to play a role as a broker in working this mess out if we are perceived as the ally of Israel and the opponent of the Palestinians.

And there is no one else out there who can serve as that broker but us.

[Burgold]

Then that is a little scary. Israel has been a beseiged nation for its entire history. It can not afford to be too nice or relax its vigilance. Every time it has the response has been violent and bloody. Honestly, I'm not really sure what they could offer or do that they haven't offered or done.

Over the years:

They've returned land. They've held cease fires. They've returned terrorists. They've held their nose as hundreds of foreign missiles struck and killed their civillians during cease fires. They've provided humanitarian aid and education. They've also retaliated, been brutal, and tried a siege (controlling the flow of goods).

No step benign or aggressive has resulted in anything positive. Every peaceful gesture is scoffed at and answered with murder, betrayal and terrorism.

I'm not sure what can be done. I wish there was something.

[Predicto]

Then that is a little scary. Israel has been a beseiged nation for its entire history. It can not afford to be too nice or relax its vigilance. Every time it has the response has been violent and bloody. Honestly, I'm not really sure what they could offer or do that they haven't offered or done.

Over the years:

They've returned land. They've held cease fires. They've returned terrorists. They've held their nose as hundreds of foreign missiles struck and killed their civillians during cease fires. They've provided humanitarian aid and education. They've also retaliated, been brutal, and tried a siege (controlling the flow of goods).

No step benign or aggressive has resulted in anything positive. Every peaceful gesture is scoffed at and answered with murder, betrayal and terrorism.

I'm not sure what can be done. I wish there was something.

I am a huge supporter of Israel, but be fair - they have not offered or done as much as you say. As a nation, Israel has catered to its far right settler faction for decades, and allowed them to build settlements all over the West Bank, basically wherever there is water. The remaining land the Palestinians live in is cut up in a zillion pieces by these settlements, roadblocks, walls and fortified roads.

I do not suggest that the Israelis relax their vigilance a bit. But one can be vigilant and realistic at the same time - the Palestinan problem is never going away until the Palestinans have their own real country. Elud Barak understood, but he got shot. Ariel Sharon came to understand, but then he died. Netanyahu does not seem to understand - yet.

[Predicto]

I found this kind of interesting - a montage of how this historic day was presented on Fox News.

[ccsl2]

You call it antagonizing. I prefer to think of it as speaking the truth.

And sometimes hearing the truth can be uncomfortable.

And the truth is not angry either.

If Israel is mad about what Obama said, they should just scratch their ass and get glad.

[81artmonk]

81artmonk is more predictable than summer storms.

speech was a good start

Have a suggestion for you. If you don't agree with my opinions say so. But to play the let's take a personal jab all the time is really old and makes you look childish.

SOmething in your life that makes you feel inadequate that moves you to verbally belittle people?? small penis, no friends??

[BRAVEONAWARPATH]

If Israel is mad about what Obama said, they should just scratch their ass and get glad.

:laugh::laugh:

[Jumbo]

Have a suggestion for you. If you don't agree with my opinions say so. But to play the let's take a personal jab all the time is really old and makes you look childish.

SOmething in your life that makes you feel inadequate that moves you to verbally belittle people?? small penis, no friends??

I'm sure you will be stunned upon your return that you were the one who got the time out.

[Corcaigh]

I'm sure you will be stunned upon your return that you were the one who got the time out.

For the record, I'd like to make it known that while I am very well endowed, I indeed have no friends.

[Seabee1973]

I noticed a few lies. 1 the agreement signed by The muslims and US in 1797 was to pay 150000 a month so the US warships could pass through the Straights over there.

Then the Thomas Jeffersons bible thing that keeps getting misrepresented Jefferson Had the Koran so that he could find out more about the religion of Islam. He was against from the beginning paying that 150,000 a month when was voted into office decided it was time to step up stop paying them money and defeat them it took a little while but eventually we defeated teh Muslims of teh Barbary(sp) states and freed the US and other nations from having to pay tribute to the muslims It was the Koran that helped Jefferson make that decision to attack teh muslims and start the Barbary war

[Seabee1973]

For the record, I'd like to make it known that while I am very well endowed, I indeed have no friends.

your frienship dues are a little late interest will be assessed:D

[Corcaigh]

your frienship dues are a little late interest will be assessed:D

If I'm gonna buy my friends, you won't make the cut.

[Seabee1973]

If I'm gonna buy my friends, you won't make the cut.

Ouch that hurt :saber:

[deejaydana]

Here's a good take by our friends at the WSJ:

As for the caveats, Mr. Obama missed a chance to remind his audience that no country has done more than the U.S. to liberate Muslims from oppression -- in Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosovo and above all in Afghanistan and Iraq, where more than 50 million people were freed by American arms from two of the most extreme tyrannies in modern history. His insistence on calling Iraq a "war of choice" is a needless insult to Mr. Bush that diminishes the cause for which more than 4,000 Americans have died.

