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Archive: POLITICS

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Predictable, Rank HYpocrisy

President Obama today denounced the imprisonment of demonstrators in Iran, demonstrators he referred to as participating in "peaceful protest" and being "innocent civilians." It is of course true that the overwhelming majority of protesters in Iran have been engaging in innocent protest, but there have also been many throwing stones and Molotov cocktails, and setting not just trash on fire, but also motorcycles and buses. All of these things have been well-documented in the videos that are circulating.

As an outcome of these demonstrations, several hundred people have been arrested. We have no way to know the individual status of each of those, although it's safe to say there were at least that many protesters (and probably many more) engaging in acts of violence which would bring an arrest in any city in the world.

Now for the history lesson. In 2004, 1806 people were arrested in New York City at the Republican Convention. Not a single Molotov cocktail was thrown, not a single bus burned, no one was throwing rocks at the police, basically it was completely non-violent (on the part of the protesters). In 2008, more than 280 were arrested at the next Republican Convention in Minneapolis/St. Paul, including several reporters. Even before that, armed police had staged preemptive raids on activists, detaining activists at a half-dozen locations. Again, in the absence of any violence.

Outrage from prominent politicians like Obama at those arrests? Absent to the best of my knowledge.

left i on the news

and the German version

The Dennis Ross Problem

There was a time when the most ridiculous accusations against Iraq as prepared by the White House Iraq Group of neocon-led propagandists were accepted by the entire Washington power elite. Remember? It was not so long ago. Iraq and al-Qaeda were in cahoots and Saddam had weapons of mass destruction powerfully threatening the world. A significant minority of intelligent Americans doubted these charges, the essence of the case for war, and for anyone paying attention, they have long since been exposed as lies. But respectable politicians and leading columnists, makers of public opinion, parroted them for a certain crucial delusion-forming interval as obvious truths.

Now again we have the leadership of both political parties with much of the journalistic establishment in tow promoting what will likely be exposed in the near term as another slough of lies, this time about Iran. At the center of them is this: Iran has a nuclear weapons program threatening Israel with nuclear holocaust.

That’s a staggering allegation, and designed to be so. It’s the son of the earlier allegation born of the White House Iraq Group propaganda team: Let’s not let the “smoking gun” be a mushroom cloud over New York City. Sheer fear-mongering.

Iraq didn’t threaten New York. The U.S. threatened, invaded and occupied Iraq, slaughtering at least tens of thousands in the process. And Iran does not threaten anyone with a nuclear weapon. It should be repeated again and again: the National Intelligence Estimate concerning the question of Iran’s nuclear program, representing the consensus of the 16 different U.S. intelligence agencies in 2007 concluded in “high confidence” that Iran does not even have an active nuclear weapons program. (The report appeared after nearly a year’s delay due to apparent obstruction by Dick Cheney’s office, the neocon headquarters).

Unfortunately, regime change in Iran is the single most urgent, outstanding item on the neocon agenda left unfulfilled after eight years of Bush-era empowerment. Its proponents refuse to allow a mere change of administrations to deflect them from their goal. Hence somehow a neocon has insinuated himself into the center of Iran policy, first as a Hillary Clinton advisor and “diplomat,” and now as an advisor to the president working for the National Security Agency.

More from Glenn Greenwald:

One of the rarest commodities in the establishment media is someone who was a vehement critic of George Bush and who now, applying their principles consistently, has become a regular critic of Barack Obama -- i.e., someone who criticizes Obama from what is perceived as "the Left" rather than for being a Terrorist-Loving Socialist Muslim. It just got a lot rarer, as The Washington Post -- at least according to Politico's Patrick Gavin -- just fired WashingtonPost.com columnist, long-time Bush critic and Obama watchdog (i.e., a real journalist) Dan Froomkin.

What makes this firing so bizarre and worthy of inquiry is that, as Gavin notes, Froomkin was easily one of the most linked-to and cited Post columnists. At a time when newspapers are relying more and more on online traffic, the Post just fired the person who, in 2007, wrote 3 out of the top 10 most-trafficked columns. In publishing that data, Media Bistro used this headline: "The Post's Most Popular Opinions (Read: Froomkin)." Isn't that an odd person to choose to get rid of?

Following the bottomless path of self-pity of the standard right-wing male -- as epitomized by Pete Hoekstra's comparison of House Republicans to Iranian protesters and yet another column by Pat Buchanan decrying the systematic victimization of the white male in America -- Charles Krauthammer last night said that Obama critics on Fox News are "a lot like [Hugo Chavez'] Caracas where all the media, except one, are state run." But right-wing polemicists like Krauthammer are all over the media.

