“Y’know, you can’t wish these things into being.” – Dan Drezner, commenting on Fed chairman Ben Bernanke’s “eliding of the international dimension of policymaking.”

Much of the commentary I’m seeing on responding to major crises — whether we’re talking about the global financial crisis, energy, climate change, or Middle East peace — these days ignores rather rudimentary  international or domestic political realities.

And it’s not just the rubes.  Bernanke’s a pretty clued-in operator, after all.

Similarly, I recently participated in a blogger breakfast with “a senior European official” who was both incredibly bright and charming who asserted that everybody already agrees on the outlines of what has to be done to solve the Israel-Palestinian problem and expressed his confidence that we’ll get something done soon.  In follow-up, he allowed as to how “everybody” did not include either the Israelis or the Palestinians.  A not insignificant exception, I’d say.

Smoke rises over the main Hamas security complex following an Israel air strike in Gaza December 28, 2008. Israel launched air strikes on Gaza for a second successive day on Sunday, piling pressure on Hamas after 229 people were killed in one of the bloodiest 24 hours for Palestinians in 60 years of conflict with the Jewish state. (Reuters)

Not surprisingly, the massive Israeli strikes into Gaza are the prime topic of conversation in the blogosphere.

The basic facts, as reported by the NYT:

Waves of Israeli airstrikes destroyed Hamas security facilities in Gaza on Saturday in a crushing response to the group’s rocket fire, killing more than 225 — the highest one-day toll in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in decades.

Israeli military officials said the airstrikes, which went on into the night, were the start of what could be days or even months of an effort to force Hamas to end its rocket barrages into southern Israel. The operation could include ground forces, a senior Israeli security official said.

Palestinian officials said that most of the dead were security officers for Hamas, including two senior commanders, and that at least 600 people had been wounded in the attacks.

(That straightforward report was initially headlined provocatively as “Israeli Attack Kills Scores Across Gaza.”  It’s now simply “Israelis Say Strikes Against Hamas Will Continue.”)

Haaretz correspondent Barak Ravid has an interesting piece called “Disinformation, secrecy and lies: How the Gaza offensive came about” that leaves more questions unanswered than it answers.

Long-term preparation, careful gathering of information, secret discussions, operational deception and the misleading of the public – all these stood behind the Israel Defense Forces “Cast Lead” operation against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, which began Saturday morning.

The disinformation effort, according to defense officials, took Hamas by surprise and served to significantly increase the number of its casualties in the strike.

Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas. According to the sources, Barak maintained that although the lull would allow Hamas to prepare for a showdown with Israel, the Israeli army needed time to prepare, as well.

A similar report by Roni Sofer at Ynetnews, titled “How Israel led Hamas into false sense of security,” sheds additional light.

The Israel government reportedly employed several measures in order to lead Hamas into a false sense of security and ensure the operation against the Islamist group would take the organization by complete surprise.  The tactic called for Defense Minister Ehud Barak to allow trucks carrying humanitarian aid into the Gaza, despite the ongoing rocket fire on the western Negev.

[...]

“Hamas pulled its people out of hiding and resumed normal operations,” said the sources. “It would seem that Hamas believes the Israeli media, and thought it had a few more days before Israel launched an operation… once the tactical opportunity presented itself, the prime minister called Barak and Livni to his home on Friday night and they made the decision.”

Putting two and two together, I wonder if the humanitarian aid convoys that have gone back and forth over the past six months — during which the operation was being planned — were used as the major source of intelligence recounted in Ravid’s piece?  Not exactly kosher, if so, but smart.  As Meryl Yourish puts it, “You see what happens when you create an army out of smart Jews? They tend out outthink the enemy, adapt their tactics as needed, and ultimately, win.”

Sean Rayment, writing at the Telegraph, titles his piece “Israel is addicted to violence.”

Slaughtering 155 civilians, many of whom are women and children, can not be justified.

Every nation state has the right to defend itself against terrorism and wanton aggresion but this attack is both disgraceful and disproportionate, and Israel, a nation which has endured much suffering in its relatively short history, should recognise this. Imagine the international response if the UK committed such an act in today in Afghanistan.

At TPM Cafe, M.J. Rosenberg uses perhaps the last un-ironic “I Blame Bush” we’ll see:

It is not like Israel wasn’t provoked. It was. Hamas’s suicidal addiction to bombing innocents borders on the insane. But Israel is far from innocent. It wanted no violence from Gaza but it also maintained a blockade on Gaza that turned it into hell on earth.

Who do I blame other than Hamas and the Israelis? The Bush administration. It forced the election that brought Hamas to power against the strong urgings of the Palestinians and the Israelis. It insisted on democratic elections and then, when it didn’t like the result, authorized Israel to do whatever it could to destroy the victors.

Anticipating these sort of attacks, Haaretz correspondent Bradley Burston responds in advance to “The worst anti-Israel charges you’ll hear in wartime.”  A sampling:

Leftist 5: The world overwhelmingly sympathizes with the Palestinians against Israel, and unreservedly backs their struggle for independence.

In an era of global revulsion against radical Islamic terror, Hamas’ protracted program of suicide bombings, drive-by murders and shelling of civilian populations, coupled with its refusal to renounce violence, recognize Israel, or accept past peace agreements, coupled with its ideology of militant jihad, have drained the Palestinians of international sympathy and have, in fact, legitimized Israeli arguments of military self-defense.

Nothing has been more instrumental in harming the cause of Palestinian independence than Hamas, with its brutal take-over of Gaza in a war with brother Palestinians, and its frank efforts to build a large-scale regular army force in the Strip.

Jerusalem Post columnist David Horovitz provides a must-read matter-of-fact analysis of the events that got us to this point (”Fighting Hamas in the shadow of 2006’s mistakes“) and the goals of the Israeli government.   He’s almost certainly right in this analysis:

No matter how effectively Israel articulates its narrative, however, it would only take one misdirected attack, with heavy civilian casualties, to ensure a replication of the dramatic shift in international opinion that occurred early in the war against Hizbullah. After civilians were killed in the basement of a building hit by Israel, adjacent to a Katyusha launch zone in south Lebanon, a previously relatively supportive international community turned bitterly critical in an instant.

