by Jasmin Ramsey

Mary Rezaian, the mother of Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post reporter who was detained in Iran last week with his wife Yeganeh Salehi without charge or access to a lawyer, makes a heartfelt plea to Iranian authorities in this video to release her two loved ones.

Reza Marashi does [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Jasmin Ramsey

Mary Rezaian, the mother of Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post reporter who was detained in Iran last week with his wife Yeganeh Salehi without charge or access to a lawyer, makes a heartfelt plea to Iranian authorities in this video to release her two loved ones.

Reza Marashi does a beautiful job of describing Jason, a friend and former IPS contributor, in this piece, and many, myself included, share the helplessness Reza conveys about the situation.

Jason’s American mother displays incredible grace in this clip, despite the agony she must be feeling, wearing a head scarf, speaking partially in Farsi, and asking rather than accusing or commanding. That’s Jason’s way, too.

“From an early age Jason noticed how Iran was negatively portrayed in the US and world media. He became a journalist to help build bridges of understanding and to share Iran’s rich cultural heritage with the West,” said Rezaian last week.

“His work was not controversial, but an honest record of his encounters with the people and the soul of Iran.”

Exactly.

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by Jim Lobe

A week after the now-notorious “Adelson Primary” at the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) convention in Las Vegas, the Washington Post ran the first of what it called a series of profiles of a “handful of wealthy donors” who are likely to give a ton of money — many [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Jim Lobe

A week after the now-notorious “Adelson Primary” at the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) convention in Las Vegas, the Washington Post ran the first of what it called a series of profiles of a “handful of wealthy donors” who are likely to give a ton of money — many tons, now that the Supreme Court has opened the floodgates of campaign cash in the McCutcheon v. FEC case — to political candidates in the current and 2016 election cycles. It chose hedge fund supremo Paul Singer as its first subject, a major GOP funder.

Actually, the Post ran two versions of the profile — one longer piece on its blog and a second, somewhat shorter piece printed in the newspaper. The blog post is more comprehensive. While it focuses primarily on Singer’s support — and substantial contributions to campaigns — for gay marriage around the country, it also mentions other causes that have benefited from his largesse, including his opposition to any form of financial regulation and Israel about which it notes only:

Like fellow Republican donor Sheldon Adelson, Singer is staunchly pro-Israel. He is on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition, which held its spring meeting last weekend. He was a member of a large American delegation that went to celebrate Israel’s 60th anniversary in 2008.

The print version of the profile, in contrast, focused almost exclusively on Singer’s LGBT rights advocacy; indeed, neither the word “Israel,” nor the phrase “Republican Jewish Coalition,” nor the name “Sheldon Adelson” appear in the more than 1,000-word piece. The only hint in the article — which is likely to be more influential in forming opinions about Singer’s philanthropy within the Beltway than the blog post — that he has any interest in Israel at all is found in the last paragraph in which it is noted that Singer sits on the board of the “conservative” [!!??] Commentary magazine. But then you’d have to know that Commentary is a hard-line neoconservative journal obsessed with Israel to figure out that Singer takes an interest in matters Middle Eastern.

In a blog post published Monday by The Nation, LobeLog co-founder and contributor Eli Clifton (who now lives in New York and thus doesn’t have ready access to the Washington Post print edition) noted appropriately that the Post’s blog profile had skimped over Singer’s Israel-related philanthropy, notably his generosity to the Likudist Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), to which he contributed $3.6 million between 2008 and 2011 and may have provided yet more since, albeit not through his family’s foundation. According to tax forms compiled by Eli, between 2009 and 2012, Singer also contributed about $2.3 million to the American Enterprise Institute which, of course, led the charge to war in Iraq and remains highly hawkish on Iran, although those contributions may have had as much or more to do with AEI’s laissez-faire economic theology as with its Israel advocacy. It’s safe to say that his current memberships on the board of both the RJC and Commentary – both staunchly Likudist in orientation — belie some substantial financial support, as does his previous service on the board of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) whose executive director, Mike Makovsky, yesterday co-authored an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal urging the Obama administration to transfer some B-52s and bunker-busting Massive Ordnance Penetrators to Israel ASAP for possible use against Iran. In the past, Singer’s family foundation has also contributed to Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy and the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) — organizations which he may still be supporting, albeit not through his foundation, which is required by the IRS to publicly disclose its giving.

In other words, there is reason to believe that Singer’s Israel-related giving — it seems most, if not all of which, has been provided to hard-line neoconservative, even Islamophobic organizations — he told the New York Times in 2007 that “America finds itself at an early stage of a drawn-out existential struggle with radical strains of pan-national Islamists” — certainly rivals, if not exceeds, his entirely laudable campaign on behalf of gay rights.

One thing Eli left out of his Nation post was Singer’s role as kind of the ultimate “vulture capitalist.” As noted in this Right Web profile quoting Greg Palast:

Singer’s modus operandi is to find some forgotten tiny debt owed by a very poor nation. …He waits for the United States and European taxpayers to forgive the poor nations’ debts, then waits a bit longer for offers of food aid, medicine and investment loans. Then Singer pounces, legally grabbing at every resource and all the money going to the desperate country. Trade stops, funds freeze, and an entire economy is effectively held hostage. Singer then demands aid-giving nations to pay monstrous ransoms to let trade resume.

In one case he demanded $400 million from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for a debt he had acquired for less than $10 million; in another he secured $58 million from the Peruvian government in exchange for letting President Alberto Fujimori flee the country in a private plane Singer had seized against payment of the debt.

More recently, his efforts to capitalize on Argentina’s debt (see here and here for IPS’ coverage) — which was touched on very briefly by the Post’s blog profile — have included the creation of an organization, the American Task Force Argentina (ATFA), that has taken out full-page ads in Capitol Hill newspapers linking the government of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner to Iran and an alleged cover-up of the highly questionable Iranian role in the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, as well as the enlistment of FDD, AEI, and staunchly pro-Israel lawmakers, such as Sen. Mark Kirk and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who have benefited from his campaign contributions, in his cause. Singer’s case has been opposed by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and a host of humanitarian and charitable organizations concerned that, if he succeeds at the U.S. Supreme Court, efforts to relieve poor countries of unsustainable debt may be set back by a more than a decade.

