Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

The N.Y. Times reports on the closing of McCain’s convention acceptance speech which, if Huffington Post’s compilation of reviews can be believed, was a big bust:

“Stand up, stand up, stand up and fight,” he said at the end of his speech. “Nothing is inevitable here. We’re Americans, and we never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history.”

Isn’t that precisely what’s wrong with American foreign policy?  We don’t study history.  We don’t read history.  We don’t learn from the past.  We don’t consider our options cautiously.  Goddamn, we make history.  That can be said to be the Bush position on Iraq in a nutshell.

Did McCain ever stop and consider that you can make history by stepping back from precipitous action and considering whether a big stick is the right or only approach?  When Jimmy Carter negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt he stood up and fought for peace.  But I don’t think that’s the kind of “standing up and fighting” McCain had in mind.

If Barack Obama becomes president he has a golden opportunity to normalize U.S relations with nations like Cuba and Iran, which have been our longtime enemies.  He will have a chance to make an indelible mark on the prospects for Middle East peace by championing a deal among Israel, the Palestinians, Syria and Lebanon.  That’s certainly making history, though of a different sort than Bush or McCain consider appropriate or advisable.

I say let’s make history by making peace, not by making war.  Not by continuing a disastrous policy of disengagement from, and isolation of our supposed Middle Eastern enemies.

I’m really warming up to Joe Biden.  I must confess that I wrote a dismissive blog post about his selection as Obama’s V.P. nominee.  But that was then, this is now.  Republicans, and apparently Aipac’s right-wing cohort has been carping about Biden’s alleged soft support for Israel.  Which motivated a sharp riposte from the candidate.  And I gotta tell you that after reading this I thought, “This guy’s got guts, kol hakavod lo (”more power to him”):

Biden dismissed the prominent role played by the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, saying the group “doesn’t speak for the entire Jewish community,” and it “doesn’t speak for the state of Israel, no matter what it insists on any occasion.”

The Delaware senator also attacked critics who have questioned his support of Israel saying, “I will take a back seat to no one, and again, no one in AIPAC or any other organization, in terms of questioning my support of the State of Israel.”

I think I can count on one hand the number of times a candidate for higher office has defended himself from such an attack by publicly fighting back and attacking Aipac by name.  As I said, that takes guts.  And I don’t think Joe Biden is foolish.  He knows what he can and can’t get away with.  He is confident enough in his record to warn Aipac that their supporters are mouthing nonsense and that he will take them to task by name if they persist.  I think too he knows that Aipac no longer rules the roost in DC.  They used to maintain their power with an iron fist.  But I think that now there is more room to breath for candidates.

On a related note: The Nation has just published an in-depth profile of Israel at 60 by Eric Alterman in which he quotes Shlomo Avineri taking another swipe at Aipac:

AIPAC, Avineri adds, “is basically a right-wing lobby and a lobby for Likud–it is not a lobby ‘for Israel.’ After Oslo, it lobbied openly against an agreement signed by the Israeli government. Forgive me,” he adds, “I have a bias against someone who lives in New York and tells us not to give up ‘our’ land.”

Nicholas Sarkozy meets Syrian president Bashir Al-Assad (Gerard Cereles/AFP-Getty)

Bashir Al-Assad has sent a not so subtle signal to both Ehud Olmert and the Israeli people that their next choice of prime minister can make or break the chance for long-term peace with his country.  Ostensibly and perhaps substantively, Assad ended this stage of the negotiation due to the resignation of Israel’s chief negotiator (and Olmert chief of staff) Yoram Turbowicz.  One thing that Assad is signaling is that he doesn’t want to deal with lame ducks like Bush or Olmert.  He wants an agreement that will stick and who can blame him given Israel’s history of negotiating deals and then abandoning them when they don’t suit its perceived interests.

It raises the importance of Tzipi Livni’s candidacy to rule the Kadima Party as well.  She is the only candidate who seems poised to exploit this opening should she become prime minister.  Thankfully, she is far ahead of her nearest party rival, Shaul Mofaz.  It also gives the Israeli electorate a stark choice when they next vote.  Their likely choice will be between the pragmatic Livni or Bibi Netanyahu, known for his rejectionist stance on such negotiations.  We can expect the usual nationalist pandering from the Likud claiming the Golan is as vital to Israel as Jerusalem and that Livni will “betray” the nation by giving it away.  I only hope that Israelis don’t fall for this trick.  Peace is more important than any single piece of land.