He also couldn't resist his by now familiar moral self-indulgence by asserting that he has "unequivocally prohibited the use of torture" and ordered Guantanamo closed. Aside from the fact that the U.S. wasn't torturing anyone before Mr. Obama came into office, his Arab hosts can see through his claims. They know the Obama Administration is "rendering" al Qaeda detainees to other countries, some of them Arab, where their rights and well-being are far less secure than at Gitmo.

The President also stooped to easy, but false, moral equivalence, most egregiously in comparing the U.S. role in an Iranian coup during the Cold War with revolutionary Iran's 30-year hostility toward the U.S. He also compared Israel's right to exist with Palestinian statehood. But while denouncing Israeli settlements was an easy applause line, removal of those settlements will do nothing to ease Israeli-Palestinian tensions if the result is similar to what happened when Israel withdrew its settlements from Gaza. We too favor a two-state solution -- as did President Bush -- but that solution depends on Palestinians showing the capacity to build domestic institutions that reject and punish terror against other Palestinians and their neighbors.

Hanging over all of this is the question of Iran. In his formal remarks, Mr. Obama promised only diplomacy without preconditions and warned about a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Yet surely Iran was at the top of his agenda in private with Mr. Mubarak and Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, both of whom would quietly exult if the U.S. removed that regional threat. They were no doubt trying to assess if Mr. Obama is serious about stopping Tehran, or if he is the second coming of Jimmy Carter.

It is in those conversations, and in the hard calls the President will soon have to make, that his Middle East policy will stand or fall.

Link:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124416109792287285.html

[Burgold]

I am a huge supporter of Israel, but be fair - they have not offered or done as much as you say. As a nation, Israel has catered to its far right settler faction for decades, and allowed them to build settlements all over the West Bank, basically wherever there is water. The remaining land the Palestinians live in is cut up in a zillion pieces by these settlements, roadblocks, walls and fortified roads.

I do not suggest that the Israelis relax their vigilance a bit. But one can be vigilant and realistic at the same time - the Palestinan problem is never going away until the Palestinans have their own real country. Elud Barak understood, but he got shot. Ariel Sharon came to understand, but then he died. Netanyahu does not seem to understand - yet.

Everything I said, the Israelis have done... although, sometimes they later undid it, and certainly never to the extent that the Palestinians dreamed of. We've had a discussion before and I think we disagreed about whether the Palestinian side needs to give anything, whether it needs to be a partner in the peace process. I think your argument was that if you give them everything they want and then you can start to ask them to change their ways. Mine was, how can you give them a country and full control when they are attacking you during cease fires, constantly launching missiles, and behaving in a most dangerous manner. I need at minimum a token of good faith before I let the repeat sex offender and child abuser move next door or worse sublet a room next door to my sleeping toddler.

I probably am overstating your position a bit and apologize in advance, but I did think I remember your position being... give em a country, give em full autonomy, take down all the defensive walls, and then you might have a chance to begin to negotiate a real peace with them.

[Rdskn4Lyf21]

For the record, I'd like to make it known that while I am very well endowed, I indeed have no friends.

:rotflmao:

THAT is a sig-worthy quote :applause:

[JMS]

I noticed a few lies. 1 the agreement signed by The muslims and US in 1797 was to pay 150000 a month so the US warships could pass through the Straights over there.

True the Treaty of Tripoli was signed in 1797 by John Adams, it's famous cause it makes the claim the US isn't and never has been a Christian country. The inffamous Tobias Lear as Diplomate to the Barbary Coast negotiated a second "Treaty of Peace and Amity" with the Pasha Yusuf on June 4, 1805 ending the first barbary war.

Then the Thomas Jeffersons bible thing that keeps getting misrepresented Jefferson Had the Koran so that he could find out more about the religion of Islam. He was against from the beginning paying that 150,000 a month when was voted into office decided it was time to step up stop paying them money and defeat them it took a little while but eventually we defeated teh Muslims of teh Barbary(sp) states and freed the US and other nations from having to pay tribute to the muslims It was the Koran that helped Jefferson make that decision to attack teh muslims and start the Barbary war

Totally false. This is one of the truely great stories in American history. It's a wonderful tail, which really reflects better upon America's history of individualism and rock heads, than it does the American Presidency or Government.

There is a book on it called the barbary coast which came out a few years back which was excellent. There was even going to be a movie with Russel Crowe playing Consol/soldier/rock head in cheif William Eaton.

I'll give you the synopsis.

Under the Washington Administrations the US pretty much fly's under the Barbary pirates radar. The Brits, ( most powerful navy ) pay them tribute and we were covered by that. I guess the pirates didn't pick up a newspaper and weren't up on current events or something.

Anyway in 1799 the barbary pirates raided the european island of Sardinia. In their raid for slaves they captured the young Anna Maria Porcile a 12 year old royal. 12 was prime marraige age for the pirates and even for European royals back then, so don't be put off by the age.

