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tartufe 12/06/2008 05:19 PM Report
Recommendations for Obama's first 10-100 days:
1. Initiate meaningful job stimulus program.
2. Start FBI, SEC, etc investigation of perpetrators of financial meltdown (including AIG, Citigroup, Rubin, Summers, conspiracy of Paulson, Bernanke et al). Without retributive justice this horrific scene equivalent of a bin Laden 9/11 will repeat.
3. Abolish GITMO.
4. Send Hillary to ME for initial feelers for talking protocol procedures.
5. Hillary to Russia with idea of conceding the Polish et al missile defense sites and a rapprochement.
6. Reopen trade with Cuba.
7. Obama, Gates and top military (in confidence) to discuss best way to start extrication from A-P (Afghanistan-Pakistan) quagmire. With goal of some large fraction of current military budget channeled to disaffected poor(?).
8. Hillary to Iran for protocol talks on how to keep dialogue ongoing.
9. Hillary to China for general stroking and maybe Darfur mutual approach.
10. Thence to N. Korea to make them feel important if nothing else.
11. Back to ME to emphasize administrations persistence and determination.
12. To emphasize we intend to be an honest broker this time we expect concessions from both sides but perhaps a little more from Israel. Especially on occupied territories.
13. Establish watch-dog agency to audit and carefully oversee stimulus expenditures to curtail inevitable corruption attendant with government contracts.
14. Have Hillary orchestrate an Arab League meeting with Obama as an invited speaker and attendee in order to cajole and exhort them to agree to meet with Israelis (preferably as a group) to assure mutual trade and relations would be done under a two-state solution etc.
15. Make plans for an extended (months long) goodwill trip around the globe, asking nor giving nothing but good relations. Include African nations as a feel-good tribute to their tribalism and racial pride. If security permits to the hot spots as well - who knows what his 'magic' holds in this regard.
SirD 12/05/2008 01:04 PM Report
Two jewish diplomats to talk about the crisis in the Middle East, not much new here. Can we here the voice of the vastly unrepresented muslims please? Charlie, your show seems like the Zionist Times sometimes. Haass and Indyk are devoted, admirable lobbyists, but we need to here the counter voice to this debate. Thanks,
ShalomFreedman 12/03/2008 02:13 PM Report
It seems to me that once again experts on the Middle East are driven more by their hopes, than by their realistic view of the realities on the ground.
How is it possible to talk of any kind of peace process between Israel and the Palestinians when the Palestinians are divided into two camps, controlling two different areas? And one of those Hamas has in its charter the major aim of destroying Israel? The Palestinians cannot make peace with themselves. How can they be expected to make peace with Israel?
Another illusion regards Syria and the peace process. Syria is not about to cut itself away from Iran. It is not after all so suicidal. The Syrians know the ruthlessness of the Iranians and understand what it would mean to desert them. So on this track too we are talking of pipe- dreaming.
hrc 12/03/2008 01:57 PM Report
Well, let's begin with a little saber rattling toward Iran just to liven things up in the area. Show kinda lost me right from the beginning. I couldn't endure the drivel for much longer and just shut off the program. I agree with radarvision on the appointment of someone like charlie rose as secretaty of state, get that dialogue flowing again. The nation states that make up the mid-east really need to come together themselves as one voice at some point so we can have constructive talking points, or not... Things like Iraq, would probably, could not have happened with a unified mid-east. Israel may or may not fit in that community, or it may just sit in as an outsider, whatever, they are a long-standing problem to peace in that region. There's a lot of blame to go around for that of course, and no simple remedy. The problem is you can't dictate peace from washington to the mid-east, just because you want to, because peace comes from within itself, end of comment.
radarvision 12/03/2008 12:26 PM Report
President elect Barack Obama has within his grasp a unique opportunity...Peace in the Middle East. Many of these islamic states have already agreed to 'recognize Israel's right to exist' which has been a major stumbling block in peace negotiations of years past.
I vehemently disagree with your guests on last night's show, Mr Hauss & Mr Indyk viewpoints. What is needed is "positive thinking" NOT Negative as they expounded. We haven't had peace in the middleeast since President Eisenhower.
I think these Islamic Nations want peace just as much as we do. The President elect should have made Charlie Rose Sec of State instead of; Hillary Clinton. Charlie has interviewed many of those Heada of State in the midddle east nations, they all like and respect Charlie Rose.
Peace in the Middle East would end the wars and silence the terrorists immediately.
REMant 12/03/2008 11:14 AM Report
The economic downturn cuts several ways, but there's no doubt that as Gladstone said many years ago, the first principle of foreign policy is to be economically strong at home, which necessarily in the long term means a stronger economy worldwide. By not making this our first priority in the past eight yrs, we have perversely created the situation, which we feel we need to fight. We can neither afford to be, nor is it in our interest to be, the world's policeman. Meddling in other ppl's affairs is never welcome, and it costs a lot of money. American foreign policy is like a Hollywood soap opera - long on morality and short on reality. What the world needs from us is exactly what we never give them - good examples and sound money - not hollow exhortations and pilotless drones.
I can't be as sanguine as Indyk in believing that we are done with Iraq. Even if they are nationalists first and sectarians second, I'd say there's a 50% chance of civil war when or if we leave, and it is not unlikely that Iran and the Russians will be involved in it. I'm afraid our window to really effect Mideast outcomes has closed. We should have been making these decisions in 1991. James Baker can point now to the mess the Iraq war has created as the reason why they did not then remove Sadam and take control of the country, but it should be clear that IF we were ever going to do it, then that's when it should have been done. Instead we doodled and dawdled for a decade, like we have about so much else. My guess is that we didn't mainly because of prior commitments.
Hardly mentioned here, however, is that surely the focus of concern has now shifted to Pakistan, and it seems these two gentlemen are still fighting the last wars. I don't see how the Palestinians enter into it to any great extent anymore. It is no longer a question of territory, if it ever was, but of religion and globalization. It would no doubt help if Israel were somehow to make peace with Syria and resolve the settlements question, but as long as the US is in the region and Israel is seen as our tool (or vice versa,) nothing will be resolved, certainly not without a genuine prosperity that retains some semblance of Islamic life.
In any case, none of these problems are going to be solved by redrawing organization charts and designing diplomatic protocols. Political science has not changed much in the last half-century; all technique and no substance.