So, while Singer’s support for LGBT rights is certainly an interesting and newsworthy topic for the Post’s profile of this major Republican donor — after all, it is a kind of man-bites-dog story — it seems pretty irresponsible to completely ignore, as the Post did in its print version, these other dimensions of Singer’s political philanthropy, particularly given the chronological proximity to the “Adelson Primary.”

by Jim Lobe

Sheldon Adelson, the multi-billionaire casino mogul, is back in the political news with a front-page article in Wednesday’s Washington Post, a timely reminder of the degree to which top Republican candidates feel compelled to kiss his ring and presumably commit themselves to unswerving devotion to the security [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Jim Lobe

Sheldon Adelson, the multi-billionaire casino mogul, is back in the political news with a front-page article in Wednesday’s Washington Post, a timely reminder of the degree to which top Republican candidates feel compelled to kiss his ring and presumably commit themselves to unswerving devotion to the security of Israel as defined by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. The occasion is a convention of the Likudist and Adelson-chaired Republican Jewish Coalition at Adelson’s hotel in Las Vegas, aptly named by the Post’s headline, “Sheldon Primary.” Worth noting in the article, which reports that Adelson’s net worth is currently estimated at $37.9 billion, is the penultimate paragraph listing some of the other RJC board members who will presumably be in attendance, all of them major donors, including Lewis Eisenberg, Paul Singer, Wayne Berman, and former (Bush-appointed) ambassadors, Sam Fox and Mel Sembler. Honored guests will include Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. (Marsha had a scoop about this event last week.)

While the Post article cites Adelson’s strong feelings about Israel, it doesn’t really put that fervor into perspective, a perspective that hopefully the weekend’s supplicants will store some where in the back of their minds when they get a one-one with the man. So, for their sake, let’s recap a couple anecdotes indicative of his devotion. First, there’s the case of Newt Gingrich, whose 2012 primary campaign was paid for almost entirely by Adelson’s largess. Asked what motivated his benefactor, Gingrich was quite clear:

He knows I’m very pro Israel. That’s the central value of his life. I mean, he’s very worried that Israel is going to not survive.

And then there’s Adelson’s own words. Speaking to a group in Israel in July 2010, he was video-taped telling his audience:

“I am not Israeli. The uniform that I wore in the military, unfortunately, was not an Israeli uniform.  It was an American uniform, although my wife was in the IDF and one of my daughters was in the IDF … our two little boys, one of whom will be bar mitzvahed tomorrow, hopefully he’ll come back– his hobby is shooting — and he’ll come back and be a sniper for the IDF,” Adelson said at the event….“All we care about is being good Zionists, being good citizens of Israel, because even though I am not Israeli born, Israel is in my heart.”

Thus, it is the blessing (and financing) of this man that is being sought this weekend by the Republicans who hope to be inaugurated as President of the United States in January 2017.

by Gareth Porter

In the wake of the preliminary nuclear deal with Iran, the Washington Post’s “Fact Checker,” Glenn Kessler, has questioned whether Obama administration officials should have taken the anti-nuclear fatwa by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei seriously. But the column is less a disinterested investigation of the truth about [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Gareth Porter

In the wake of the preliminary nuclear deal with Iran, the Washington Post’s “Fact Checker,” Glenn Kessler, has questioned whether Obama administration officials should have taken the anti-nuclear fatwa by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei seriously. But the column is less a disinterested investigation of the truth about the issue than a polemic that leans clearly toward the related position of Israel, AIPAC and their Congressional supporters.

After quoting Secretary of State John Kerry’s acknowledgment in November of Khamenei’s fatwa against the possession or use of nuclear weapons, Kessler referred to it as “the alleged fatwa” and as a “diplomatic MacGuffin”. A “McGuffin” is a device that moves the plot forward but, as Kessler put it, is “unimportant to the overall story”. Kessler argued that the fatwa “gives the Americans a reason to begin to trust the Iranians and the Iranians a reason to make a deal”. But he asserted that U.S. officials were wrong to suggest that the fatwa “prohibits the development of nuclear weapons”.

While acknowledging that Khamenei may have issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons, he cited three reasons why greater skepticism by these officials about the fatwa is called for. In all three cases, however, Kessler failed to examine the available evidence carefully and offered conclusions that are clearly contradicted by that evidence.

Kessler noted that Khamenei’s fatwa, first issued in 2003, linked the ban on nuclear weapons to an earlier fatwa by the first Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, that banned the production of chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq war. But according to Kessler, there was no such chemical weapons ban, and thus Khamenei’s fatwa against nuclear weapons should not be trusted.  He wrote:

Iran admitted to chemical weapons production after it ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) in 1997, and U.S. intelligence agencies suspected Iran of maintaining a chemical weapons stockpile at least until 2003. So what does it say if the origin of the supposed fatwa is based on a misleading statement?

It has indeed been the official position of the U.S. intelligence community — and has been repeated many times by secondary sources over the years — that Iran admitted to the CWC’s governing body in 1997 that it had produced chemical weapons during the war. But Kessler apparently did not check the original text of the supposed Iranian “admission.” He relied instead on a secondary source that only cited the reference to the Iranian statement, along with an Israeli press article claiming that Iran had admitted to having had chemical weapons.

But the full text of the statement in question, submitted to the Conference of States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) by Iranian Ambassador Mohammad R. Alborzi in November 1998, is available on the Internet. Had Kessler looked it up, he would have learned that Alborzi did not in fact say that Iran had produced chemical weapons.

What Alborzi actually said is that, confronted with repeated chemical attacks by Iraq over several years,

Iran was left with no alternative but to seek an effective means of deterrence in the hope that it could halt or at least limit the barrage of these barbarous weapons on its people…. In this context, the decision was made that, on a strictly limited scale, capability should be developed to challenge the imminent threat particularly against the civilian populated centers. We declared, at the time, that Iran had chemical weapons capability, while maintaining the policy not to resort to these weapons and rely on diplomacy as the sole mechanism to stop their use by its adversary. The war ended soon after. Following the establishment of ceasefire, the decision to develop chemical weapons capabilities was reversed and the process was terminated.