In addition to his Rupert Murdoch perch at Fox, Krauthammer remains as a regular columnist at the Post, alongside fellow right-wing Obama haters such as Bill Kristol, George Will, Jim Hoagland, Michael Gerson and Robert Kagan -- as well as a whole bevy of typical, banal establishment spokespeople who are highly supportive of whatever the permanent Washington establishment favors (David Ignatius, Fred Hiatt, Ruth Marcus, David Broder, Richard Cohen, Howie Kurtz, etc. etc.). And that's to say nothing of the regular Op-Ed appearances by typical Krauthammer-mimicking neoconservative voices such as John Bolton, Joe Lieberman, and Douglas Feith -- and the Post Editorial Page itself. "Caracas" indeed.

Notably, Froomkin just recently had a somewhat acrimonious exchange with the oh-so-oppressed Krauthammer over torture, after Froomkin criticized Krauthammer's explicit endorsement of torture and Krauthammer responded by calling Froomkin's criticisms "stupid." And now -- weeks later -- Froomkin is fired by the Post while the persecuted Krauthammer, comparing himself to endangered journalists in Venezuela, remains at the Post, along with countless others there who think and write just like he does: i.e., standard neoconservative pablum. Froomkin was previously criticized for being "highly opinionated and liberal" by Post ombudsman Deborah Howell (even as she refused to criticize blatant right-wing journalists).

All of this underscores a critical and oft-overlooked point: what one finds virtually nowhere in the establishment press are those who criticize Obama not in order to advance their tawdry right-wing agenda but because the principles that led them to criticize Bush compel similar criticism of Obama. Rachel Maddow is one of the few prominent media figures who will interview and criticize Democratic politicians "from the Left" (and it's hardly a coincidence that it was MSNBC's decision to give Maddow her own show -- rather than the endless array of right-wing talk show hosts plaguing television for years -- which prompted a tidal wave of "concern" over whether cable news was becoming "too partisan"). In general, however, those who opine from the Maddow/Froomkin perspective are a very endangered species, and it just became more endangered as the Post fires one if its most popular, talented, principled and substantive columnists.

Greenwald's columns can be read at Salon.com

further insight from Jane Hamsher

What a Surprise! Not.

WASHINGTON — Defense Department officials are debating whether to ignore an earlier promise and squelch the release of an investigation into a U.S. airstrike last month, out of fear that its findings would further enrage the Afghan public, Pentagon officials told McClatchy Monday.

The military promised to release the report shortly after the May 4 air attack, which killed dozens of Afghans, and the Pentagon reiterated that last week. U.S. officials also said they'd release a video that military officials said shows Taliban fighters attacking Afghan and U.S. forces and then running into a building. Shortly afterward, a U.S. aircraft dropped a bomb that destroyed the building.

However, a senior defense official told McClatchy Monday: "The decision (about what to release) is now in limbo."

Pentagon leaders are divided about whether releasing the report would reflect a renewed push for openness and transparency about civilian casualties or whether it would only fan Afghan outrage and become a Taliban recruiting tool just as Army Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal takes command of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Two U.S. military officials told McClatchy that the video shows that no one checked to see whether any women or children were in the building before it was bombed. The report acknowledges that mistakes were made and that U.S. forces didn't always follow proper procedures, but it does little to reassure Afghans that the U.S. has done enough to avoid repeating those mistakes.

read on in McClatchy

Fisk on Iran

It was Iran's day of destiny and day of courage. A million of its people marched from Engelob Square to Azadi Square – from the Square of Revolution to the Square of Freedom – beneath the eyes of Tehran's brutal riot police. The crowds were singing and shouting and laughing and abusing their "President" as "dust".

Mirhossein Mousavi was among them, riding atop a car amid the exhaust smoke and heat, unsmiling, stunned, unaware that so epic a demonstration could blossom amid the hopelessness of Iran's post-election bloodshed. He may have officially lost last Friday's election, but yesterday was his electoral victory parade through the streets of his capital. It ended, inevitably, in gunfire and blood.

Not since the 1979 Iranian Revolution have massed protesters gathered in such numbers, or with such overwhelming popularity, through the boulevards of this torrid, despairing city. They jostled and pushed and crowded through narrow lanes to reach the main highway and then found riot police in steel helmets and batons lined on each side. The people ignored them all. And the cops, horribly outnumbered by these tens of thousands, smiled sheepishly and – to our astonishment – nodded their heads towards the men and women demanding freedom. Who would have believed the government had banned this march?