The longer the military operation goes on, the more strident the international criticism will become. Hamas, whose indifference to the deaths of fellow Palestinians was manifest when it killed many of them in seizing power in Gaza 18 months ago, will not easily succumb to Israel’s demands. Will Israel succumb to those of the international community?

From a U.S. perspective, WaPo staff writer Michael Abramowitz has an editorial-disguised-as-a-news-article entitled “Israeli Airstrikes on Gaza Strip Imperil Obama’s Peace Chances.”  Perhaps this is so obvious — indeed, tautological — that it’s jumps past commentary and becomes analysis.

There is little doubt, however, that if the situation escalates, it could hand yet another crisis to Obama, who will already be inheriting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and an unstable situation in Pakistan. If the past is any guidance, the United States will probably come under great pressure to restrain Israel if the tit-for-tat violence grows.

One senior Bush administration official said he thinks the Israelis acted in Gaza “because they want it to be over before the next administration comes in.” Although Bush has largely been supportive of almost any Israeli action taken in the name of self-defense, the official pointed out: “They can’t predict how the next administration will handle it. And this is not the way they want to start with the new administration.”

From the Department of Bold Predictions:

But other U.S. analysts were skeptical the Israeli offensive would succeed in intimidating Hamas. “By now Israel should have realized that [this kind of attack] rarely has any decisive effect,” said Anthony H. Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “At best you get another faltering cease-fire, and then the whole thing begins again. Both sides have been escalating to nowhere.”

Betting on continued violence in this perennial conflict is about as close to a sure thing it gets.

Since this is my last entry in the debate, I’d like to thank Bernard Finel for what I think has been an excellent, interesting, and informative debate. I’ve accomplished what I set out to do when I was moved to propose this debate: I’ve established that complete disengagement with the Middle East (the resolution of the debate) would be imprudent and Bernard agrees with me:

Engagement and disengagement are not binary values. My call is not for zero presence, but rather for a diminished visibility of our role in the region

That’s not what I drew from Bernard’s article that prompted my suggestion nor is it what I drew from his affirmative case. I still don’t have a clear idea of what Bernard is proposing. I do see that he’s dissatisfied with things as they are, a view I share.

I also believe that he and I agree that we should de-emphasize our military commitment to the Middle East somewhat. Where we appear to differ is in what the nature of our continuing engagement with the Middle East should be.

I’ll now consider some of Bernard’s arguments seriatim.

Oil

Let’s dispense with the oil issue first since it’s the easiest. The spreadsheet of oil prices that Bernard produced is highly informative but rather than proving his case it proves mine. Policies aren’t arrived at by averages but by events. The price spike of 1979-1980 was produced by the deteriorating security situation in the Middle East I sketched in my argument. The price spike of 1986 was caused by the so-called Tanker War during the Iran-Iraq War. That each of those was followed by an increase in U. S. military involvement in the Middle cannot mean that they were caused by that involvement although that increased involvement may have had increased hostility to the United States as a secondary effect. I think the message is rather clear: if the states of the Middle East want us to reduce our military engagement

There is currently no way for us to avoid dependence on oil. Even if we produced every single drop of oil that we consumed, since oil is fungible, the Gulf states are major oil producers, and they are the lowest cost producers we would still be dependent on Gulf oil. An oil price shock would affect us under those circumstances as much as it would now. The quantified effects of closing the Straits of Hormuz are estimated to be around $200 billion per year, i.e. more than the cost of the military engagement that Bernard has cited.

There is no alternative to oil at hand and will not be for the foreseeable future. There is no production-ready electric car, there’s no reason to believe that a practical one will be producible in production quantities at a reasonable cost for the foreseeable future, and if neither of those were true we’d still remain dependent on oil for the foreseeable future for two reasons.

It rarely makes discussions of oil independence but even if a production electric car were ready it will take twenty years for us to turn over the complete oil-burning vehicle fleet. That’s a matter of mathematics and economics as well as logistics. 100 million vehicles at $40,000 a pop (on average) cost $4 trillion. If you can produce the batteries in those quantities which nobody knows how to do yet. A price shock in oil would be an economic catastrophe for us for every year of those twenty years.

And even that’s not the whole of it. Our current electrical grid doesn’t have the excess capacity to handle the additional load required to recharge all those electric vehicles, it will take us decades to update our grid, and it will cost trillions more.

But that’s a parochial view. Our investment in stability in the commerce in oil through the Gulf maintains price stability not only for us but for our European and Asian allies and, equally importantly, for every poor country in the world that is far less willing to pay for turning over its vehicle fleet or upgrading its electric grid than we are. Our investment keeps those countries stable and the world at peace.

Terrorism and security interests

There’s little reason to believe that disengagement from the Middle East will result in a reduction of the threat from terrorism. As my good friend Mark Safranski put it, that’s not merely counter-intuitive, it’s lacking in real world evidence. Terrorists have their own intrinsic motivations; they aren’t merely responding to our actions although those may be among the explanations they present for their actions.

The most dangerous, awful anti-American regimes in the world aren’t those with whom we have high levels of engagement, they’re those, like Iran and North Korea, with whom our engagement is very limited.

It isn’t disengagement that will lead to a more positive view of America and Americans but more engagement as the polling data I’ve linked to suggests. Here’s an additional example.

Recent arrests in Belgium have rounded up members of a terrorist ring who apparently were planning an attack in Brussels. Belgium hasn’t been part of the coalition in Iraq and its military involvement in Afghanistan has been nominal. Both its footprint and its fingerprint in the Middle East are quite small. Nonetheless the Belgians are a target for terrorist activities.