The N.Y. Times’ story also notes that France is stepping into a vacuum normally filled in the past by the U.S.  President Sarkozy has breached the U.S. effort to isolate Syria through his visit and negotiations with President Assad.  Ambitious as Sarkozy is, he clearly seeks to become a player and broker in any future peace negotiations.  All this comes at the expense of the Bush Administration, whose Mideast agenda is currently in shambles, proving that confrontation and isolation do not work when they are the only arrows in the policy quiver.

This should also provide another opening for Barack Obama to attack John McCain by showing the price that the U.S. has had to pay for seven years of isolationist Bush policy in the Middle East.  Should Obama be elected president it is absolutely vital that he rectify the mistakes of his predecessor and engage with Israel, Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinians, and perhaps even Iran should they prove willing, to disengage the combatants and resolve the outstanding issues separating them.  He may be given an opportunity no president has had since Jimmy Carter (who directly helped broker peace with Egypt and and indirectly with Jordan) to resolve many of these conflicting interests and bring peace between Israel and her remaining hostile neighbors.

It seems to me that a man who’s been divorced twice, had multiple adulterous affairs and one of whose kids can’t stand his guts, has just a smidge of chutzpah to offer advice on what it takes to be a good wife and mother.  He hasn’t exactly been the ideal husband or father himself.

Yes, Rudy Giuliani is shameless (but you knew that already, didn’t you?).  In his attempt to imitate a barracuda, he attacked those who criticized Sarah Palin for the impact her campaigning would have on her family:

How dare they question whether Sarah Palin has enough time to spend with her children and be vice president,” Mr. Giuliani said. “How dare they do that? When do they ever ask a man that question?”

Not so fast, Rudester.  Who are you to pontificate on this subject?  Seems to me a smidge of humility was called for here.  But hell, Rudy thinks humility is for sissies and Democrats.

As for the substance of his attack: keep in mind that Sarah Palin is not in the same situation as the average working mom.  She would be vice president of the United States, not mayor of Wasilla.  That’s a job that requires a huge time and energy commitment.  Not to mention that she has a newborn with Down’s Syndrome and a teenage daughter who is five months pregnant.  I don’t say that these issues disqualify her.  But I know that if I faced running for higher office and had that situation at home, I’d think twice or three times before I did so.  And even then, I’d say no.

Personally, I don’t think Palin thought more than a millisecond before saying Yes.  And I don’t think she gave her children more than a second’s thought in doing so.

Sarah Palin has a Jewish problem.  Hers is even worse than John Hagee’s.  Despite his fire and brimstone vision of the End Times and concomitant deaths of Jewish unbelievers, at least he can say that he’s friendly with right-wing Jews due to his scorched earth philosophy about Israeli territorial concessions.  Palin doesn’t even have that going for her.

Now, Politico’s Ben Smith reports that only two weeks ago Palin attended her local church to hear Jews for Jesus executive director David Brickner excoriate Jews for not accepting Him as their Lord and saviour:

Brickner’s mission has drawn wide criticism from the organised Jewish community, and the Anti-Defamation League accused them in a report of “targeting Jews for conversion with subterfuge and deception”.

Brickner … described terrorist attacks on Israelis as God’s “judgment of unbelief” of Jews who haven’t embraced Christianity.

“Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. It’s very real. When [Brickner's son] was in Jerusalem he was there to witness some of that judgment, some of that conflict, when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment - you can’t miss it.”

I’m not going to make the same mistake anti-Obamaites made in attributing the Rev Jeremiah Wright’s views to Obama. She doesn’t necessarily believe that all Jews are going to rot in Hell for not accepting Jesus. But I think it’s entirely legitimate to ask what she was doing there while a speaker whom Jews view as anathema was expressing such ideas. And it’s appropriate to insist that she not participate in such forums in the future and that she dissociate herself from the views she heard that day. So far, not a peep from her. I guess that means it’s only a capital offense for Democrats to listen to racist, intolerant sermons in church. Republican evangelicals must have the Protestant equivalent of the papal indulgence to get themselves off the hook.

Palin is already “right with God.” Now she desperately wants to get right with Israel and the Jews. On Tuesday Palin, chaperoned by Joe Lieberman, had her first pro forma meeting with Aipac’s national board of directors at her Minneapolis hotel, where the campaign has sequestered her:

A campaign official … said it [the meeting] was geared towards putting the American Jewish community at ease over her understanding of US-Middle East relations.

“That’s obviously going to be an issue,” the aide said. “It’s not like being the senator from New York, obviously. But these aren’t issues that are off her radar.”

Palin … expressed her “heartfelt support for Israel” and spoke of the threats it faces from Iran and others, the campaign official said.