Anyway the pirates were willing to ransome her back to her family, and the family wanted her back, but they couldn't raise money on the continent cause Britan and France (Napoleon) were going at it and the financial markets were a mess.

Anyway, so young Anna's family in their desparation go the the tunisian consul of a small new republic, The United States and rock head William Eaton a soldier of the revolution. Even though this is none of our concern William Eaton decides it's intollerable and puts up the US marker for the Ransom.

By the time word gets back to the US what Eaton had done, John Adams who was friends with Eaton was out of office and Jefferson was in office. Jefferson was like, YOU DID WHAT? and refused to honor the marker. Crawfished.

So in 1803 United States Commodore Richard Morris and a Captain John Rodgers stop in Tunisia with the young Ameircan squadron and get themselves arrested for Eaton's unpaid debt which is now $22,000. The American fleet contained that much gold for operating expenses and was forced to pay the bill to get their officers out of the tunisian whooscow. The fleet unserimoneously recalled Eaton in disgrace.

So now we are squarely in the Barbary Pirates radar and they start preying on American shipping. You see, the problem was the Pirates of the Barbary coast weren't just in the ransom and debt collection business, they were in the protection business and we weren't paying the protection bill yet. So they started preying on American shipping. Latter that year 1803 when the USS Philidelphia ran aground the pirates captured the cargo and enslaved the 300 crew men including officers. Telling Jefferson they would be free if he paid them tribute.

OK so now Jefferson has a problem. He needs a man who knows something about the area and who can deal with the Pirates. All he has is recently recalled counsoler William Eaton. This is where the story gets good.

Eaton is given a detachment of fewer than six marines and is sent back to Tunisia to see what he can do. What he does is raise an army of hundreds of European and Arab mersonaries mostly on promises and bluffs, and invades Tripoli.

Jefferson hears what's going on and again says... HE's DOING WHAT?? and dispatches a Diplomate Tobias Lear to make the problem go away...

Segway... Tobias Lear is also a pretty colorful character. He was George Washington's private secretary and turns up as Jefferson's right hand man. How did this occur after all Washington and Jefferson hated each other. In fact Washington left word in his will that one man was not welcome at his funeral and that was fellow Virginian Thomas Jefferson so much did he resent Jefferson for his personal attacks on Washington in his second administration.... Anyway story goes Lear got in trouble with Washington when he started pocketing rent owed to the great general from tennant farmers, and the General figured out what was happenning. Lear engratiated himself with people after Washingtons death including Jefferson by destorying Washington's correspondences and diary entries critical of folks. Tobias Lear leveraged his custodianship over Washingtons papers, and granted this "sensoring" services in exchange for civil servant jobs and other political favors from powerful figures.

Lear is believed to have made some particularly harsh letters between George and Thomas disappear from Georges files. These were politically damaging to Jefferson because Washington was very highly regarded in the young US.

One reason we know this was occuring is Lear spelled out his services in a letter to Alexander Hamilton which survives. He asked if Hamilton wanted any of ihs correspondances or washingtons comments "sensored".

Anyway... Eaton invaded... Had some sucess. Captures the pirates second largest city Derna. Everything is looking fairly good with the invasion other than the fact Eaton is financing it himself with almost no help. Tobias Lear in parrellel working under Jefferson's direction reaches an agreement to pay off the pirates and does so. Jefferson forces Eaton and the handful of Marines to abandon their mercenary army, and the single American warship supporting their invasion is withdrawn (1805).... Hostages were released, ransoms paid protection money is paid anually....

Lear is recalled from Tunisia in 1815 on the eve of the second Barbary war. Ends up shooting himself in the head 1816.

Eaton returns to the US 1805 bankrupted by funding the war himself. Jefferson at first refuses to pay his expenses. Eaton becomes a cult hero for his military sucess and how he lead the invasion of Libiya with 4-5 marines(**). Ultimately Eaton is offered the #2 seat in Arron Burr's failed attempt to form his own country in the then western United States. Eaton testifies against Burr at his treason trial and does very well for himself on the stand. Jefferson appreciative pays Eaton's expense check.

The US continues to pay tribute to the barbary pirates until 1815 when Britian, the US, and Neitherlands all took them on and defeated them.

We stopped paying tribute in 1812 sparking the war, because in the war of 1812 the British had swept the Med free of American shipping. No ships in the Med, not reason the pay the protection money. When we returned to the Med, the pirates wanted the back bills, sparking a united confrontation with them.

After 1815, American and European technology advances made them much less suseptable to piracy in the region. Piracy thus came to a conclusion relatively naturally, not because we took a principled stance against it. Certainly Jefferson never took such a stance.

(**) That's right in the Marine corps hyme when they sing "from the shores of Tripolii" they are describing the actions of fewer than six marines who were sent with Thomaus Eaton as security to the Barbary Coast and got caught up in his wild abmitious honor based privately funded scheme to dethrown the Pasha of Tripoli.

[JMS]

Bumping this thread..