Israel

Israel doesn’t figure prominently in my own calculus of American interests in the Middle East and I wish that the nature of the relationship between Israel and the United States were somewhat different than it is now. Howsomever it remains that Israel is our closest ally in the Middle East, there is a substantial constituency in the United States that would render major disengagement from Israel politically impossible, and I have little reason to believe that such disengagement would produce more security for us, the Israelis, for the Middle East, or for the world. In particular I don’t see how major disengagement from the Middle East would motivate the Israelis to arrive at a settlement with the Palestinians nor do I see how relinquishing our strongest bargaining chips—our engagement with the Middle East—would strengthen our hand in achieving such a settlement.

Increased engagement

Bernard wrote:

Our embassies are massive concrete structures, set back from the road, with triple rings of security barriers. Our businesses operate behind barbed wire and are protected by private security. Americans travel in armed convoys and stay in secluded hotels that also feature fortress-like precautions.

Does that describe Egypt, Jordan, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates? Or many other countries in the Middle East and North Africa? Perhaps someone better informed than I could comment.

I think that’s a description of Iraq. We can’t undo the harm to our long term interests in the Middle East that our invasion of Iraq has caused. Nor am I prepared to argue that on net the invasion was a good thing.

Over the next several years we’ll be removing something like half of the troops we have in Iraq which I support as the security situation there has clearly improved substantially.

Bernard scoffed at the possibility of trade with the Middle East. Let’s take a single example: Jordan. Currently the European Union does something like $4 billion per year in exports to Jordan. The U. S. does something like $650 million, only about 6% of the total. It certainly looks to me as though there’s a market there and room for improvement on our part. There’s a similar pattern throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

Emphasis on trade liberalization and increased trade with the Middle East will not only improve the people who live there’s opinion of us but it will improve their way of life, making them more prosperous and happier. And that in turn will make all of us more secure.

Conclusion

The reason I proposed a debate on the subject was simply because the format of a debate calls for the burden of proof to fall on the affirmative. That’s not a trick; that’s the definition. Debating requires the affirmative to meet the burden of proof. I’m not surprised that Bernard doesn’t much care for the format because the real world evidence points the other way.

In the final analysis it actually appears to me that Bernard and I have many points of agreement: we shouldn’t disengage from the Middle East completely, our military engagement with the region is too great. I see no way to reduce our “fingerprint” on the region for the foreseeable future and think that our best interests lie in increased engagement. That’s our historical experience and that’s what the opinions of people all over the world support.

We need to engage with the world rather than withdraw from it and the Middle East is no exception to that but the engagement should not be so heavily in the form of military engagement. More butter, fewer guns.

Question 1 (Finel): You write: “I believe the evidence speaks clearly: the increased U. S. engagement in the region has overall been a stabilizing force.” What is the precise benefit to the United States of this increased stability? Are American interests in the region more or less secure today as a result? Or is this purely a altruistic argument on your part?

Schuler: I won’t deny that my motives are partly altruistic but that’s not the only reason we should want stability in the Middle East. Avoidance of oil price shocks doesn’t just benefit the United States but every country that buys oil whether they’re in South America, Africa, or Asia. Some of the governments in these places are holding on very tenuously as it is. An oil price shock could send them over the edge. We recently saw risks of that in Pakistan.

Pakistan recently applied for a World Bank loan because of the high price of oil. The significantly higher price spike caused by an interruption in Gulf oil might well have sent them over the edge. That presents a very real direct security threat to us. The Pakistani government is bad enough at preventing terrorist training camps from operating in the country as it is; a failure of that government would make matters even worse. Additionally, our supply lines for Afghanistan run through Pakistan. A collapse of the Pakistani government would be a very bad thing for our troops there.

Repeat that in Central America, South America, and Africa and you’d aggravate the poverty and misery in the countries in those areas. People in poor, chaotic places can be driven to great lengths. They resort to piracy as in Somalia or drug production and trafficking as in Afghanistan. They go where they think they might find work or relief—here, France, Italy, the United Kingdom. That places strains on our health and educational systems among others, not to mention social stresses.

And people living in prosperous countries make better customers for American goods and services than people in poor, chaotic countries do. Improving security is a fine example of doing good while doing well.

Question 2 (Finel): You quote from Sayyid Qutb. What evidence can you produce to show that Qutbism is followed by anything more than a tiny sliver of the population of the Middle East?

Schuler: A recent Pew poll suggested that roughly 8% of Muslims living in the United States expressed opinions which I’d interpret as radical Islamist ones. The number of foreign-born Muslims, particularly Arabs, who expressed such views among the whole was somewhat higher. I wouldn’t be surprised if 10% of the population of the Middle East had such views. That’s tens of millions of people.

The membership of the Muslim Brotherhood is certainly estimated to be in the millions. I don’t think there’s any doubt that his teachings are very influential.

I’m not certain whether the absolute numbers are particularly important. There weren’t a lot of Japanese who believed that Japan should attack the United States sixty years ago and only a very small number actually took part in the attack. We engaged in total war against the Japanese anyway. My point is emphatically not that we should be engaging in total war but that a relatively small number of people can create a lot of misery.

Question 3 (Finel): How would you guarantee the security of “American tourists, American products, American students, and, especially, American businessmen”? Which of the security measures undertaken after the 1998 embassy bombings would you reverse in order to encourage greater contact between these groups and the people of Middle Eastern countries?

Schuler: It’s certainly a problem and I’m open to suggestions. I don’t know that I’m advocating reversing any of the post-1998 measures. I’m not advocating a sudden flood of Americans but a gradual increase. American businesses aren’t doing as much business as they could be in the Middle East and North Africa and real as opposed to perceived security concerns probably aren’t the most important reason for that.

Clearly, some places are riskier than others. Iraq would be pretty darned risky. However, to the best of my knowledge there’s only been one murder of an American in Jordan over the period of the last 20 years. There are all sorts of places in the Middle East and North African where American tourists and businessmen aren’t in considerably more danger than British or French tourists or businessmen and the British and French are doing quite a bit of business in the Middle East.