Moreover, Alborzi’s statement was fully consistent with what Iran had said during the war. On December 29, 1987, Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi said, “The Islamic Republic is capable of manufacturing chemical weapons and possesses the technology.” But he also said, “[W]e will produce them only when Islam allows us and when we are compelled to do so.”

The Iranians were clearly engaging in an effort to deter Iraq’s use of chemical weapons by letting it be known that it could produce such weapons if the Iraqi chemical attacks did not cease. The State Department actually commented publicly in April 1985 that Iran was “developing a chemical weapons capability.” And the CIA had repeatedly made the same distinction between developing the “capability” for making unconventional weapons and actually manufacturing them in its reports on Iran’s WMD programs to Congress in the late 1990s.

The published record on Iran’s policy toward chemical weapons has been distorted by the general acceptance of the idea that both Iraq and Iran had used chemical weapons in 1988 against the Iraqi Kurdish city of Halabja. That belief had been actively promoted by officials of the Defense Intelligence Agency who had also been involved in assisting the Iraqi military in its air offensive against Iranian forces, as former Washington Post correspondent Patrick Tyler later revealed. But a 2007 book by Joost Hiltermann, the International Crisis Group’s former deputy director for the Middle East and North and its current chief operating officer, on the Halabja attack definitively refuted the idea that Iran had used chemical weapons on that occasion or at any other time or place during the Ira-Iraq War.

Contrary to Kessler’s claim, therefore, Khamenei was not lying when he said in a 2003 speech, “Even when Iraq attacked us by chemical weapons, we did not produce chemical weapons.”

Moreover, the reason for Iran’s decision to forgo producing, let alone using chemical weapons in retaliation was not that it lacked the ability to do so. Iran’s chemical sector was at least equal to, if not more advanced than that of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, according to a study for the Harvard Sussex Program. What U.S. officials and the news media have been loathe to acknowledge is that Khomeini considered chemical weapons illegal under Islam, and that his judgment was binding on the Iranian government — just as Khamenei noted in the speech declaring nuclear weapons likewise illegal.

Kessler’s second and third arguments were based entirely on the opinions of Mehdi Khalaji, whom he appears to regard as the ultimate source on the subject of Iranian fatwas in general and the “alleged fatwa” against nuclear weapons in particular. What Kessler did not tell his readers, however, is that Khalaji’s employer, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a pro-Israel think tank spun off from AIPAC itself, can hardly be considered a disinterested or objective source on the issue of Khamenei’s anti-nuclear fatwa.

Kessler cited Khalaji as asserting that Khomeini had abruptly shifted course on various issues, such as woman’s suffrage and the eating of sturgeon. (“He was also against the eating of sturgeon — until he was for it,” Kessler commented tartly.) The implication the reader is invited to draw from those comments is that Khomeini’s fatwas were arbitrary, changeable and therefore could not have been the definitive factor in anything so weighty as weapons of mass destruction.

But as can be seen from detailed account of what actually transpired in regard to Khomeini’s fatwa making sturgeon halal (allowed) rather than haram (forbidden) under Islam makes it clear that Khalaji’s cavalier dismissal of Khomeini’a fatwas as “abruptly shifting course” is grossly inaccurate.

Khalaji is also Kessler’s source for the more serious claim that Khamenei’s fatwa no longer applies to the possession of nuclear weapons as distinct from their use. “Whereas in 2005 Khamenei said that the ‘production of an atomic bomb is not on our agenda’,” wrote Kessler, “more recent statements have focused on use of nuclear weapons, often dropping references to the ‘development’ of such weapons.”

But Khamenei’s 2005 statement was not about the “development” of nuclear weapons but about their “production”. As Khalaji himself reported in a 2011 article, what Khamenei actually said was, “Islam does not allow us [to produce the atomic bomb]”. The crucial bracketed phrase was added by Khalaji himself.

The only question, therefore, is whether Khamenei has indeed stopped referring to the “production” of nuclear weapons. Kessler quoted from a 2012 Khamenei speech in which Khamenei clearly indicates that his fatwa bans the production of nuclear weapons. Here is the English-language translation that Kessler quoted:

We do not pursue to build nuclear weapons. In reality, having nuclear weapons is not to our benefit. From the viewpoint of ideology, theory, and the Islamic jurisprudence, we consider this as forbidden and proliferation of nuclear weapons as a wrong decision.

The quote provided by Kessler himself thus directly contradicts his own claim that Khamenei had begun to focus only on the “use of nuclear weapons” and had backed off on his ban on the building and possession of nuclear weapons.

Clearly recognizing the contradiction, Kessler then suggested there is something wrong with the English-language translation. He cited an alternative translation of the same 2012 Khamenei statement quoted above by Khalaji (who, of course, had inserted the bracketed material in the original):

In fact, nuclear weapon is not economically useful for us. Furthermore, intellectually, theoretically and juridically [from Sharia point of view] we consider it wrong and consider this action wrong.

Kessler claimed that there is “quite a difference” between the two translations. But even a quick comparison of the two reveals that there is no substantive difference between them. The reference in Khalaji’s translation to “this action” in the second sentence clearly implies that Khamenei had included an active verb in the first sentence, which the official version had translated as “pursue to build a nuclear weapon”. Otherwise, the phrase “this action” makes no sense.

Khalaji thus appears to have bowdlerized the sentence in his translation so as to make it appear that Khamenei had not said that Iran considered the pursuit of building a nuclear weapon juridically “wrong”.

Kessler’s column uses the gimmick of assigning “Pinocchios” to those whose political pronouncements turn out to be untrue, with the number of such long noses indicating the seriousness of the untruth. In this case, Kessler chose not to give the Obama administration any such bad marks, concluding that Kerry’s statements “do not quite rise to the level of earning Pinocchios”.

But Kessler’s column itself would seem to warrant three “Pinocchios” — one for each of the three false claims that appeared therein. Kessler’s failure to check primary sources, his exclusive reliance on a researcher from a pro-Israeli think tank, his introduction of a false criterion for judging whether Khamenei has retreated from the fatwa and his unwarranted suggestion that an official translation of Khamenei’s statement had somehow been altered to change Khamanei’s meaning all raises serious questions about the objectivity and thoroughness of his fact-checking on this issue.

