Cliche-based Foreign Policy

Since I couldn't have said it any better than Caroline Glick, I decided to post her most recent op-ed:
Column One: Cliche-based Foreign Policy
By CAROLINE B. GLICK 
09/02/2011 16:58


US Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, kicked up a political storm this week. On Tuesday, Ros-Lehtinen introduced the United Nations Transparency, Accountability and Reform Act. If passed into law it would place stringent restrictions on US funding of the UN’s budget.

The US currently funds 22 percent of the UN’s general budget. That budget is passed by the General Assembly with no oversight by the US. America’s 22% share of the budgets nonvoluntary, meaning the US may exert no influence over how its taxpayers’ funds are spent.

If Ros-Lehtinen’s act is passed into law, the UN will have two years to enact budgetary reforms that would render a minimum of 80% of its budget financing voluntary. If the UN does not make the required reforms, the US government will be enjoined to withhold 50% of its nonvoluntary UN budget allocations.

Beyond this overarching demand for UN budgetary reform, the act contains several specific actions that are directed against UN institutions that advance anti-American and anti-Israel agendas.

Ros-Lehtinen’s act would defund the UN Human Rights Committee until such time as it repeals its permanent anti-Israel resolution, and prohibits countries that support terror and are under UN Security Council sanctions from serving as its members. It would also prohibit the US from serving as a member of the UNHRC until such reforms are enacted.

Ros-Lehtinen’s bill defunds all UN activities related to the libelous Goldstone Report, and the anti- Semitic Durban process. It vastly curtails and conditions US funding of UNRWA, the Palestinian refugee agency permeated by members of terrorist organizations. UNRWA’s facilities are routinely used to plan, execute and incite terrorism against Israel and to indoctrinate Palestinians to seek Israel’s destruction.

The bill pays special attention to the Palestinian Authority’s plan to have the UN SecurityCouncil and General Assembly vote in favor of Palestinian statehood later this month. The bill would cut off US funding to any UN agency or organization that upgrades the Palestinian mission to the UN in any way in the aftermath of a General Assembly vote in favor of such an upgrade in representation.

Ros-Lehtinen’s bill, which has 57 co-sponsors, provides detailed explanations for how the targeted UN agencies and activities harm US interests. It notes that the US’s membership since 2009 in the UN Human Rights Council has had no impact whatsoever on the UNHRC’s anti-Israel and anti- American agenda. The US has been unable to temper in any way the UNHRC’s actions and resolutions, including its decisions to form the Goldstone Committee and to endorse the findings of the Goldstone Report, and its continued support and organization of the anti-Semitic Durban conferences in which Israel is attacked and libeled as an illegitimate, racist state.

The bill notes that despite US efforts to extend oversight over UNRWA’s hiring process, UNRWA continues to hire members of terrorist organizations. The bill provides a long list of UNRWA employees who have perpetrated terrorist attacks.

Ignoring its fact-based assessment of UN failings, the Obama administration has rejected the Ros- Lehtinen bill out of hand. Speaking to Politico, an administration source panned the bill, claiming, “This draft legislation is dated, tired and frankly unresponsive to the positive role being played by the UN.”

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland attacked the bill, saying it would “seriously undermine our international standing and dangerously weaken the UN as an instrument to advance US national security goals.”

Since taking office, Barack Obama has taken concerted steps to place cooperation with the UN at the top of his foreign policy agenda. Through word and deed, Obama has shown that he believes that the US should minimize the extent to which it operates independently of the UN on the global stage.

Obama and his advisers give four arguments to support their view that the UN should effectively replace the US as the global leader. First, they say that the US cannot operate unilaterally on the global stage.

Second, they insinuate that operations undertaken outside the UN umbrella are somehow illegitimate.

To support this contention, they intimate that the reason the US was bogged down in Iraq following its 2003 invasion was because it did not receive specific Security Council permission to invade. In contrast, they point to the current Security Council-sanctioned military operation in Libya and the 1991 Security Council-sanctioned Persian Gulf War as success stories. And they attribute those missions’ successes to their conduct under the UN aegis.

The third argument, which comes across clearly in Nuland’s statement, is that to have credibility in global affairs, the US must not throw its weight around at the UN. If it objects too strenuously to the way things are done, or makes its support for the UN conditional on UN actions, then all the other UN members will be offended and refuse to cooperate with the US.