It would also help if there weren’t exaggerated and mistaken impressions given in our own media. For example, the early reports of the attacks in Mumbai last month emphasized that the terrorists were after Americans and Britons. Later reports tended to refute that. There’s never been a definitive answer to whether that was the case and our media accounts have left us with the impression that Americans were particular targets whether that was the case or not. That makes it hard to assess the actual risks.

The most recent Pew Survey of Global Attitudes found that people in other countries who had more personal exposure to America and Americans were also more likely to have a favorable attitude towards America and Americans. We aren’t going to improve our security situation by barricading ourselves within our borders. Ignorance and isolation are our enemies not our friends.

Question 1: What evidence do you have that reducing our “footprint” and “fingerprint” will result in a reduction of radicalism in the Middle East?

BERNARD FINEL: Obviously, it is impossible to prove a hypothetical, so there is no direct evidence to support my contention that reducing our visibility will reduce radicalism. Indeed, I don’t think it is likely to reduce radicalism at all—what I believe is that it will reduce anti-American radicalism, which is a slightly different argument. I also want to point out that we need to think through carefully the evidentiary requirements of the case for a policy change. If our current policies were working well, then there would be a strong argument for the presumption against a major departure, and hence a high-standard of proof would be required. In the current case, where our Middle Eastern policy is, I think, self-evidently unsatisfactory, the standard of proof for change is lower. That said, I agree with the implicit assumption behind these questions, which is that the first principle ought to be to first do no harm to American interests.

As to the evidence. I come to my conclusion on the basis of both an analysis of public opinion data and by comparison to other countries. First, opinion data: There is deep, deep skepticism of American motives. According to a survey done by Shibley Telhami of opinion in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, 83% of respondents held an unfavorable view of the United States in 2008. Of that 64% held a “very unfavorable” view. The fundamental reason for this unfavorable opinion is skepticism of American motives. When asked whether the U.S. goal was to “weaken and divide Islam” a worldpublicopinion.org poll in 2007 showed 78% of Moroccan believed that was the U.S. goal, as did 92% of Egyptians and 73% of Pakistanis. This is a common belief in the Middle East. Indeed, it is one of the few obvious sources of anti-American sentiment, along with support for Israel and the Iraq war. On the whole, the public in the Middle East responds positively to American “values”—such as democracy, freedom, and so on. And on the whole, these same publics reject terrorism. So, I think we can infer, from this, that it is the American role in the region that prompts anger and resentment.

Second, do a comparison with other countries. If the issue if “who we are” rather than “what we are (perceived as) doing,” then why are we more unpopular than our European allies who share most of our values. There is no correlate between level of democracy and unpopularity. There is no correlation between percentage of Christians and unpopularity. Muslims in the United States are, on the whole, better integrated into American society than are Muslims in Europe, and yet in the Middle East that is not reflected in a different in public opinion.

If you can explain 83% unfavorable ratings—in countries that are largely American allies—with some other data point, I’m open to reconsidering my argument. But I just think the data leads one to the conclusion that it is American involvement that is generating a backlash.

Now, as a policy matter, does that imply that reducing our footprint would ease this challenge. I really don’t know. I can’t see how it could hurt. But I am also not sure it will help. Just as anti-Semitism often exists even in the absence of Jews, it is possible that anti-Americanism has become so ingrained in modes of political analysis that even if we reduce our presence, we will still be blamed for negative developments in the bizarre conspiracy theories that seem to dominate political analysis in the Middle East. I think reducing our footprint and fingerprints is the best option, but I would not bet the mortgage on it.

Question 2: what evidence do you have that reducing our “footprint” and “fingerprint” will result in enhanced security for Israel or a greater likelihood of the Israelis and Palestinians reaching a mutually agreeable settlement of their differences?

BERNARD FINEL: Actually, I don’t think it will do either of those things, and I apologize if I gave that impression. About Israeli security — my view is that the Israelis can take care of themselves. They are a nuclear armed state with the best conventional military in the region. Deterrence should hold against state actors. In terms of non-state actors, I think the answer lies in multilateral non-proliferation initiatives — fissile material cut-offs, international nuclear fuel banks, and so on. Unilaterally whacking countries that might someday become a threat to Israel seems to me an inefficient approach, and one that will make the U.S. and Israel increasingly unpopular thus feeding the problem we seek to resolve.

About the Israeli-Palestinian dispute… actually, I don’t think there is a negotiated solution available, and I just think that it is mistake to be so involved that we get blamed when no agreement arises. I also think it is a mistake to raise false hopes. My view here is that we should acknowledge we have no power over the situation, offer our assistance if requested, but otherwise try to break the notion that the road to peace in the Middle East somehow runs through Washington.

Question 3: what evidence do you have that pursuing “alternative energy, oil exploration at home, better fuel efficiency from cars” will result in a substantial reduction in oil use in the near term in the United States let alone in the long term? How large a reduction and in what time frame?

BERNARD FINEL: My argument is a long-term one actually. I come at the issue from the reverse perspective. Is there any reason why, even given today’s technology, we “need” to use oil? No. Replacing the roughly 9% of electricity generated by oil-fired power plants is within easy reach by a combination of coal, nuclear, solar, and wind. The bigger issue is the use of oil in the transportation sector. Here there are again plenty of existing solutions — plug-in electric, hydrogen-powered, natural gas, etc. The big challenge in making a switch is primarily infrastructure. The cost of building out this infrastructure is massive… but so is the cost of fighting wars in the Middle East and maintaining power-projection capabilities for regional contingencies there.