Kessler’s failure in fact-checking on the Khamenei fatwa is symptomatic of a much larger problem. For many years, news media have systematically failed to check the facts in regard to one claim after another about alleged Iranian ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons. The result is a narrative about the Iranian nuclear program that is highly distorted and needs to corrected in order to have a rational discussion of the issue.

via The National Interest

Lindsey Graham and John McCain, the two-thirds of the Three Amigos who are still in the U.S. Senate since the departure of Joe Lieberman, contributed to the opinion pages of the Washington Post this weekend a short reprise of their familiar positions on front-burner Middle Eastern [...]]]> by Paul Pillar

via The National Interest

Lindsey Graham and John McCain, the two-thirds of the Three Amigos who are still in the U.S. Senate since the departure of Joe Lieberman, contributed to the opinion pages of the Washington Post this weekend a short reprise of their familiar positions on front-burner Middle Eastern issues: act forcefully to defeat the Assad regime in Syria, be obdurate toward Iran, etc. Nothing new here, but it might be worth reflecting for a moment on one of their accusations: that the administration’s “failure in Syria” is part of broader “collapse of U.S. credibility in the Middle East.” Graham and McCain’s particular usage of the term credibility exemplifies something broader, too: a habit of associating the concept only with forceful actions, especially military actions, rather than with any other policy course.

This restrictive concept of upholding a nation’s credibility does not flow from any dictionary definition of credibility (“the quality or power of inspiring belief”). Whether any given action or piece of inaction tends to inspire belief depends of course on context and on what else the state in question has said or done on the same subject. There is no reason to postulate an asymmetry in favor of forceful action or any other kind of action.

There are valid grounds for criticizing the Obama administration’s policies on Syria, especially the overemphasis on the issue of chemical weapons with insufficient advance thinking about what to do if a significant chemical incident were to occur. But the administration’s subsequent seizing on the Russian initiative after the chemical incident in August was in a real sense a making good on its own word about viewing chemical weapons as the most important dimension of the Syrian conflict. That is an unjustifiably narrow way of viewing the conflict, but at least the administration was being consistent, and consistency is an important ingredient of credibility.

The Two Amigos write that the president “specifically committed” to them in the Oval Office “to degrade the Assad regime’s military capabilities, upgrade the capabilities of the moderate opposition and shift the momentum on the battlefield.” Those of us who have not been flies on the Oval Office wall cannot referee that one. But publicly the president has not made the sort of commitment that would warrant the Amigos’ accusation that he “abandoned” the Syrian opposition.

Another erroneous application of the concept of credibility is the senators’ equating loss of credibility with how “Israel and our Gulf Arab partners are losing all confidence” in the administration’s diplomacy, with references to recent indications of the Saudi regime’s displeasure. Displeasing other states, when there has been no failure to live up to a treaty commitment and when the other states—as is true of both Israel and Saudi Arabia—have major differences of interest with the United States as well as some shared interests, has nothing to do with a failure of credibility. Consistent pursuit of the United States’s own interests is much more of a foundation for maintaining credibility.

Graham and McCain do inadvertently give us an example in their piece of how U.S. credibility can be hurt. In referring to the Iranian nuclear issue they say, “We should be prepared to suspend the implementation of new sanctions, but only if Iran suspends its enrichment activities.” This formulation comes out of a letter that eight other senators also signed and that tries to portray this package as a balanced “suspension for suspension” deal. This is a ludicrous play on words. There is nothing reasonable or proportionate about linking a demand for one side to stop completely an ongoing program in return for the other side not piling on still more new sanctions, which doesn’t really entail a suspension of anything. The wordplay is unbelievable. If we want the Iranians or anyone else to believe that the United States is serious about reaching an agreement, this sort of silliness damages U.S. credibility.

via Tom Dispatch

by Andrew J. Bacevich

The abiding defect of U.S. foreign policy? It’s isolationism, my friend. Purporting to steer clear of war, isolationism fosters it. Isolationism impedes the spread of democracy. It inhibits trade and therefore prosperity. It allows evildoers to get [...]]]> The New York Times and the Enduring “Threat” of Isolationism

via Tom Dispatch

by Andrew J. Bacevich

The abiding defect of U.S. foreign policy? It’s isolationism, my friend. Purporting to steer clear of war, isolationism fosters it. Isolationism impedes the spread of democracy. It inhibits trade and therefore prosperity. It allows evildoers to get away with murder. Isolationists prevent the United States from accomplishing its providentially assigned global mission. Wean the American people from their persistent inclination to look inward and who knows what wonders our leaders will accomplish.

The United States has been at war for well over a decade now, with U.S. attacks and excursions in distant lands having become as commonplace as floods and forest fires. Yet during the recent debate over Syria, the absence of popular enthusiasm for opening up another active front evoked expressions of concern in Washington that Americans were once more turning their backs on the world.

As he was proclaiming the imperative of punishing the government of Bashar al-Assad, Secretary of State John Kerry also chided skeptical members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that “this is not the time for armchair isolationism.”  Commentators keen to have a go at the Syrian autocrat wasted little time in expanding on Kerry’s theme.

Reflecting on “where isolationism leads,” Jennifer Rubin, the reliably bellicose Washington Post columnist, was quick to chime in, denouncing those hesitant to initiate another war as “infantile.” American isolationists, she insisted, were giving a green light to aggression. Any nation that counted on the United States for protection had now become a “sitting duck,” with “Eastern Europe [and] neighbors of Venezuela and Israel” among those left exposed and vulnerable.  News reports of Venezuelan troop movements threatening Brazil, Colombia, or Guyana were notably absent from the Post or any other media outlet, but no matter — you get the idea.

Military analyst Frederick Kagan was equally troubled.  Also writing in thePost, he worried that “the isolationist narrative is rapidly becoming dominant.”  His preferred narrative emphasized the need for ever greater military exertions, with Syria just the place to launch a new campaign.  For Bret Stephens, a columnist with the Wall Street Journal, the problem was the Republican Party.  Where had the hawks gone?  The Syria debate, he lamented, was “exposing the isolationist worm eating its way through the GOP apple.”