The final argument they make is reflected in the statement the unnamed administration source gave to Politico. Quite simply, in their view, trying to hold the UN accountable for its actions is old fashioned. In today’s world, accountability is out. And anyone who doesn’t understand that is simply out of touch, “dated, tired.”

All of these arguments are false. In the first instance, it is simply untrue that the US is incapable of operating unilaterally. Aside from Saudi Arabia in 1991 and Kuwait in 2003, the US did not need its partners in Iraq. Of all the non-American participants in the US military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, only Britain made an impact on fighting. And frankly, the US would have secured Saudi, Kuwaiti and British cooperation without ever involving the UN.

Indeed, under both Democrat and Republican administrations, the US has frequently acted successfully outside the UN framework. In 1999, the Clinton administration could not get UN Security Council agreement to fight in Kosovo, and so it ignored the UN and fought alongside its NATO allies.

The US had 21 allied militaries fighting alongside its forces in Iraq, despite the fact that the operation was conducted outside the UN Security Council umbrella.

The US-initiated Proliferation Security Initiative founded in 2003 is arguably the US’s most successful multilateral effort to stem the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Operating completely outside the UN framework, the PSI has 98 members.

As for the two major US military operations that have been carried out in recent memory by force of UN Security Council resolutions, the jury is still out on both. Due to theSecurity Council’s restrictions on the mission of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the US permitted Saddam Hussein to remain in power after removing his invasion forces from Kuwait.

In the 12 years between that war and the 2003 Iraq war, Saddam killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who – at US urging – tried to overthrow him. He exploited theSecurity Council sanctions to starve his people for propaganda purposes while he and his cronies enriched themselves through corrupt UN oil-for-food contracts.

Had Saddam been overthrow in 1991, his replacement by a pro-Western successor regime could have been enacted more smoothly and at far smaller cost to the US and the Iraqi people.

As for Libya, reports from Tripoli indicate that critics of the UN mission were correct. In overthrowing Muammar Gaddafi, the US has apparently enabled a situation in which any successor regime will likely be dominated by al-Qaida-aligned political and military forces allied with Iran.

The claim that the US will lose influence in international affairs if it is perceived as bossy by its fellow UN nation states is similarly groundless. The hard truth is that no one goes along with the UN simply because it is the UN. States are reasonably and consistently opportunistic in their cooperation with the UN. They support the UN when it supports their interests and they ignore the UN when it opposes their interests.

States do not oppose the US at the UN because they consider it bossy. They oppose the US at the UN because they believe it serves their national interests to oppose the US and its interests.

It is due to clashing interests, not the comportment of US representatives, that the Obama administration to fail to exert any influence over the UNHRC’s agenda despite its commitment to “engagement.”

Clashing national interests are the reason the Obama administration has failed to secure Security Council support for anything approaching effective measures against Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

The final administration argument – that it is déclassé to demand that the UN stop advancing the causes of America’s enemies – is not simply peevish and insulting. It is indicative of the culture that motivates the administration to cling to its UN-centered agenda despite its obvious and repeated failure.

As the easy refutation of all the administration’s arguments makes clear, the agenda is not a product of rational thought. It is the product of the groupthink that is endemic at the universities whence Obama and his advisers have emerged. This groupthink is directed by unquestioned clichés that are passed off as sophisticated reasoning. These include such pearls of wisdom as “global governance,” “Twitter revolution,” “multilateralism” and “interdependence.”

These clichés have become articles of faith that are impermeable to fact and reality. As a consequence, those who adhere to them will never acknowledge their failure to deliver on their utopian promises. Instead they attack anyone who points out their failure as “dated,” and as “tired” old fogies who are too unsophisticated to understand the world.


We see this attitude at work in all aspects of Obama’s foreign policy. For instance, Obama came into office with the view that the reason all efforts to date to successfully complete a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians failed because the Palestinians didn’t trust the US to “deliver” Israel. To remedy this perceived problem, Obama has consistently sought to “put daylight” between the US and Israel. This policy has failed abysmally, as the PA’s current UN statehood bid shows. And yet the administration continues to cling to it, because acknowledging its failure would involve renouncing a cliché.

So, too, the administration’s policy of engaging Iran has brought the mullocracy to the brink of a nuclear arsenal, empowered it to violently repress pro-American democracy protesters, expand its influence in Iraq and Afghanistan, take over Lebanon, and make inroads in Egypt, Libya and beyond. And yet, despite all of this, the administration refuses to admit its policy is wrong and adopt a more effective one, because doing so would involve acknowledging that “engagement” is not the panacea it was cracked up to be.