According to Energy Independence Now, converting all of California’s gas stations to carry hydrogen would cost roughly $5 billion. Extrapolate that to the rest of the country and we are looking at maybe a $50 billion price tag. Add in investments in generation capacity—maybe twice that again, so another $100 billion. We spend roughly $150 billion in purchasing foreign oil every year (the figure varies with prices, of course). For the money we spend in a single year on foreign oil, we could make a major dent in a hydrogen infrastructure. Hydrogen is still more costly than oil if you don’t take into account the political and military costs associated with oil dependency. If you do, the gap closes. But you don’t need to replace all oil. Just reduce our use and exposure to the point that we don’t feel compelled to be a regional policeman.

Just a caveat—the numbers on energy independence are all over the map. It depends on how quickly you do it, which technologies, assumptions about economies of scale, etc. My point is, we spend $150 billion on foreign oil, we spend perhaps another $100 billion annually in supporting military capacity and political engagements to reduce risk in access to that oil, and we spend tens of billions more a year in mitigating the consequence of this dependence. There is a massive amount of resources locked up in the status quo. Oil dependence is not cheap.

Writing at the San Francisco Chronicle, George Bisharat charges that Barack Obama unnecessarily offended the world’s Muslims by pandering to the Israel lobby.

On his first day as the presumptive Democratic candidate for president earlier this month, Barack Obama committed a serious foreign policy blunder. Reciting a litany of pro-Israeli positions at the annual meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), he avowed: “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”

In promising U.S. support of Israel’s claims to all of Jerusalem, Obama couldn’t have picked a better way to offend the world’s 325 million Arabs and 1.5 billion Muslims.

What follows is a rather standard discourse on the Palestinian case, the need to be seen as an honest broker in the region, and so on. Given that there’s not much light between Obama and his Republican opponent, John McCain, on this one, it’s a purely academic exercise.

For the record, I’m sympathetic to Bisharat’s argument, as applied to American foreign policy in general more so than to Obama’s remarks in particular, but think the focus is misplaced. The issue is how best to advance U.S. interests, not how to make others happy. But taking the Likudist stance on Jerusalem as a starting point strikes me as decidedly unhelpful in that regard.

Also amusing: Bisharat is quoted, without comment, at little green footballs under the headline “Barack Obama Has Offended Billions of Muslims.” I was under the impression that offending Muslims was a good thing in LGF-land? Sure enough, it took until the 21st comment to get: “If there ever was a religion that needed offending it’s Islam.”

A bureaucratic SNAFU almost cost seven Palestinian students their ability to study abroad on prestigious Fulbright scholarships.

The U.S. has reinstated the Fulbright scholarships of seven Gaza Strip students blocked by Israel from leaving the Hamas-ruled territory, the State Department said Monday. The students were informed Thursday that their scholarships for the upcoming academic year would be deferred because they couldn’t get out of Gaza, which Israel blockaded after the Islamic militants seized power a year ago.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the U.S. reversal came on orders from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who first heard about the scholarship snafu on Friday. “She wasn’t pleased,” McCormack said.

Israel and the United States have tried not to point fingers in public over the scholarship incident, but each government clearly thinks the other made mistakes early on. Israeli officials say U.S. diplomats didn’t ask for special exemptions for the Fulbright students, while U.S. officials say Israel should have recognized immediately that these were a special case. U.S. officials also blame themselves.

McCormack appeared to blame lower-level U.S. diplomats or support staff for the decision to yank the scholarships without discussing the implications with enough higher-ups. “On our side there was some decision-making that in retrospect we wouldn’t have taken,” he said. “The secretary is just pleased that it’s been fixed, or will be fixed.”

David Siegel, spokesman at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, defended Israel’s Gaza closure policy. “Hamas exploits every opportunity to send terrorists and weapons across the border, including under the guise of humanitarian cases,” Siegel said. “Israel has a strong interest in the emergence of a moderate and educated Palestinian leadership.”

One understands the Israeli trepidation about young Palestinians crossing into their territory. But even hard-liners recognize that hand selected students engaged in cross-cultural education are the last people one wants to keep out.

Thankfully, that understanding is apparently reflexive at the top of both chains of command even if there was some overzealous misapplication of regulations a few rungs down. Bureaucracies screw these kinds of things up all the time, thus the “N” in SNAFU. What’s unusual is fixing the problem so quickly.

Dunkin’ Donuts has pulled an ad spot featuring Rachael Ray wearing a scarf around her neck because some thought it was a subtle nod of support to Palestinians.

Does Dunkin’ Donuts really think its customers could mistake Rachael Ray for a terrorist sympathizer? The Canton-based company has abruptly canceled an ad in which the domestic diva wears a scarf that looks like a keffiyeh, a traditional headdress worn by Arab men.
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Some observers, including ultra-conservative Fox News commentator Michelle Malkin, were so incensed by the ad that there was even talk of a Dunkin’ Donuts boycott. ‘‘The keffiyeh, for the clueless, is the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad,’’ Malkin yowls in her syndicated column. ‘‘Popularized by Yasser Arafat and a regular adornment of Muslim terrorists appearing in beheading and hostage-taking videos, the apparel has been mainstreamed by both ignorant and not-so-ignorant fashion designers, celebrities, and left-wing icons.’’

The company at first pooh-poohed the complaints, claiming the black-and-white wrap was not a keffiyeh. But the right-wing drumbeat on the blogosphere continued and by yesterday, Dunkin’ Donuts decided it’d be easier just to yank the ad.

Said the suits in a statement: ‘‘In a recent online ad, Rachael Ray is wearing a black-and-white silk scarf with a paisley design. It was selected by her stylist for the advertising shoot. Absolutely no symbolism was intended. However, given the possibility of misperception, we are no longer using the commercial.’’

The terrorists have won. Or maybe we’ve just gone collectively insane.

I was blissfully unaware of both the commercial and the the controversy surrounding it until seeing a link on memeorandum this morning. But, seriously?

It’s true that wearing the keffiyah as a fashion symbol has been a recurring trend among Palestinian sympathizers and various hipsters over the years. But Ray’s scarf doesn’t look anything like Yasser Arafat’s.