The protesters' bravery was all the more staggering because many had already learned of the savage killing of five Iranians on the campus of Tehran University, done to death – according to students – by pistol-firing Basiji militiamen. When I reached the gates of the college yesterday morning, many students were weeping behind the iron fence of the campus, shouting "massacre" and throwing a black cloth across the mesh. That was when the riot police returned and charged into the university grounds once more.

At times, Mousavi's victory march threatened to crush us amid walls of chanting men and women. They fell into the storm drains and stumbled over broken trees and tried to keep pace with his vehicle, vast streamers of green linen strung out in front of their political leader's car. They sang in unison, over and over, the same words: "Tanks, guns, Basiji, you have no effect now." As the government's helicopters roared overhead, these thousands looked upwards and bayed above the clatter of rotor blades: "Where is my vote?" Clichés come easily during such titanic days, but this was truly a historic moment.

Would it change the arrogance of power which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad demonstrated so rashly just a day earlier, when he loftily invited the opposition – there were reported to be huge crowds protesting on the streets of other Iranian cities yesterday – to be his "friends", while talking ominously of the "red light" through which Mousavi had driven. Ahmadinejad claimed a 66 per cent victory at the polls, giving Mousavi scarcely 33 per cent. No wonder the crowds yesterday were also singing – and I mean actually singing in chorus – "They have stolen our vote and now they are using it against us."

more from Fisk in The Independent (U.K.)

The Importance of Tribes

Steven Pressfield has developed a video series in which he makes a very interesting and strong case for why, in large part, the U.S. has been floundering in its war efforts in Afghanistan. Here is his introduction:

This five-part series is about war in Afghanistan, ancient and modern. Each video is five minutes long. I'm not doing this for money. I have no political axe to grind. I'm a Marine and I don't want young Marines and soldiers going into harm's way without the full mental arsenal of history and cultural context.

What's my thesis? That the enemy in Afghanistan today (and in Iraq and Pakistan) is not Islamism or jihadism. It's tribalism.

The tribal mind-set (warrior pride, hostility to all outsiders, perpetual warfare, the obligation of revenge, suppression of women, a code of honor rather than a system of laws, extreme conservatism, unity with the land, patience and capacity for hatred) permeates everything in Afghanistan and its neighboring Islamic republics. For war-making or peace-making, it cannot be ignored.

Think of these videos as a crash course in tribalism.

Pressfield's videos can be viewed here, and are well-worth watching

Minding the Store?

Absolutely mind-boggling.

via Michael Shedlock

Natural Growth?

President Barack Obama has put Israel and its wholly-owned subsidiaries in the American press in uproar by demanding that Israel halt its policy of settlement growth in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including the now infamous "natural growth." He has posited this as a condition for a peace process that results in what is called the two-state solution. Obama says Israel agreed to this in 2003, when Israel signed onto Mad King George's so-called Roadmap To Peace. Readers might recall that the Roadmap was supposed to produce a comprehensive settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by 2005. Israel, to be sure, signed it with "reservations," but her leaders have now countered Obama's gambit by saying that it had an unwritten verbal agreement with the Bush Administration that allowed Israel to proceed with a partial form of "natural growth" in the existing settlements. Presumably this partial natural growth is driven by demographic facts shaping the settler population. This is a curious argument, but it does show how vapid the Middle East debate has become.

To illustrate the depths of the mindlessness now shaping debate, let us set aside the obvious: "Natural growth" is a red herring because (1) all settlements are illegal under international law and (2) a two-state solution can not possibly succeed unless the Palestinian state on the West Bank is a coherent geographical entity, with at least one border open to a country other than Israel. Both of these conditions imply Israel must tear down its illegal separation wall, close down the hundreds of illegal checkpoints that strangle free movement of Palestinians in the West Bank, shut down all the illegal Israeli-only access roads that carve the West Bank into isolated Bantustans, and roll back its existing settlements to a point where Palestinian territory in the West Bank approximates that of the status quo ante on June 4, 1967. Yet now the debate has been joined over the question of natural growth?