Ros-Lehtinen’s bill is expected to be blocked in the Democrat-controlled Senate before Obama has the opportunity to veto it. This is a pity not simply because the bill would advance US interests and the cause of freedom. It is a pity because it shows that the foreign policy debate in the US is now a fight between those who trust facts and those who trust clichés.

From TownHall.com...

Michael Youssef  

Turmoil in Egypt is a Real Threat to Israel

On the first night of the so-called “Arab Spring” in Egypt, I sat for three hours at a desk at CNN (video at the end of the article). That night, I did my best to convince an inexperienced, and not very knowledgeable young anchor that this was not the kind of democracy that he and all those in the liberal Western press were making it out to be.

Given my first-hand knowledge of the situation, both empirically and academically, I sought to give him and his viewers a distinct picture of what would unfold. I warned that Islamists would soon sweep these well-meaning young people under the Egyptian sand.

Here we are, nearly eight months later, and I have never been invited back to CNN because they know I have every right to say, “I told you so.”

What was about to happen was apparent to those of us who have watched Islamists who, for years, were salivating to destroy public enemy number one in the Arab world, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. For years they have longed to destroy the Egyptian peace treaty with Israel for which Mubarak was a guardian. As they waited, they quietly organized while supporting and supplying Hamas behind the scenes.

To be sure, the hard work and heavy price of the uprising was paid for not by the Islamists, but by a small group of genuine liberals from among Egypt’s educated young people. The Islamists watched from the shadows while some of these young people paid the ultimate price and died for the revolution. Once the revolution succeeded and Mubarak resigned, the Islamists came out of hiding and began flexing their muscles and are now running the country through intimidation and fear. Sadly, for some of us, but not the Obama administration, this was expected.

Today the Salafists, who are heavily funded by their fellow Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia, are literally forcing a weak and ineffective government’s hand to appoint cabinet members and governors who are sympathetic to them.

All of this is taking place under the watchful eye of the wavering Egyptian army who has prosecuted civilians who criticize them while Islamists and the criminal elements in society are exercising true power. The Egyptian army’s main focus in the last eight months has been to rebuild the army’s multi-billion dollar businesses that were undermined by Jamal Mubarak and his new entrepreneurial class, all of whom are now under arrest with the former president.

However, the unintended consequence of the army’s passivity and decriminalizing of Al-Qaeda and Islamic terrorist elements is that jihad fighters have moved in force into the Sinai Desert from Afghanistan, Yemen, and Gaza. One Egyptian newspaper estimated that at least 6,000 Al-Qaeda fighters are now in Sinai.

First, they overwhelmed the police and took their weapons and now they are reaching their longed for goal –to attack Israel.

On August 17, 2011, some of these Al-Qaeda fighters crossed the Egyptian-Israeli border, reportedly dressed in Egyptian army uniforms. They killed eight Israeli bus passengers and wounded 44 more. Israel mistakenly killed three Egyptian soldiers in the confusion and crossfire, inciting the wrath of a mass of Islamists in front of the Israeli Embassy in Egypt. There they demanded the end of diplomatic relations with Israel.

Finally, the Egyptian army moved into Sinai, breaking the spirit of the Camp David agreement in order to “quell the unrest.” Still, Al-Qaeda is daily increasing in number in the Sinai desert, posing a real serious threat to Israel.

So the question is this: Does the Egyptian army have the will and the stomach to fight the thousands of Al-Qaeda fighters who have the support of millions of Islamists in Egypt, especially now that they see their goal of menacing Israel is in sight? This is going to be the ultimate test for the Egyptian army who has been funded for years by billions of American tax dollars.

Where is the Obama administration that was quick to turn their backs on one of America's oldest and most loyal Arab leaders? Oh yes, they condemned the attack on Israel. How noble!! The American administration needs to be more forceful in its fight against terrorism, regardless of where it originates.

Michael Youssef

Michael Youssef, PhD is an Egyptian-born American and founding rector of The Church of The Apostles. His messages are broadcast 3800 times a week into 200 countries through Leading The Way Ministries. He holds a PhD from Emory University in Social Anthropology. 

PLEASE HELP ME UNDERSTAND THIS...