“We had a good productive discussion on the importance of the US-Israel relationship, and we were pleased that governor Palin expressed her deep, personal, and lifelong commitment to the safety and well-being of Israel,” Aipac spokesman Josh Block said. “Like Senator McCain, the vice-presidential nominee understands and believes in the special friendship between the two democracies and would work to expand and deepen the strategic partnership in a McCain/Palin administration.”

This is clearly boilerplate stuff. And you’ll notice that the story was fed to the press by spokespeople instead of the candidate herself. This is a further indication of nervousness on the campaign’s part in having Palin present her own views on the issue (if she has any).

Clearly, McCain’s people worry that Palin has as little understanding of Israel as she has of other major foreign policy issues. She’s never visited Israel. Her state contains a grand total of 6,000 Jews. It would be legitimate to question whether, at this point, she “gets” many issues of concern to the Jewish community. And her evangelical background isn’t going to persuade Jews otherwise. Davke l’hefech, as they say in Hebrew.

This is through no fault of her own. I wouldn’t expect a politician from Alaska to know her borsht from her bialy or her two-state solution from her Separation Wall. But the fault lies with McCain, who chose Palin without thinking through the impact this would have on his campaign in the Jewish community. Or perhaps he did make such a calculation and Jews were judged expendable compared to evangelicals. Either way, it doesn’t say much for McCain.

Praise the Lord and pass the ballot box.

Sarah Palin may be “right with God.” But is she “right with America?” Talk about separation of church and state…I was just watching the accompanying video with my wife and she–both of us having been born and raised in New York–said: “Can you imagine a governor of New York saying these things?” Frankly, I can’t imagine a governor of any state saying such things, at least not as a sitting governor.

Things are different in Alaska perhaps because politically there is less at stake. But now that Palin seeks to move onto a national stage, it is precisely videos like this that will allow a national audience to determine whether she is fit to be elected.

Here are some of the choice quotations from the video that jumped out at me. In his introduction, controversial Pastor Ed Kalnins notes that when he first met Palin, she was the mayor of Wasilla:

When I got the chance to meet our mayor, I said: “This person loves Jesus. That’s the bottom line. She loves Jesus with everything she has. She’s a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ before she’s a mayor.”

After boasting that her 19 year-old son Track had enlisted in the military and was about to be deployed to Iraq, Palin preached:

“Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending them [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God,” she exhorted the congregants. “That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan.

Subsequently, she makes another boast about a $30 billion natural gas pipeline which she’s seeking to build from Alaska through Canada to the lower 48:

” I can work really, really hard to get a natural gas pipeline, a $30 billion project that’s going to create a lot of new jobs for Alaskans and will have a lot of energy flowing through here. And pray about that also. I think God’s will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that.

She then lists the tasks she can do as governor to make the state a decent place to live. But she adds:

None of that is gonna do any good if the people’s heart isn’t right with God. We can work together to make sure that God’s will be done here in Alaska.

After watching this video, I can perfectly understand why evangelicals are overjoyed with her nomination. But I can’t understand why John McCain was as well. Did he not think that videos like this might disturb non-evangelicals, not to mention non-Christians of which, believe it or not, there are a few in this country?

Religiously, Sarah Palin is George Bush unbuttoned. The latter manages much of the time to disguise the evangelical passion of his political mission. Palin possesses the same zeal, but lays it on the line for all to see. There is no artifice, no subtlety. It’s all right there. So America, judge for yourself. If this woman is “right with you” to be vice president, then evangelical Christianity is even more frighteningly pervasive and powerful than I feared.

Frankly, candidates like Palin are the Jews’ worst nightmare. The sentiments she expresses are part of a vestigial memory we internalize about what intolerance and bigotry sounds like. We know it when we hear it. And we hear it here. Not perhaps, in full-bore anti-Semitic mode. But we know when we’re not wanted and as non-believers we’re not wanted in Sarah Palin’s theocratic world view.

We are a minority who in a way, lives on the kindness of strangers, to quote Blanche DuBois in Streetcar Named Desire. In the words of this candidate there can be no kindness for Jews, except as instruments of some Hagee-like plan to wreak destruction and redemption on the world.

John McCain till now had the highest poll ratings of a Republican presidential candidate in a long time (around 32%). No longer. With Palin on his ticket he can kiss much of that Jewish vote goodbye. Sure, he’ll still retain 15-20% of the hardcore true believers. But forget the rest. As Ben Smith writes about an e mail he received from the Republican Jewish Coalition touting Palin as a friend of Israel because her office has an Israeli flag on the wall:

…The fact that this tiny image [of an Israeli flag on her office wall] is the best the official voice of Republican Jewry has to defend Palin is a mark that McCain may have just helped solve Obama’s Jewish problem.