Further, the terrorists wear headdresses because that’s how men throughout the Middle East and North Africa dress. It’s a protective covering for the head in brutally hot climates. In any case, none of them are paisley.

The iconic “spider-web” black-and-white keffiyeh is often displayed symbolically by members of Arafat’s Fatah party (which more generally uses yellow as its party colour), although it has never been able to expropriate it as their exclusive symbol. The zig zag style of stitching is sometimes described as symbolic of their historic struggle and their inability to progress towards their objectives without having to avoid obsticles. This is in contrast to how many members of the radical leftist PLO factions (such as PFLP, PFLP-GC DFLP) prefer the checkered red keffieyhs — red being both the traditional colour of the workers’ movement and the red scarf supposedly more indicative of a bedouin and rural (thus poorer, more popular) background. The Islamist factions, such as Hamas, use green — representative of the Islamic faith — as a party color, but for keffiyehs they stick to the traditional black-and-white or red variants, with no particular preference evident. While widely known, this color symbolism is by no means universally accepted by all Palestinians, and its importance should not be overstated — red or black-and-white scarves are used by Palestinians of all political stripes, as well as by those with no particular political sympathies.

But, just to be safe, we should assume that every white chick wearing a scarf is a terrorist or terrorist sympathizer. Ray’s lucky her ad’s just been canceled and she hasn’t been hauled off to Gitmo for questioning.

UPDATE: Via Steven Taylor, I see that Tom Grant has discovered a much more egregious example of terror chic:

These fiends are everywhere. (While Taylor is reminded of an old Monty Python sketch about communists, it seems more to me like Ray Stevens’ “Santa Claus is Watching You.”)

Meanwhile, Doug Mataconis thinks sympathy for Arafat is the least of Ray’s crimes.

(And while we’re on the subject, what’s with the extraneous “a” in Ray’s first name? Perhaps another homage to Arafat? Or . . . Al Qaeda?)

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has even caught Meghan McCain — daughter of Juan McCain, hero of the Reconquista — wearing a purple plaid scarf keffiyah! Gawker has the photographic evidence. Nick Denton’s terrorist loving staff thinks it’s funny. They won’t think it’s funny, though, when the Straight Talk Express rams into Gawker HQ and explodes!

While much has been made of Barack Obama’s problems with white working class voters, especially in Appalachia, a more problematic trend may be signs of trouble with Jewish voters, a strong if relatively small part of the Democratic base.

Today’s NYT features Jodi Kantor’s story, “Many Florida Jews Express Doubts on Obama.”

On Thursday, Mr. Obama will court Jewish voters with an appearance at a synagogue in Boca Raton, Fla. A longtime Democratic constituency with a consistently high turnout rate, Jews are important to his general election hopes, particularly in New York, which he expects to win; in California and New Jersey, which he must keep out of Republican hands; and, most crucially, here in Florida, where Jews make up around 5 percent of voters. This is the most haunted state on the electoral college map for Democrats, the one they lost by hundreds of votes and a Supreme Court decision in 2000, and again in 2004.

“The fate of the world for the next four years,” mused Rabbi Ruvi New as his Sunday morning Kabbalah & Coffee class dispersed in East Boca Raton. “It’s all going to boil down to a few old Jews in Century Village,” he added, referring to a nearby retirement community.

Jews, of course, are just one of the many constituencies Mr. Obama must persuade: Latinos, women, working-class whites and independents are vital as well. Thanks in part to enthusiasm from younger Jews, he won 45 percent of the Jewish vote in the primaries (not counting the disputed ones in Florida and Michigan), a respectable showing against a New York senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton. But in recent presidential elections, Jews have drifted somewhat to the right. Because Mr. Obama is relatively new on the national stage, his résumé of Senate votes in support of Israel is short, as is his list of high-profile visits to synagogues and delis. So far, his overtures to Jews have been limited; aside from a few speeches and interviews, he has left most of it to surrogates.

And, frankly, a lot of bizarre rumors linger.

Because of a dispute over moving the date of the state’s primary, Mr. Obama and the other Democratic candidates did not campaign in Florida. In his absence, novel and exotic rumors about Mr. Obama have flourished. Among many older Jews, and some younger ones, as well, he has become a conduit for Jewish anxiety about Israel, Iran, anti-Semitism and race.

Mr. Obama is Arab, Jack Stern’s friends told him in Aventura. (He’s not.)

He is a part of Chicago’s large Palestinian community, suspects Mindy Chotiner of Delray. (Wrong again.)

Mr. Wright is the godfather of Mr. Obama’s children, asserted Violet Darling in Boca Raton. (No, he’s not.)

Al Qaeda is backing him, said Helena Lefkowicz of Fort Lauderdale (Incorrect.)

Michelle Obama has proven so hostile and argumentative that the campaign is keeping her silent, said Joyce Rozen of Pompano Beach. (Mrs. Obama campaigns frequently, drawing crowds in her own right.)

Mr. Obama might fill his administration with followers of Louis Farrakhan, worried Sherry Ziegler. (Extremely unlikely, given his denunciation of Mr. Farrakhan.)

How widespread these beliefs are is hard to measure. But it goes well beyond that.

But the resistance toward Mr. Obama appears to be rooted in something more than factual misperception; even those with an accurate understanding of Mr. Obama share the hesitations. In dozens of interviews, South Florida Jews questioned his commitment to Israel — even some who knew he earns high marks from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which lobbies the United States government on behalf of Israel.

“You watch George Bush for a day, and you know where he stands,” said Rabbi Jonathan Berkun of the Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center.

Many here suspect Mr. Obama of being too cozy with Palestinians, while others accuse him of having Muslim ties, even though they know that his father was born Muslim and became an atheist, and that Mr. Obama embraced Christianity as a young man. In Judaism, religion is a fixed identity across generations.

“His father was a Muslim and you can’t take that out of him,” said Ms. Chotiner, 51, who said she would still vote for Mr. Obama, out of Democratic loyalty. “Do I have very strong reservations? Yes, I do,” she said.