I am baffled!  I just don't get it!  After Israeli civilians are brutally murdered by a cell that entered Israel from the Egyptian Sinai belonging to The Popular Resistance Committees, a loosely held Gaza-based terror group with clear ties to the Hamas, Israel retaliates by rapidly organizing a surgical strike on the leader of the PRC's military wing.  He and several of his henchmen were killed...forestalling perhaps in some small way future attacks on innocent Israeli lives.  The tragedy was that, unbeknownst to the Israelis, these savages who ordered the attack that murdered 8 innocent civilian lives had a 9-year old child with them…even after it was well known that Israel had targeted them for retaliation.  Why was a 9-year old child with these known terrorists who were attempting to hide from the IDF?

Nabil Shaath and Saeb Erekat, senior PA members CONDEMNED ISRAEL for, of all things, using these attacks in an attempt to thwart the PA's statehood bid and WARNED ISRAEL that there will be consequences of any reprisal against the terrorists.

There is an old Hebrew word: CHUTZPAH - meaning "insolence", "audacity", and "impertinence"!  Believe me, we all wish that ALL the killing would stop (at least Israelis and those non-Israelis who have any veneer of sanity).  We all wish that everyone could live in peace in this Holy Land.  But, as long as those who are the vilest of individuals continue to INTENTIONALLY attack the innocent, there is no opportunity for such a dream.  Any attempt at creating even a semblance of moral equivalency between what the terrorists did and the attempt at focused retaliation by the IDF is not only a prevarication, but absolutely unconscionable.

What is mind-boggling to me is the audacity of the PA leadership to instantly turn this around and vilify Israel's retaliatory response with no attempt at framing the issue at all by the murderous rampage of their fellow “Palestinians”.  Please, help me understand this.  And to think, the red carpet is being laid out as we speak for entrance into the hall of shame known as the United Nations for these impenitent so-called leaders.  There is NO JUSTIFICATION for the cowardly and senseless murder of innocent civilians, no matter what the cause.  There is EVERY JUSTIFICATION for the attempt at an immediate and precise response by those who are called to protect the innocent while making every attempt at minimizing collateral injury.

We should never stop praying for the Peace of Jerusalem...and I never will.  But, how can there be faithful and expectant negotiations for a true and lasting peace with a non-partner such as this?  There is no fathomable attempt at logic that can create a foundation for negotiations with this kind of mind-set - NONE.  Hence, unless there is a fundamental...and I mean a deeply principled and axiomatic alteration in the dogma and moral fiber of the general Arab population of this region AND its leaders, it seems to me impossible without some miraculous intervention for anything approaching peace and security to be established today.

It is sickening.  It is disgusting.  And, what's worse is that, if you look at the worldwide press, there is a clear minimization of the terrorist attack with clear mounting anti-Israel sentiment as a result of their very appropriate and ethically substantive response.

The Y-NET article on the Palestinian Authority's derisory rhetoric follows:

Shaath: Israel's madness will not deter us

Expressing sharp criticism of IDF response to Thursday's terror attacks, senior Fatah official Nabil Shaath says Israel bears full responsibility for escalation, consequences: 'This is war crime'

Elior Levy

Published: 08.19.11, 13:58 / Israel News

Following Israel's assassination of two senior members of the Popular Resistance Committees' military wing on Thursday, senior Fatah official Nabil Shaath expressed sharp criticism of Israel's actions in Gaza.

According to Shaath, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is interested in military escalation in the Strip in a bid to divert attention from the socio-economic crisis in Israel.

He further accused Israel of seeking regional escalation in order to torpedo Palestinian efforts vis-à-vis the United Nations in September. "Israel's madness will not deter the Palestinian leadership from appealing to the UN, the opposite is true, and it will push the leadership to work harder in its efforts."

In a press release on Friday Shaath alleged that Israel was looking for an excuse to carry out collective punishment against the Palestinian people saying: "This is a war crime aimed at causing efforts by the Palestinian Authority and other factions to avoid armed conflict to fail.
Shaath has called on the international community to act swiftly to stop what he calls "Israeli aggression". He further noted that Israel bears full responsibility for what is happening and the consequences that could drag the entire region into the unknown.

The Fatah Foreign Relations Commission stated that since the escalation, Shaath has held deliberations with foreign officials "in order to explain the truth about what is happening and explain the aims behind Israel's aggression against Gaza".
The Hamas interior ministry in Gaza announced that it is prepared for any new Israeli military escalation in the Gaza Strip. Ministry spokesman Ihab al-Rasin said that "the interior ministry and the security forces are prepared to deal with any Israeli escalation.

"In spite of the occupation's attempt to bring us to our knees – we will not raise the white flag. We promise our people that we are not afraid of the threats and will remain steadfast on our land."