The Journal’s op-ed page also gave the redoubtable Norman Podhoretz, not only still alive but vigorously kicking, a chance to vent.  Unmasking President Obama as “a left-wing radical” intent on “reduc[ing] the country’s power and influence,” the unrepentant neoconservative accused the president of exploiting the “war-weariness of the American people and the rise of isolationist sentiment… on the left and right” to bring about “a greater diminution of American power than he probably envisaged even in his wildest radical dreams.”

Obama escalated the war in Afghanistan, “got” Osama bin Laden, toppled one Arab dictator in Libya, and bashed and bombed targets in Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, and elsewhere.  Even so, it turns out he is actually part of the isolationist conspiracy to destroy America!

Over at the New York Times, similar concerns, even if less hysterically expressed, prevailed.  According to Times columnist Roger Cohen, President Obama’s reluctance to pull the trigger showed that he had “deferred to a growing isolationism.”  Bill Keller concurred.  “America is again in a deep isolationist mood.”  In a column entitled, “Our New Isolationism,” he decried “the fears and defeatist slogans of knee-jerk isolationism” that were impeding military action.  (For Keller, the proper antidote to isolationism is amnesia.  As he put it, “Getting Syria right starts with getting over Iraq.”)

For his part, Times staff writer Sam Tanenhaus contributed a bizarre two-minute exercise in video agitprop — complete with faked scenes of the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor — that slapped the isolationist label on anyone opposing entry into any war whatsoever, or tiring of a war gone awry, or proposing that America go it alone.

When the “New Isolationism” Was New 

Most of this, of course, qualifies as overheated malarkey.  As a characterization of U.S. policy at any time in memory, isolationism is a fiction.  Never really a tendency, it qualifies at most as a moment, referring to that period in the 1930s when large numbers of Americans balked at the prospect of entering another European war, the previous one having fallen well short of its “War To End All Wars” advance billing.

In fact, from the day of its founding down to the present, the United States has never turned its back on the world.  Isolationism owes its storied history to its value as a rhetorical device, deployed to discredit anyone opposing an action or commitment (usually involving military forces) that others happen to favor.  If I, a grandson of Lithuanian immigrants, favor deploying U.S. forces to Lithuania to keep that NATO ally out of Vladimir Putin’s clutches and you oppose that proposition, then you, sir or madam, are an “isolationist.”  Presumably, Jennifer Rubin will see things my way and lend her support to shoring up Lithuania’s vulnerable frontiers.

For this very reason, the term isolationism is not likely to disappear from American political discourse anytime soon.  It’s too useful.  Indeed, employ this verbal cudgel to castigate your opponents and your chances of gaining entrée to the nation’s most prestigious publications improve appreciably.  Warn about the revival of isolationism and your prospects of making the grade as a pundit or candidate for high office suddenly brighten.  This is the great thing about using isolationists as punching bags: it makes actual thought unnecessary.  All that’s required to posture as a font of wisdom is the brainless recycling of clichés, half-truths, and bromides.

No publication is more likely to welcome those clichés, half-truths, and bromides than the New York Times.  There, isolationism always looms remarkably large and is just around the corner.

In July 1942, the New York Times Magazine opened its pages to Vice President Henry A. Wallace, who sounded the alarm about the looming threat of what he styled a “new isolationism.”  This was in the midst of World War II, mind you.

After the previous world war, the vice president wrote, the United States had turned inward.  As summer follows spring, “the choice led up to this present war.”  Repeat the error, Wallace warned, and “the price will be more terrible and will be paid much sooner.”  The world was changing and it was long past time for Americans to get with the program.  “The airplane, the radio, and modern technology have bound the planet so closely together that what happens anywhere on the planet has a direct effect everywhere else.”  In a world that had “suddenly become so small,” he continued, “we cannot afford to resume the role of hermit.”

The implications for policy were self-evident:

“This time, then, we have only one real choice.  We must play a responsible part in the world — leading the way in world progress, fostering a healthy world trade, helping to protect the world’s peace.”

One month later, it was Archibald MacLeish’s turn.  On August 16, 1942, theTimes magazine published a long essay of his under the title of — wouldn’t you know it — “The New Isolationism.”  For readers in need of coaching, Timeseditors inserted this seal of approval before the text: “There is great pertinence in the following article.”

A well-known poet, playwright, and literary gadfly, MacLeish was at the time serving as Librarian of Congress.  From this bully pulpit, he offered the reassuring news that “isolationism in America is dead.”  Unfortunately, like zombies, “old isolationists never really die: they merely dig in their toes in a new position.  And the new position, whatever name is given it, is isolation still.”

Fortunately, the American people were having none of it.  They had “recaptured the current of history and they propose to move with it; they don’t mean to be denied.” MacLeish’s fellow citizens knew what he knew: “that there is a stirring in our world…, a forward thrusting and overflowing human hope of the human will which must be given a channel or it will dig a channel itself.”  In effect, MacLeish was daring the isolationists, in whatever guise, to stand in the way of this forward thrusting and overflowing hopefulness.  Presumably, they would either drown or be crushed.

The end of World War II found the United States donning the mantle of global leadership, much as Wallace, MacLeish, and the Times had counseled.  World peace did not ensue.  Instead, a host of problems continued to afflict the planet, with isolationists time and again fingered as the culprits impeding their solution.

The Gift That Never Stops Giving

In June 1948, with a notable absence of creativity in drafting headlines, theTimes once again found evidence of “the new isolationism.”  In an unsigned editorial, the paper charged that an American penchant for hermit-like behavior was “asserting itself again in a manner that is both distressing and baffling.”  With the Cold War fully joined and U.S. forces occupying Germany, Japan, and other countries, the Times worried that some Republicans in Congress appeared reluctant to fund the Marshall Plan.

From their offices in Manhattan, members of the Times editorial board detected in some quarters “a homesickness for the old days.”  It was incumbent upon Americans to understand that “the time is past when we could protect ourselves easily behind our barriers behind the seas.”  History was summoning the United States to lead the world: “The very success of our democracy has now imposed duties upon us which we must fulfill if that democracy is to survive.”  Those entertaining contrary views, the Times huffed, “do not speak for the American people.”