Thanks to reader Miriam Adams for notifying me that Sami Al-Arian was freed on bail today by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after five years in prison:

Sami Al-Arian is out on bail in Virginia today, said his attorney Jonathan Turley.

“He is having a very cheerful reunion with four of his children in Washington, D.C.,” said Turley.

His wife, Nahla, and youngest daughter, Lama, returned to Egypt three days ago.

The former University of South Florida professor had been in federal custody for more than five years and was released this afternoon after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agreed with his attorneys that to hold him was a violation of his constitutional rights.  Al-Arian had been held by  ICE for 130 days and the legal limit was 90 days.

A federal judge had ordered the government to release him in July.  Despite her ruling the Justice Department refused to do so and the judge ordered them to do so once again today, which is the only reason he is out.

Despite a five year battle by the feds to pin a terror charge of any kind on him, they never succeeded.  Keeping him in jail seemed designed as a punishment for their failure, rather than a legitimate legal procedure.  His release is a small victory for civil liberties and against Islamophobia in this country.  It is a small victory against the Bush Administration’s perpetual war on terror.

He is nowhere near in the clear yet though.  Now, he must prepare for a Supreme Court appeal of the supoena that led to his original contempt citation.

It’s important that progressives be clear in their discussion of the issue of Sarah Palin’s 17 year-old daughter’s pregnancy.  The issue is not that her daughter is pregnant.  That is something that unfortunately happens to too many American teenagers.  But it is a personal issue and should remain so.

The real issue here is the betrayal of Palin’s own religious values that such a pregnancy represents.  I can hear evangelicals across America groan as they read this news or hear it on their TVs.  While Christians are supposed to be a forgiving lot, they can be surprisingly unforgiving about those among the flock who stray from the straight and narrow.  I just can’t see how Palin can carry these voters with her in November.

Even Palin’s claim that the father of her daughter’s child will “make an honest woman of her” doesn’t seem like it will mollify the Christian base:

On Monday morning, Ms. Palin and her husband, Todd, issued a statement saying that their 17-year-old unmarried daughter, Bristol, was five months pregnant and that she intended to marry the father.

If you add to this the other oddities of her background that are coming to light–membership in a political party that advocated Alaskan secession; touting her opposition to the Bridge to Nowhere which she actually supported for a significant portion of her political career; carrying on a political-personal vendetta against a former brother-in-law who divorced her sister–she begins to seem like the sort of damaged goods that will not help McCain’s campaign.

The only question is whether the drumbeat of bad press and tawdry revelations slackens or rises in the days ahead.  My guess is that they will not slacken.  I don’t know where that leaves McCain.  I don’t see how he can dump her this late in the game.  But if he doesn’t, then she hangs like an albatross around his neck for the duration of the campaign.  I guess he can try to stuff her in a closet or the third floor garret like Mr. Rochester does to his crazy first wife in Jane Eyre.  But it still won’t look good.

My guess is that as soon as the convention ends you’re never going to see Sarah Palin and John McCain in the same room again.  Instead, McCain will be seen palling with Joe and Mitt and Mike and maybe even Rudy.  But certainly not Sarah.  And if he somehow wins the presidency, Sarah Palin’s main assignment as vice president will be ironing the doilies in the White House mess.

Most of America shrugged–Huh?–when it read about Sarah Palin’s selection as his running mate.  But news is gradually emerging of the behind-the-scenes battle that caused her star to rise and others’ stars to fade in the runup to this critical announcement.

The N.Y. Times reports that McCain really wanted Joe Lieberman, who after all has become his closest political ally, friend, and surrogate:

Up until midweek last week, some 48 to 72 hours before Mr. McCain introduced Ms. Palin at a Friday rally in Dayton, Ohio, Mr. McCain was still holding out the hope that he could choose a good friend, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, a Republican close to the campaign said. Mr. McCain had also been interested in another favorite, former Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania.

But both men favor abortion rights, anathema to the Christian conservatives who make up a crucial base of the Republican Party. As word leaked out that Mr. McCain was seriously considering the men, the campaign was bombarded by outrage from influential conservatives who predicted an explosive floor fight at the convention and vowed rejection of Mr. Ridge or Mr. Lieberman by the delegates.

Perhaps more important, several Republicans said, Mr. McCain was getting advice that if he did not do something to shake up the race, his campaign would be stuck on a potentially losing trajectory.