Just what is natural growth?

read the rest of Franklin C. Spinney's piece at Counterpunch

Madrassas

In today's excerpt - madrassas, the Islamic schools in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan viewed with concern by the U.S. as a breeding ground for terrorists. Yet government funding in these countries for basic services such as schools is severely limited, leaving madrassas as the only viable option for many of the poorer citizens, and providing an opportunity for terrorist groups to gain credibility vis-à-vis the government by providing such necessities as school, food, and clothing:

"American national security strategists remained deeply concerned over the fact that the madrassas were actually growing in number. In the autumn of 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld penned a memo in which he confessed that 'we lack the metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror.' Rumsfeld added, 'Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training, and deploying against us?' At the time, I was interning at the Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities, a think tank in Quantico, Virginia, conducting research on religion and violence around the world. Frankly, I didn't know much on the subject, though Rumsfeld's memo piqued my curiosity. Why were the madrassas growing in number? And were terrorists, like the ones involved in the 9/11 plot, prone to plan a sophisticated attack inside one of these backcountry schools?

"Soon after arriving in Pakistan I embarked on a journey around the country to observe an array of madrassas - and to find out what compelled students to go there, and whether they showed any signs of the reforms Musharraf had promised to enact. I found that, in many cases, economic factors and the state's collapsed education system - rather than some obsession with radical ideology - offered a better explanation for why parents sent their students to madrassas. At the public schools teachers didn't show up for work, schools laid in disrepair, and the nation's literacy rate hovered around 50 percent. For parents, especially in the more desperate households, opting to pull their children out of public schools and put them in madrassas was an easy choice. In a 2004 essay, Dr. Tariq Rahman, author of Denizens of Alien Worlds: A Study of Education, Inequality, and Polarization in Pakistan, wrote that, of the madrassa students he surveyed in his research, '76.6 percent belonged to the poorer sections of society.'

"To serve the most destitute families, some madrassas even offered scholarships, according to Amir Rana, a terrorism analyst in Lahore. 'For each child they send to a madrassa, a family could make another eight or ten dollars a month,' he said. 'A poor family with no chances for work could send five or six kids to madrassas, and use the money they get to feed the rest of the family.' Plus, those who attended the madrassa received three meals a day, clean clothes, and a place to sleep. In the absence of a welfare state, or even a well-functioning state, madrassas performed the double role of being a school and an NGO (nongovernmental organization [which are typically involved in providing charitable services to the very poor]).

" 'In the U.S., they say madrassas are a big problem in Pakistan. That's not our problem,' Dr. Ata-ur-Rahman, a sharp, impressive leader of Jamaat-i-Islami, former member of parliament, and a principal of a madrassa in the North-West Frontier Province, told me. 'Our problem in Pakistan is not madrassas. Our problem is clean drinking water. Our problem is sanitation. Our problem is health care. These are our problems that you should highlight somewhere.'"

reprinted from Delancy Place

Hearts and Dreams

I've just spent a week sleeping at the houses of the Hannoun family in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem. Three modest two bedroom bungalows are home to the families of the Hannoun brothers – they are part of 28 homes in the neighborhood, inhabited by over 500 Palestinians.

As part of their illegal "Judaization" of East Jerusalem (which is meant to be the future capital of Palestine), the Israelis have told the Hannoun's, and other families in the area, they will be evicted and their homes destroyed to make way for new Jewish settlers. A brave collection of international activists stay up to the small hours in preparation to document and resist the imminent confiscation of the homes, which is scheduled to take place in the period from now to July 19th.

Sheikh Jarrah is situated in a valley down from the American Colony hotel where Tony Blair stays in a luxury suite when he deigns Jerusalem with his presence as the Quartet's "Peace Envoy". When you look out of the Hannoun's window, Blair's hotel is 30m away; Blair can probably see the Hannoun's house during his morning swim. Before I contacted his spokesman he had nothing to say about the evictions. That's one side of the valley. On the other, the British consulate peers down from its high security peak. In the full glare of our consulate and our former Prime Minister a community is being illegally destroyed.

The Hannoun family have been the victims of terror for decades as they have fought off Israel's attempts to take their homes. Maher Hannoun, who is leading the resistance and speaks with eloquence and calm, chain smokes his way through the evenings as he recounts to anyone who will listen what has befallen his family.