That very month, Josef Stalin announced that the Soviet Union was blockading Berlin.  The U.S. responded not by heading for the exits but by initiating a dramatic airlift.  Oh, and Congress fully funded the Marshall Plan.

Barely a year later, in August 1949, with Stalin having just lifted the Berlin Blockade, Times columnist Arthur Krock discerned another urge to disengage.  In a piece called “Chickens Usually Come Home,” he cited congressional reservations about the recently promulgated Truman Doctrine as evidence of, yes, a “new isolationism.”  As it happened, Congress duly appropriated the money President Truman was requesting to support Greece and Turkey against the threat of communism — as it would support similar requests to throw arms and money at other trouble spots like French Indochina.

Even so, in November of that year, the Times magazine published yet another warning about “the challenge of a new isolationism.”  The author was Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson, then positioning himself for a White House run.  Like many another would-be candidate before and since, Stevenson took the preliminary step of signaling his opposition to the I-word.

World War II, he wrote, had “not only destroyed fascism abroad, but a lot of isolationist notions here at home.”  War and technological advance had “buried the whole ostrich of isolation.”  At least it should have.  Unfortunately, some Republicans hadn’t gotten the word.  They were “internationally minded in principle but not in practice.”  Stevenson feared that when the chips were down such head-in-the-sand inclinations might come roaring back.  This he was determined to resist.  “The eagle, not the ostrich,” he proclaimed, “is our national emblem.”

In August 1957, the Times magazine was at it once again, opening its pages to another Illinois Democrat, Senator Paul Douglas, for an essay familiarly entitled “A New Isolationism — Ripples or Tide?” Douglas claimed that “a new tide of isolationism is rising in the country.”  U.S. forces remained in Germany and Japan, along with Korea, where they had recently fought a major war.  Even so, the senator worried that “the internationalists are tiring rapidly now.”

Americans needed to fortify themselves by heeding the message of the Gospels: “Let the spirit of the Galilean enter our worldly and power-obsessed hearts.”  In other words, the senator’s prescription for American statecraft was an early version of What Would Jesus Do?  Was Jesus Christ an advocate of American global leadership?  Senator Douglas apparently thought so.

Then came Vietnam.  By May 1970, even Times-men were showing a little of that fatigue.  That month, star columnist James Reston pointed (yet again) to the “new isolationism.”  Yet in contrast to the paper’s scribblings on the subject over the previous three decades, Reston didn’t decry it as entirely irrational.  The war had proven to be a bummer and “the longer it goes on,” he wrote, “the harder it will be to get public support for American intervention.”  Washington, in other words, needed to end its misguided war if it had any hopes of repositioning itself to start the next one.

A Concept Growing Long in the Tooth

By 1980, the Times showed signs of recovering from its brief Vietnam funk.  In a review of Norman Podhoretz’s The Present Danger, for example, the noted critic Anatole Broyard extolled the author’s argument as “dispassionate,” “temperate,” and “almost commonsensical.”

The actual text was none of those things.  What the pugnacious Podhoretz called — get ready for it — “the new isolationism” was, in his words, “hard to distinguish from simple anti-Americanism.”  Isolationists — anyone who had opposed the Vietnam War on whatever grounds — believed that the United States was “a force for evil, a menace, a terror.”  Podhoretz detected a “psychological connection” between “anti-Americanism, isolationism, and the tendency to explain away or even apologize for anything the Soviet Union does, no matter how menacing.”  It wasn’t bad enough that isolationists hated their country, they were, it seems, commie symps to boot.

Fast forward a decade, and — less than three months after U.S. troops invaded Panama – Times columnist Flora Lewis sensed a resurgence of you-know-what.  In a February 1990 column, she described “a convergence of right and left” with both sides “arguing with increasing intensity that it’s time for the U.S. to get off the world.”  Right-wingers saw that world as too nasty to save; left-wingers, the United States as too nasty to save it.  “Both,” she concluded (of course), were “moving toward a new isolationism.”

Five months later, Saddam Hussein sent his troops into Kuwait.  Instead of getting off the world, President George H.W. Bush deployed U.S. combat forces to defend Saudi Arabia.  For Joshua Muravchik, however, merely defending that oil-rich kingdom wasn’t nearly good enough.  Indeed, here was a prime example of the “New Isolationism, Same Old Mistake,” as his Timesop-ed was entitled.

The mistake was to flinch from instantly ejecting Saddam’s forces.  Although opponents of a war against Iraq did not “see themselves as isolationists, but as realists,” he considered this a distinction without a difference.  Muravchik, who made his living churning out foreign policy analysis for various Washington think tanks, favored “the principle of investing America’s power in the effort to fashion an environment congenial to our long-term safety.”  War, he firmly believed, offered the means to fashion that congenial environment.  Should America fail to act, he warned, “our abdication will encourage such threats to grow.”

Of course, the United States did act and the threats grew anyway.  In and around the Middle East, the environment continued to be thoroughly uncongenial.  Still, in Times-world, the American penchant for doing too little rather than too much remained the eternal problem, eternally “new.”  An op-edby up-and-coming journalist James Traub appearing in the Times in December 1991, just months after a half-million U.S. troops had liberated Kuwait, was typical.  Assessing the contemporary political scene, Traub detected “a new wave of isolationism gathering force.”  Traub was undoubtedly establishing his bona fides.  (Soon after, he landed a job working for the paper.)

This time, according to Traub, the problem was the Democrats.  No longer “the party of Wilson or of John F. Kennedy,” Democrats, he lamented, “aspire[d] to be the party of middle-class frustrations — and if that entails turning your back on the world, so be it.”  The following year Democrats nominated as their presidential candidate Bill Clinton, who insisted that he would never under any circumstances turn his back on the world.  Even so, no sooner did Clinton win than Times columnist Leslie Gelb was predicting that the new president would “fall into the trap of isolationism and policy passivity.”

Get Me Rewrite!

Arthur Schlesinger defined the problem in broader terms.  The famous historian and Democratic Party insider had weighed in early on the matter with a much-noted essay that appeared in The Atlantic Monthly back in 1952.  He called it – you guessed it — “The New Isolationism.”