There are several things I find extraordinary about what this passage says about John McCain and the Republican Party. First, that McCain’s original instincts about choosing a V.P. were a lot sounder than his final choice. While I would have strongly opposed Lieberman on other grounds, at least he IS a true moderate in a Republican sense. Ridge too had strong moderate credentials. All this would’ve stood McCain in good stead in a general election in which he would have to do well among independents to win.

What this says about the Party is that it is so riven by factionalism, and that the evangelical wing is so ascendant, that it prevented McCain from going with his moderate, maverick gut feeling. His gut was right. He needed a moderate on the ticket. But he chose a right-winger to satisfy the Party. Unfortunately for McCain, he has to run shackled to a Party that ideologically appears light years more conservative than he is.

The fact that conservatives even threatened to derail McCain’s own preferred V.P. candidate on the floor of the convention seems almost unbelievable to me. It means there are elements within the Party who are willing to take it down in flames if their presidential candidate doesn’t pass an ideological litmus test.

You can talk all you want about the dissension among Democrats between Clinton and Obama (and there IS a good deal of it). But whatever bad blood there may be–Obama has not been forced to squelch his fundamental political instincts in order to win his Party’s nomination. However moderate Joe Biden may be in a Democratic context, he wasn’t virtually imposed on Obama in order to win the fealty of a specific interest group within the Party as Palin was.

If you add on top of this the absolute shellacking Palin is taking as news emerges of her questionable background and political/personal history, along with the disarray that Hurricane Gustav caused to the Party’s convention plans, I think you have a Republican Party in serious trouble. I realize this is not reflected in either the polls or fundraising tallies. But I think these inner contradictions have already begun to take a toll and will continue to do so.

This is clearly a Party divided against itself and in the long run it–or at least John McCain’s candidacy–cannot stand.

Is it just me or does anyone else feel we’re entering Bizarro world with the Republican Party’s decision to put its first day of its national convention on ice because of decision to put its first day of its national convention on ice because of Hurricane Gustav?

Senator John McCain and his advisers decided on Sunday to halt all but the most essential activities for the Republican National Convention on Monday, sacrificing a major televised platform for his political message…

McCain advisers said the programming for the rest of the four-day convention would be determined on a day-to-day basis, and many questions remained open, such as whether Mr. McCain, of Arizona, and his running mate…would appear here to accept their party’s nominations…

I mean, what does all this mean?  Let’s think it through.

First, it means that even Republicans, those political animals so willing to be deluded by the failings of their leaders, concede that Bush’s handling of Hurricane Katrina was an utter disaster.  This is confirmed by George Bush’s decision to forgo the convention entirely.  Can someone with a better historical memory than I tell me if an outgoing president has EVER ditched his Party’s nominating convention?  And I don’t even need a political historian to tell me we’d have to go back a very long time to find a convention not attended by the winning nominee, probably to the 19th century.

This seems at least historic.  Beyond this, it also confirms just how extreme a liability Bush is seen to be not just by the average American, but even by Republicans themselves.  The only question I have is: did McCain tell George not to come or did George make the decision himself?  I can’t imagine it would be the latter.  Can you imagine someone like George Bush willingly slinking around the White House with his tail between his legs while his Party turns its back on him and gives him a Bronx cheer while they’re at it??

How will America react to a Party that essentially ditches its quadrennial national convention because it’s too chicken shit that the country will remember it nightmarish handling of the last major national weather disaster?  I mean, even if John McCain looks all concerned as he meets with Haley Barbour in a FEMA conference center–how is he going to turn around this sneaking sensation floating through the minds of many that he’s just runnin’ friggin’ scared?

And this comment from McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, is the height of disingenuousness:

“We really don’t have the luxury of trying to evaluate the politics of this kind of situation.”

This guy’s living in an alternate universe if he doesn’t understand that politics is at the very heart of this decision.

And can anyone tell me why any Republican delegate would want to attend a convention when its nominee might not even show up??  It seems to me that if Gustav is as serious a storm as many believe it could be, that these guys have some serious political problems on their hands.  And barring a miracle (like Gustav bypassing the Republican south and hitting the Democratic northeast instead) or a Hail Mary pass completion, I don’t see how McCain pulls this one off.

There’s one really sad aspect of all this for me and all those delegates.  They won’t get a chance to say a fond farewell to Dick Cheney, who plans to be shooting quail and maybe a Democrat or two, if he can find one, in the Texas back country.

In more traditional cultures, when the weather god turns his back on you and rains catastrophe down on your people, your followers would see you as cursed and turn their back on you.  I don’t know if Gustav was sent by a weather god, but it sure does make you wonder whether the fates are not exactly smiling down on Republicans this election season.