Maher's father was a refugee from The Nakba (or 'The Catastophe' as Palestinians call the founding of Israel in 1948) when he was forced out of Nablus; his grandfather was forced out of Haifa at the same time. The Jordanian government gave them the houses in 1956 as compensation and transferred the ownership to them in 1962. Maher was born in 1958 so has spent his whole life, and bought up all his children, in his home. The Israeli settler company, Nahalat Shimon, backed by the Israeli courts, is trying to use a forged century-old Ottoman-era contract to claim ownership. Like all over East Jerusalem, the Israelis have also tried to bribe Maher with an open cheque if he goes quietly. He refused. "This is my home," he said. "I would never respect myself if I sold my home for money. They want to build a settlement on our hearts, on our dreams."

more from Matt Kennard at the Lenin's Tomb blog

A Perfect Storm

Economic news remains focused on banks and housing, while the threat mounts to the US dollar from massive federal budget deficits in fiscal years 2009 and 2010.

Earlier this year the dollar’s exchange value rose against currencies, such as the euro. UK pound, and Swiss franc, against which the dollar had been steadily falling. The dollar’s rise made US policymakers complacent, even though the rise was due to flight from over-leveraged financial instruments and falling stock markets into “safe” Treasuries. Since April, however, the dollar has steadily declined as investors and foreign central banks realize that the massive federal budget deficits are likely to be monetized.

What happens to the dollar will be the key driver of what lies ahead. The likely scenario could be nasty.

America’s trading partners do not have large enough trade surpluses to finance a federal budget deficit swollen to $2 trillion by gratuitous wars, recession, bailouts, and stimulus programs. Moreover, concern over the dollar’s future is causing America’s foreign creditors to seek alternatives to US debt in which to hold their foreign reserves.

According to a recent report in the online edition of Pravda, Russia’s central bank now holds a larger proportion of its reserves in euros than in US dollars. On May 18 the Financial Times reported that China and Brazil are considering bypassing the dollar and conducting their mutual trade in their own currencies. Other reports say that China has increased its gold reserves by 75 per cent in recent years.

China’s premier, Wen Jiabao, has publicly expressed his concern about the future of the dollar. Arrogant, hubris-filled American officials and their yes-men economists discount Chinese warnings, arguing that the Chinese have no choice but to support the dollar by purchasing Washington’s red ink. Otherwise, they say, China stands to lose the value of its large dollar portfolio.

China sees it differently. It is obvious to Chinese officials that neither China nor the entire world has enough spare money to purchase $4 trillion of US Treasuries over the next two years. According to the London Telegraph on May 27, Dallas Federal Reserve Bank president Richard Fisher was repeatedly grilled by senior officials of the Chinese government during his recent visit about whether the Federal Reserve was going to finance the US budget deficit by printing money. According to Fisher, “I must have been asked about that a hundred times in China. I was asked at every single meeting about our purchases of Treasuries. That seemed to be the principal preoccupation of those that were invested with their surpluses mostly in the United States.”

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has gone to China to calm the fears. However, even before he arrived, a Chinese central bank spokesman gave Geithner the message that the US should not assume China will continue to finance Washington’s extravagant budgets. The governor of China’s central bank is calling for the abandonment of the dollar as reserve currency, using the International Monetary Fund’s Special Drawing Rights in its place.

President Lyndon Johnson’s “guns and butter” policy during the 1960s forced president Richard Nixon to eliminate the gold backing that the dollar had as world reserve currency, putting foreign central banks on the same fiat money standard as the US economy. In its first four months, the Obama administration has outdone president Johnson. Instead of ending war, Obama has expanded America’s war of aggression in Afghanistan and spread it into Pakistan. War, bailouts, and stimulus plans have pushed the government’s annual operating budget 50 per cent into the red.

Washington’s financial irresponsibility has brought pressure on the dollar and the US bond market. Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke thought he could push down interest rates on Treasuries by purchasing $300 billion of them. However, the result was to cause a sharp drop in Treasury prices and a rise in interest rates.

As monetization of federal debt goes forward, US interest rates will continue to rise, worsening the problems in the real estate sector. The dollar will continue to lose value, making it harder for the US to finance its budget and trade deficits. Domestic inflation will raise its ugly head despite high unemployment.

The incompetents who manage US economic policy have created a perfect storm.

more from Paul Craig Roberts at Counterpunch

Memo to Obama

From Bill Lind:

The recent fire/counterfire between President Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney over Guantanamo, the prisoners held there and techniques used in their interrogation revealed a distressing ignorance in the White House. Specifically, it revealed that Obama and his advisors are ignorant of military theory.

Cheney won the debate by drawing the usual Republican distinction, that between doing what is necessary for national security and being nice. If Republicans are allowed to frame the issue that way, they will always win. But in fact, theirs is a false position. We do not have to choose between doing what works in the “war on terrorism” and doing what is morally right. The two are the same.