Several interviewees said they had reservations about Mr. Obama’s stated willingness to negotiate with Iran — whose nuclear ambitions and Holocaust-denying president trigger even starker fears among Jews than intifada uprisings and suicide bombings. American Jews are by no means uniformly opposed to negotiations with Iran, the leaders of several Jewish groups said, but there is no consensus, and everyone fears that the wrong choice could lead to calamity. Israelis fear Iran “could be the first suicide nation, a nation that would destroy itself to destroy the Jewish nation,” Mr. [Alan] Dershowitz said.

While most of this report is anecdotal, there are some data supporting the trend. The latest Rasmussen poll in Florida shows McCain beating Obama 50-40. More interestingly, “Just 57% of Florida Democrats say they will vote for Obama while 27% plan to vote for McCain. The two candidates are essentially even among unaffiliated voters.” To be sure, part of this is a function of Hillary Clinton supporters who haven’t accepted that Obama will be the nominee yet, combined with some bitterness over how the DNC has treated the state. Regardless, Obama has to view this with some concern.

Dave Schuler, Alex Knapp, Dodd Harris and I talked about this phenomenon in passing on last night’s edition of OTB Radio, mostly inspired by a RealClearPolitics piece by former NYC mayor Ed Koch, a liberal Democrat who backed President Bush in 2004 “saying at the time that I did not agree with him on a single domestic issue, but I did believe he was the only one running who appreciated the threat of Islamic terrorism to American values and Western civilization and was prepared to wage a war to defend those values.” Despite Bush’s horrendous approval ratings, Koch argues history will vindicate him precisely because of his stance on terrorism and, in particular, his staunch support of Israel.

I’m dubious of Koch’s claims on a variety of fronts. But there is likely a strong contingent of “Ed Koch Democrats” out there who vote with a keen eye toward America’s policy toward Israel. That both baffles and concerns me but it’s a reality.

Jamie Rubin, formerly Bill Clinton’s State Department spokesman, takes to the pages of the Washington Post to call out John McCain for hypocrisy in claiming that Barack Obama wants to “appease” Hamas. Riffing on John Kerry’s famous gaffe, the piece is subtitled, “McCain Was for Talking Before He Was Against It.”

McCain is the last politician who should be attacking Obama. Two years ago, just after Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections, I interviewed McCain for the British network Sky News’s “World News Tonight” program. Here is the crucial part of our exchange:

I asked: “Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?”

McCain answered: “They’re the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it’s a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that.”

For some Europeans in Davos, Switzerland, where the interview took place, that’s a perfectly reasonable answer. But it is an unusual if not unique response for an American politician from either party. And it is most certainly not how the newly conservative presumptive Republican nominee would reply today.

Given that exchange, the new John McCain might say that Hamas should be rooting for the old John McCain to win the presidential election. The old John McCain, it appears, was ready to do business with a Hamas-led government, while both Clinton and Obama have said that Hamas must change its policies toward Israel and terrorism before it can have diplomatic relations with the United States.

The comments from both McCain and President Bush about Obama wanting to “appease” Hamas are, at best, rather silly. Using words of praise from Hamas leaders against Obama is within the bounds of political give and take but it’s not helpful in illuminating policy differences.

In McCain’s defense, though, the facts on the ground have changed rather dramatically, making the “hypocrisy” charges questionable. Mahmoud Abbas dismissed the Hamas-led government last June. Thus, the premise of McCain’s 2006 comments — that we simply have to deal with the Palestinian government, like it or not — has been obviated.

Of course, one could apply that same argument to Iran and Cuba and McCain doesn’t take the logic that far.

UPDATE: Much more from Jim Geraghty who correctly notes that even McCain’s 2006 statements on the subject were much more nuanced than Rubin suggests.

Thomas Ricks reports that Matt Matthews, a historian at the Army’s Combat Studies Institute, has written a new report concluding that “five years of fighting insurgents in Iraq may also have dulled U.S. soldiers’ skills at more conventional combat.”

The study, apparently, isn’t a case study of the U.S. military but rather the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war and Israel’s woeful performance.

The fight at Wadi Saluki, for example, revealed the failure of tank commanders and crewmen to use their smokescreen systems, the lack of indirect fire skills, and the total absence of combined arms proficiency. The IDF lost many of these perishable skills during its long years of COIN [counterinsurgency] operations against the Palestinians.

[...]

While the U.S. Army continues to perform irregular warfare operations throughout the world, it must not lose its ability to execute major combat operations.

Unfortunately, combat skills are not interchangeable. We spent years presuming that, if we trained to beat the Big, Bad Russians, we could handle anyone. Vietnam, Beirut, and other encounters proved different. Similarly, proficiency in maneuver warfare has only limited transfer into counterinsurgency or stability operations. The reverse, alas, is likely true as well.

I’d like to bring an article in the Hoover Institutions’s publication, Policy Review, A Moral Core for U.S. Foreign Policy by Derek Chollet and Tod Lindberg, to your attention. In the article the authors note that

…after two successive presidents of opposite political parties (Bill Clinton and George W. Bush) have argued that spreading American values is itself a vital interest, there is growing skepticism in many quarters about whether trying to do so is worth significant costs, or even a true interest of the United States at all. Facts matter, and after several difficult years of pursuing a foreign policy framed as a fight for American values, more are wondering whether the sacrifice is worth it.

It’s an idea that cuts across the political spectrum from Left to Right. For Democrats although political opposition to President Bush is certainly one of the factors informing a reexamination of “spreading American values” as an important factor in U. S. foreign policy, it isn’t the only factor.