In June 1994, more than 40 years later, with the Cold War now finally won, Schlesinger was back for more with a Times op-ed that sounded the usual alarm.  “The Cold War produced the illusion that traditional isolationism was dead and buried,” he wrote, but of course — this is, after all, the Times – it was actually alive and kicking.  The passing of the Cold War had “weakened the incentives to internationalism” and was giving isolationists a new opening, even though in “a world of law requiring enforcement,” it was incumbent upon the United States to be the lead enforcer.

The warning resonated.  Although the Times does not normally givecommencement addresses much attention, it made an exception for Madeleine Albright’s remarks to graduating seniors at Barnard College in May 1995.  The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations had detected what she called “a trend toward isolationism that is running stronger in America than at any time since the period between the two world wars,” and the American people were giving in to the temptation “to pull the covers up over our heads and pretend we do not notice, do not care, and are unaffected by events overseas.”  In other circumstances in another place, it might have seemed an odd claim, given that the United States had just wrapped up armed interventions in Somalia and Haiti and was on the verge of initiating a bombing campaign in the Balkans.

Still, Schlesinger had Albright’s back.  The July/August 1995 issue of Foreign Affairs prominently featured an article of his entitled “Back to the Womb?  Isolationism’s Renewed Threat,” with Times editors publishing a CliffsNotes version on the op-ed page a month earlier.  “The isolationist impulse has risen from the grave,” Schlesinger announced, “and it has taken the new form of unilateralism.” 

His complaint was no longer that the United States hesitated to act, but that it did not act in concert with others.  This “neo-isolationism,” he warned, introducing a new note into the tradition of isolationism-bashing for the first time in decades, “promises to prevent the most powerful nation on the planet from playing any role in enforcing the peace system.”  The isolationists were winning — this time through pure international belligerence.  Yet “as we return to the womb,” Schlesinger warned his fellow citizens, “we are surrendering a magnificent dream.”

Other Times contributors shared Schlesinger’s concern.  On January 30, 1996, the columnist Russell Baker chipped in with a piece called “The New Isolationism.”  For those slow on the uptake, Jessica Mathews, then a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, affirmed Baker’s concerns by publishing anidentically titled column in the Washington Post a mere six days later.  Mathews reported “troubling signs that the turning inward that many feared would follow the Cold War’s end is indeed happening.”  With both the Times and the Post concurring, “the new isolationism” had seemingly reached pandemic proportions (as a title, if nothing else).

Did the “new” isolationism then pave the way for 9/11?  Was al-Qaeda inspired by an unwillingness on Washington’s part to insert itself into the Islamic world?

Unintended and unanticipated consequences stemming from prior U.S. interventions might have seemed to offer a better explanation.  But this much is for sure:  as far as the Times was concerned, even in the midst of George W. Bush’s Global War in Terror, the threat of isolationism persisted.

In January 2004, David M. Malone, president of the International Peace Academy, worried in a Times op-ed “that the United States is retracting into itself” — this despite the fact that U.S. forces were engaged in simultaneous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Among Americans, a concern about terrorism, he insisted, was breeding “a sense of self-obsession and indifference to the plight of others.”  “When Terrorists Win: Beware America’s New Isolationism,” blared the headline of Malone’s not-so-new piece.

Actually, Americans should beware those who conjure up phony warnings of a “new isolationism” to advance a particular agenda.  The essence of that agenda, whatever the particulars and however packaged, is this: If the United States just tries a little bit harder — one more intervention, one more shipment of arms to a beleaguered “ally,” one more line drawn in the sand — we will finally turn the corner and the bright uplands of peace and freedom will come into view.

This is a delusion, of course.  But if you write a piece exposing that delusion, don’t bother submitting it to the Times.

Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University.  His new book is Breach of Trust:  How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country.

Copyright 2013 Andrew Bacevich

by Mark N. Katz

“Obama weighing limited strike on Syria,” reads the main headline of an August 27 Washington Post article. We still don’t know exactly what this will entail, but as this piece — and many other news reports — indicate, the operative word definitely appears to be: limited.

As authors [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Mark N. Katz

“Obama weighing limited strike on Syria,” reads the main headline of an August 27 Washington Post article. We still don’t know exactly what this will entail, but as this piece — and many other news reports — indicate, the operative word definitely appears to be: limited.

As authors Karen De Young and Anne Gearan explain, the action that the Obama administration is contemplating “is designed more to send a message than to cripple Assad’s military and change the balance of forces on the ground.” In other words, after warning last year that the use of chemical weapons is a “red line” that the Assad regime must not cross, President Barack Obama feels that he must respond if (as appears increasingly likely) the Assad regime has used them against its own citizens. But he wants to do as little as possible for fear of getting the US involved in another fractious Middle Eastern conflict.

If this is indeed the sort of attack on Syria that the president is contemplating, it is not likely to be very effective. Bashar al-Assad is not only willing to kill his opponents; he will sacrifice his supporters as well. If the US-led retaliation to his alleged recent use of chemical weapons is just one that targets some of his military facilities, that is a cost that Assad will be willing to pay. Indeed, it may encourage him to launch even more chemical weapons attacks due to the belief that while US retaliation may be annoying, it will not threaten the survival of his regime or its advantages vis-à-vis his opponents.

The White House should not forget that there is precedent for something like this. Between the end of the first Gulf War in 1991 and the US-led intervention against Iraq in 2003, the US launched numerous, small-scale attacks against Iraq in retaliation for Saddam Hussein’s many misdeeds. These did not succeed in improving his behavior much.

Nor will limited (there’s that word again) strikes against Syria improve Assad’s behavior. If the Obama administration seriously wishes to alter Assad’s ways, then it must attack or threaten to attack that which he values most: his and his regime’s survival. It is not clear, of course, that Assad will change course even if he is personally threatened. But it is only if he is eliminated, or appears likely to be, that elements within his security services concerned primarily about their own survival and prosperity will have the opportunity to reach an accommodation with some of the regime’s opponents, neighboring states and the West.

Threatening Assad’s survival is what is needed to attenuate the links between Assad and the forces that are protecting him. Undoubtedly riven with internal rivalries (something that dictators encourage for fear that their subordinates will otherwise collaborate with one another against them), the downfall of Assad — actual or believed to be imminent — is what will open the door for some in the security services to save themselves through cooperating with the regime’s opponents. Absent this condition, it is simply too risky for them to turn against their master and his other supporters — who are ever on the lookout for signs of disloyalty.

