Obama Fail Blog

The New York Times has soured on President Obama's strategy for achieving peace in the Middle East:

Peacemaking takes strategic skill. But we see no sign that President Obama and Mr. Mitchell were thinking more than one move down the board. The president went public with his demand for a full freeze on settlements before securing Israel’s commitment. And he and his aides apparently had no plan for what they would do if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said no.

Most important, they allowed the controversy to obscure the real goal: nudging Israel and the Palestinians into peace talks. (We don’t know exactly what happened but we are told that Mr. Obama relied more on the judgment of his political advisers — specifically his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel — than of his Mideast specialists.)

The idea made sense: have each side do something tangible to prove it was serious about peace and then start negotiations. But when Mr. Netanyahu refused the total freeze, President Obama backed down.

Mr. Netanyahu has since offered a compromise 10-month freeze that exempts Jerusalem, schools and synagogues and permits Israel to complete 3,000 housing units already under construction. The irony is that while this offer goes beyond what past Israeli governments accepted, Mr. Obama had called for more. And the Palestinians promptly rejected the compromise.

Source: New York Times via HotAir

Stunning. When the New York Times doesn't blindly support your efforts in the Middle East, you are either a conservative or a failure.

It should be noted that Rahm Emanuel served as a civilian volunteer at an Israeli military base during the first Gulf War. You might think such a stunning conflict of interest would make him biased towards Israel... Apparently not.

Frida Ghitis of the Bradenton Herald points out that Obama's foreign policy missteps have come at a time when Israelis are showing unprecendented support for a two-state solution:

Obama has lost his mojo in the Middle East. Nobody listens to him, nobody trusts him. A poll found 70 percent of Palestinians have a negative view of the U.S. president. His standing in Israel is no better.

It is extraordinary that this is happening even as majorities of both Israelis and Palestinians offer strong support for the two-state solution. The War & Peace Index poll showed a record 75 percent of Israelis support negotiations, but 68 percent of Israelis also say Obama is not likely to preserve Israel’s interests in the long run.

Source: Bradenton Herald

Ed Morrissey at HotAir puts the New YorkTimes article into perspective:

As the editorial says, Obama and Mitchell couldn’t think past their own opening move and game out the possibilities. Why might that be? The foreign-policy team that includes Emanuel and Samantha Power (at the National Security Council) has ideological interests in getting Israel to surrender. Power suggested a few years ago that the Western nations should invade and occupy Israel in order to set the Palestinians free. With that kind of advice flowing at the White House, this diktat on settlements is hardly surprising, nor is its end result.

When Newsweek and the New York Times tells a Democratic president that he’s screwing up foreign policy, it’s time to clean house and start getting professional help. Unfortunately, neither of these publications considered the ramifications of endorsing an inexperienced ideologue for the top job when it counted.

Source: HotAir