7-17-2014 Obama’s Foreign Policy and the Future of the Middle East – [ex-Ambassador] Charles Freeman 
Presentation to a Middle East Policy Council Capitol Hill Conference

http://chasfreeman.net/obamas-foreign-policy-and-the-future-of-the-middle-east/

A while back, the United States set out to reconfigure the Middle East.  The result is that the region and our position in it are both in shambles.  Much of what has happened seems irreversible.  In the short time allotted to me, I want to talk about the region's dynamics.  I will conclude with a few thoughts about what might be done but probably won't be….In April, our four-decade-long effort to broker a secure and accepted place for a Jewish state in the Middle East sputtered to a disgraceful end.  In the tragicomic final phase of the so-called "peace process," instead of mediating, the United States negotiated with Israel about the terms of Palestinian capitulation, not with the Palestinians about self-determination.  The U.S. effort to broker peace for Israel is now not just dead but so putrid it can't be shown at a wake.  Israel didn't believe in it, so it killed it.  May it rest in peace.

From the outset, Israel used the "peace process" as a distraction while it created facts on the ground in the form of illegal settlements.  Israeli expansionism and related policies have now made Israel's peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians– and, thus, with Israel's Arab neighbors – impossible.  The United States created the moral hazard that enabled Israel to put itself in this ultimately untenable position.  Forty years of one-sided American diplomacy aimed at achieving regional and international acceptance for Israel have thus perversely produced the very opposite –  increasing international isolation and opprobrium for the Jewish state.

We will now "cover Israel's back" at the United Nations as its ongoing maltreatment and intermittent muggings of its captive Arab population complete its international delegitimization and ostracism.  We will pay a heavy political price for this stand globally, in the Middle East, and very likely in escalating terrorism against Americans abroad and at home.  It may satisfy our sense of honor.  But it more closely resembles assisted suicide than a strategy for the survival of Israel and our own position in the Middle East…

When democratic elections yield governments to which we or our allies object – as in Algeria, Palestine, and Egypt – Washington contrives their overthrow and replacement by congenial despots.  If democracy is the message, America is not now its prophet…

Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

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