The military theory that allows us to see this is the work of Colonel John Boyd, USAF. Boyd argued that war is fought on three levels: the moral, the mental and the physical. Of the three, the moral level is the most powerful, the physical level is the least powerful and the mental level lies between the other two.

Cheney argued that we should sacrifice the moral level to the physical. We should engage in torture because it may gain us information that could prevent another attack like 9/11. That could be the case.

But Boyd’s theory would respond that the defeat we suffer on the moral level by adopting a policy of torture will outweigh any benefits torture might bring us on the physical level of war. How so? By pumping up the “terrorists” will, cohesion and ability to cooperate while diminishing our own.

In effect, both our enemies and our allies will come to see us as evil. That enables enemies to recruit, raise money, and generate new operations while we must focus internally on papering over cracks in our coalitions. They gain greater harmony, while we face increased friction, Boyd’s dread “many non-cooperative centers of gravity.” They pull together, we are pulled apart.

For President Obama and other opponents of torture, the important fact here is that, if we understand what Boyd is saying, we no longer face the choice Cheney offered. We need not choose between doing what military necessity commands and acting morally. Military necessity itself demands that we act morally. The real choice is between doing what wins wars and loses wars, with Cheney arguing for the latter. Suddenly, it is the Republicans who are on the wrong side of the “national security” issue.

Let me offer President Obama three pieces of advice, all intended to escape the Republicans’ trap:

First, when this issue comes up again (and it will), go to your NSC director, General Jim Jones, for advice. He is familiar with Boyd’s work. Your political people are not.

Second, apply Boyd’s insight about the three levels of war not only to the question of torture but to everything we do in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. At present, we are sacrificing the moral level to the physical in lots of ways, which is to say we are defeating ourselves. A good start would be a Presidential order forbidding air strikes on populated areas and demanding they be restricted elsewhere to situations where our troops would otherwise be overrun.

Three, solve the issue of detainees at Guantanomo and elsewhere by designating all of them as what they are, namely Prisoners of War. International law specifies how POWs must be cared for. POW camps on American soil are nothing new; we have had them in every war. POWs may be held until the war is over or exchanged. This is what the Bush administration should have done from the outset, a point Democrats can make. The current mess was created by Republicans.

Politicians usually roll their eyes when military theory is mentioned, deeming it too esoteric for “the real world.” As President Obama’s inability to answer Cheney effectively shows, nothing could be further from the truth. The Bush administration led America into two quagmires, in Iraq and Afghanistan, because of its ignorance of the theory of Fourth Generation war. If the Obama White House continues as ignorant as its predecessor, it will set the country up for fresh disasters. A wise President will prefer to learn from theory than from failure.

Lind's Defense and the National Interest

The Netanyahu Problem

"We've accomplished quite a few things, and I think the most important one is to cement the principle that the path to peace is through negotiations and not through violence.”

These were the ‘encouraging’ words modestly uttered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during a joint press conference with the US president. The President was then Bill Clinton, and the date was October 2, 1996.

In the occupied Palestinian territories, the situation then seemed incredibly grim. But there was no Israeli wall. The settlements were smaller in size and in population. Gaza was besieged, but not to the point of total suffocation.

Recently, Prime Minister Netanyahu paid a highly anticipated visit to the White House, on May 18, 2009, this time meeting with Barack Obama.

“I share with you very much the desire to move the peace process forward. And I want to start peace negotiations with the Palestinians. I would like to broaden the circle of peace to include others in the Arab world,” said Netanyahu.

One need not emphasize the harm inflicted upon the Palestinian people during those years. The violence, which Netanyahu seemingly decried in ’96, visited Palestinians countless times. Starting December 27, 2008 and for 22 frightening days, much of Gaza was decimated by the Israeli army, using US weapons, killing and wounding thousands. There is now a giant wall, hundreds of miles in length, snaking around the West Bank, separating Palestinians from their land, livelihoods and any possibility of a true statehood. There are Jewish settlements, joined by Jewish-only roads that hopelessly fragment the occupied West Bank. They all are illegal under international law, as is the so-called Separation Wall, as are the brutal attacks and siege on Gaza, as is the Israeli military occupation altogether.

We are told that Obama is serious about peace in the Middle East. He maybe is. But even such assumed seriousness might not be able to change the disturbing pattern that forced Clinton before him, according to former top Middle East Advisor, Aaron David Miller, to utter the following words: "Who the f*** does he think he is? Who's the f***ing superpower here?"