Middle East Focus: Change and Barack Obama: from Bush Light to Bush Heavy Isotope…………

Arabia Deserta

Change and Barack Obama: from Bush Light to Bush Heavy Isotope…………

Rattlesnake Ridge

BFF

“But in recent weeks, the Obama administration and its allies have thrown smart sanctions overboard, slapping Iran with broad restrictions on oil exports and banking that they hope will damage the economy so badly that they force the leadership to change course…….. But some current and former officials acknowledge doubts about whether indiscriminate sanctions will turn the country against the mullahs, or only serve to stir anger against the West………. At the beginning of the Obama presidency, U.S. officials emphasized that they believed such sanctions would punish the innocent and could backfire politically. After imposing broad sanctions on Hussein and Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, world powers mostly came to the view that sanctions could be manipulated by governments to consolidate their political support and even make huge profits. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the administration wanted to hit the government "without contributing to the suffering of the ordinary people, who deserve better than what they are currently receiving." But efforts to freeze the assets, constrain the businesses and limit foreign travel of the elites weren't enough to bring the government to the negotiating table. "If Iran continues to choose its path of defiance, we will continue to develop new and innovative ways to impose new and ever more costly sanctions," Treasury official David Cohen told Congress………….”

In trying to prove that they are not wimps, the Democrats are outdoing Bush and Cheney. They are like the little monkey I saw in Cairo some years ago, dancing to the tunes of its master. That little monkey wore a red tarboosh (fez) If a spectator dropped a few coins in the pot the little monkey would salute; if the spectator walked away without contributing the monkey would wipe its hand repeatedly on its exposed anus while venting simian invectives toward the departing cheapskate.

Mr. Obama (and Clinton) is longer Bush light: he is Bush heavy isotope, to use nuclear tems. The Obama administration is dancing to the tunes played perfectly by the Likud right-wing coalition in Israel. Netanyahu was somewhat cornered by George W Bush: he couldn’t exactly accuse him of being anti-Israeli and keep the Republican Bible thumpers on his side. Now he has free reign: Democrats, as is their wont in recent years, are terrified of being painted as siding with “them”. Netanyahu can kick their potentates in the posterior, as he has been doing, and they’d come back for more.

The Democrats have gone well beyond what even Bush was willing to do to the Iranian people to get their government to yield. They may be on their way to going all the ways, as we used to say when we were teenagers and preoccupied, scoring with the Israeli right wing. The Mother of all Middle East Wars may be called Obama’s war, possibly the price of a second term. It would be ‘divine’ justice if they wage it and still lose: actually I believe they will lose the election if they wage a new war. That is why they may not go ahead and do it: a silver lining in the gray smoke of all the war talk.

The danger point is next November: if we get to it without a war and Obama wins, then the prospects for war will be remote. If the war-crazy, service-dodging, Republicans win…………
Cheers
mhg

m.h.ghuloum@gmail.com