So far, though, the Obama administration has taken pains to signal that it is not going to threaten the Assad leadership. This seems very odd. It did, after all, kill Osama bin Laden when it could have captured (and possibly gained a treasure trove of intelligence from) him instead. The Obama administration has also launched an aggressive drone missile campaign against Al Qaeda targets in Yemen, Pakistan and elsewhere. But however heinous the actions of these terrorists have been, they have killed far fewer people than Assad and his henchmen.

The Obama administration may be reluctant to target Assad because he is a head of state. But whether for this reason or any other, the result of Washington’s self-restraint will be that Assad remains free to kill more and more of his own citizens.

An American attack on Syria does indeed need to be limited — limited to Assad.

by Mitchell Plitnick

On the eve of US Secretary of State John Kerry’s fifth trip of the year to Israel and the Palestinian Territories, little has changed. Despite Kerry’s entreaties not only to both parties but also to Jewish-Americans to come into his “Tent of the Peace Process,” every indication on [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Mitchell Plitnick

On the eve of US Secretary of State John Kerry’s fifth trip of the year to Israel and the Palestinian Territories, little has changed. Despite Kerry’s entreaties not only to both parties but also to Jewish-Americans to come into his “Tent of the Peace Process,” every indication on the ground is, at best, more of the same. The only changes have made it more obvious than ever that the two-state solution, as previously conceived, is dead.

In advance of delaying this trip in order to consult with the rest of the administration’s leadership on increasing military aid to the Syrian rebels, Kerry spoke to the American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) annual meeting in early June. He entreated the audience to speak out in a voice that the Israeli leadership could hear in support of the moribund two-state solution.

Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, widely regarded as the government’s “fig leaf” whose role is to mask the rejectionism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, echoed Kerry’s call. And the AJC, along with other Jewish-American organizations, got an immediate chance to respond. Yet that very opportunity demonstrated the futility of Kerry’s and Livni’s efforts.

First, Netanyahu’s Deputy Defense Minister, Danny Danon, of Netanyahu’s own Likud Coalition, declared that “…if there will be a move to promote a two-state solution, you will see forces blocking it within the [Likud] party and the government.” Danon accurately pointed out that “…the majority of Likud ministers, along with the Jewish Home [party], will be against it.” Indeed, Jewish Home leader Naftali Bennett, an outspoken opponent of a Palestinian state who advocates Israeli annexation of more than 60% of the West Bank, followed up Danon’s remarks by saying that the two-state solution is dead and “We need to build, build, build.”

Netanyahu tried to distance himself from the comments, but most understood that Danon and Bennett were simply being straightforward about the Israeli government’s makeup and direction. Indeed, it was telling that, just a few days before Kerry was due to arrive for his latest visit, Netanyahu attended the dedication of a school named after his father in the West Bank settlement of Barkan. While his aides insisted that Netanyahu did not mean to make a political statement with his appearance, his words at the school say otherwise. “The most important thing is to deepen our roots, because all the rest grows from there,” Netanyahu said. “We are here today to deepen our roots.”

The Palestinian Authority has responded to all of this by pointing out that Israel is acting against the two-state solution. “Every time Kerry comes, [Netanyahu] does something to undermine the possibility of a Palestinian state,” said Palestinian lead negotiator, Saeb Erekat. “It’s more than provocative, it’s devastating. This government’s policies are disastrous for Palestinians, Israelis and the region. I don’t know what purpose it serves to undermine the two-state solution.”

Yet the Palestinians continue to be divided, and not just between Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza. Rockets launched from Gaza Sunday night are believed to have been fired by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza. The act was reported to have been undertaken to spite Hamas, which had killed an Islamic Jihad operative while ostensibly arresting him.

The continuing divisions, especially the constantly sputtering reunification process between Hamas and Fatah is yet another reason why the two-state solution as previously conceived is, in fact, inconceivable now, no matter how much wishful thinking Kerry engages in. While indications remain that both Israelis and Palestinians support the creation of a Palestinian state, the positive answers to that abstract question may not even reflect the scope of public opinion.

In December 2012, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research asked Palestinians about the two-state solution. The majority supporting the proposal was still there, though it was down to only 52%. But when asked about a demilitarized state, only 28% supported that idea, while a robust 71% opposed it. This can hardly be surprising. After all, a Palestinian state would not only be neighboring the country that has occupied it for 46 years, but there is also the flux in which the neighboring countries — Syria, Jordan, Egypt — find themselves today. If a threat did materialize against a fledgling Palestinian state, it is hard to imagine that Israel would put its soldiers in jeopardy to defend the neighbors they regard as untrustworthy and frankly, distasteful.

But such a state is a sine qua non for Israel, and not only for reluctant “peacemakers” like Netanyahu. A demilitarized Palestinian state was clearly the vision of Netanyahu’s predecessors, to the extent they would agree to a Palestinian state at all. And, in Israeli political discourse, the so-called peace camp — including such parties as Labor, Yesh Atid, Kadima and even the most left-wing Zionist party, Meretz — is unanimous in calling for a demilitarized state.

It is said that this is Kerry’s last-ditch effort. If the Israelis and Palestinians move no closer on this trip, Kerry is prepared to abandon his shuttle diplomacy to focus his efforts on issues that may prove more malleable. The Israelis would certainly like to see negotiations resume, as this takes pressure off of Israel in the international arena, especially with Europe. This explains why Naftali Bennett, who is so hostile to peace with the Palestinians, states that he would not “veto” talks.

But political realities dictate something very different. Bennett, and indeed Netanyahu, may want to see talks resume, but they do not want them concluded with a Palestinian state. The Palestinians themselves cannot present a united front; the Palestinian Authority does not represent all of the population nor do its positions align with any but a small minority of the Palestinian people. And the United States is not prepared to insist on results. That is why so many say the two-state solution is dead. Kerry should learn the obvious lesson and either re-think his policy approach or, as he is threatening, turn his attention elsewhere.

Photo: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before their working dinner in Jerusalem on March 23, 2013. [State Department Photo/Public Domain]