But liberal skepticism is more than structural or institutional — it is also internal to the debates among different camps within liberal politics. The history of the past seven years — and the consequences of a policy perceived as driven more by values than interests — has been sobering for a number of left-leaning members of the foreign policy establishment. Many supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq for the same reasons that they supported confronting Saddam Hussein during the Clinton years. And many applauded President Bush when he talked about the importance of democracy promotion. Yet now that the costs of such policies are apparent — whether in terms of political capital, U.S. global prestige, or blood and treasure — many in the foreign policy elite have become more cautious, scaling back ambitions and endorsing more realistic goals.

And it isn’t only the political opponents of George W. Bush who are reexamining the policy but members of his own party as well:

Six years later, neoconservatives again find themselves largely on the outside looking in as many mainstream Republicans seek a return to the kinds of policies then-Governor Bush articulated during the 2000 presidential campaign: a foreign policy based on humility, skepticism about the United States ’ interests in “nation-building,” and the limited applicability of American values to regions like the Middle East.

The article then enters into an extended examination of the hypothetical foreign policy of “Acirema”, the world’s dominant military power, based solely on national interest narrowly construed. Touchstones of our current policy including alliances, our relationship with Israel, nuclear defense policy are examined in turn:

Disband NATO, abandon Israel, destabilize China, welcome wars when useful, disregard genocide, and wage preemptive nuclear war? While such views are consistently found in certain small segments of the political spectrum, there is, thankfully, no plausible passageway from America to Acirema.

and they find the notions of a values-free foreign policy alien to our national character:

But the United States was founded not as a “values-free” rational calculator of what’s good for No. 1, but as a nation embodying certain values or principles that justified rebellion against its lawful sovereign. While, to this day, the United States has been accused (often with justification) of failing to live up to the values of the Declaration of Independence, the United States has never been able to or seriously attempted to expunge those values from all consideration in the conduct of domestic or foreign policy.

The bulk of the rest of the article consists of a discussion of what values a revitalized American foreign policy that’s cognizant of American values might include

• Standing against the conquest of territory by force.
• Defending liberal regimes.
• Promoting liberal governance.
• Balancing prudential considerations and principle.
• Enforcing the “responsibility to protect.”
• Addressing global hardship.
• Strengthening alliances and institutions.

It’s less than a week before “Super Tuesday”, when an enormous proportion of the delegates of both parties who will be voting to decide the presidential candidates of the two major parties will be elected themselves. In the seemingly interminable campaign season, the principles underlying our foreign policy bid fair to be overwhelmed by the policy details being presented in stump speeches.

Withdraw from Iraq? Increase the size of our military? Increase the strength of our alliances? Bring peace between the Israelis and Palestinians? All of these are specific action items that might be undertaken in a foreign policy rather than constituting a policy themselves. Action items like this and the policy that drives them ideally should spring from a coherent national consensus. Take a look at this article and, whether you agree with it enthusiastically or disagree with it vehemently, I’m sure you’ll take away something useful in forming your own views of what direction our foreign policy should be moving in.

Megan McArdle observes that, “When I tuned into the morning news yesterday, the BBC was covering the Gaza strip. Fox News was teaching people how to make homemade butterscotch pudding.”

I gather that she disapproves of Fox’ choice. But, really, learning about the latest bizarre chapter in Palestine will have precisely zero practical consequence. By contrast, butterscotch pudding is delicious. And homemade butterscotch pudding would almost have to be even better.

Of course, pudding is made from eggs, a/k/a “chicken abortions,” and milk, a/k/a “cow pus,” so said recipe might be less useful to a vegan.

Image source: Something So Clever via Google

Massive numbers of Palestinians are fleeing to Egypt.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians on foot and on donkey carts poured into Egypt from Gaza Wednesday after masked gunmen used land mines to blast down a seven-mile barrier dividing the border town of Rafah. The border breach was a dramatic protest against the closure of the impoverished Palestinian territory imposed last week by Israel.

Jubilant men and women crossed unhindered by border controls over the toppled corrugated metal along sections of the barrier, carrying goats, chickens and crates of Coca-Cola. Some brought back televisions, car tires and cigarettes and one man even bought a motorcycle. Vendors sold soft drinks and baked goods to the crowds.

They were stocking up on goods made scarce by the Israeli blockade and within hours, shops on the Egyptian side of Rafah had run out of stock. The border fence had divided the Rafah into two halves, one on the Egyptian side and one in southern Gazan.

One imagines they were yelling “Rodney King!” as they did this. . . .

Aside from whatever impact this has on the never-ending Israel-Palestinian mess, one wonders how it will affect the border security debate in the United States. Suddenly, erecting walls doesn’t seem like such a great solution.

UPDATE: A video report from AP:

The al Aksa Martyr Brigades put out a leaflet advocating the assassination of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayad.

Fatah’s armed wing, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, on Sunday called for the murder of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayad for “collaboration” with Israel and the US. This was the first time the group has openly called for Fayad’s assassination. In the past, the group distributed leaflets strongly condemning Fayad and calling for his dismissal.

Fayad has been under heavy criticism from some Fatah leaders and activists, who accuse him of denying them public funds and plotting to undermine Fatah’s grip on power. Other Fatah leaders have also accused Fayad of seeking to consolidate his power with the hope of replacing Mahmoud Abbas as PA president.

The threat was made in a leaflet distributed by the Aksa Martyrs Brigades in the Gaza Strip. Some Fatah officials in Ramallah sought to distance themselves from the threat, claiming that the leaflet had been forged. They even went as far as accusing Hamas of being behind it.

“The command of the Aksa Martyrs Brigades in the Gaza Strip calls on all its elements and striking forces in the West Bank to immediately eliminate the so-called Salaam Fayad,” the leaflet said. It claimed that Fayad’s Ramallah-based government was working for Israel and the US.

Lovely. This demonstration further illustrates that the Palestinians aren’t ready for self-government and thereby undermines the Aksa Martyrs Brigades’ putative objective. But the old adage “the perfect is the enemey of the good” is never more apt than in the case of the Palestinian radicals, who see anything less than the annihilation of Israel and the having every square inch of the 1948 territory under Palestinian rule as surrender.