It seems clear to me that the Obama Administration has no human rights policy. That is, while in some inchoate sense they would like respect for human rights to grow around the world, as all Americans would, they have no actual policy to achieve that goal – and they subordinate it to all their other policy goals.
Israel bombed the Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007. What the Syrians did in response, nothing. Israel has killed a number of terrorist leaders in Syria. Response? Nothing.
Senator Kerry was fooled by Bashar al-Assad.
Arab states continue to send the Palestinians gifts of extravagant rhetoric and countless Arab League resolutions – but not much cash.
Henry M. Jackson, congressman and senator from 1941 until his death in 1983, achieved far greater renown than most legislators, ran for president in 1972 and 1976, and was for much of the 1970s and 1980s one of the most powerful men in America.
You can easily see why the experience of Jews would be helpful if you’re looking to get action on religious persecution.
An effective U.S. policy toward Sudan – one capable of changing the situation in the south and affecting the lives of its people – will require top-level attention and a great deal of energy. It should have three elements: aid, diplomacy, and financial disclosure.
Like all forms of collective security, multilateral sanctions require a unanimity rarely achieved in international politics.
At Guantanamo Bay, we could create a West Berlin, a free small city within the Communist nation that could trade freely with the U.S. and elect its own officials.
You are not practicing Judaism if you celebrate Christmas.
President Obama has never summarized the Obama Doctrine with such clarity, but here is what it would look like: ‘I will undertake any military attack against our enemies, regardless of the risks and collateral damage, so long as it is over by the time I have to announce it.’
Libya as a country is a relatively new concept. The period of Libya as a modern nation really starts after World War II.
At Camp David in 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat 94 percent of the West Bank; ten years later, Ehud Olmert offered Abbas 93.6 percent with a one-to-one land swap.
When a deeply sympathetic American president asks for concessions and compromises and appears able to cajole some from the Palestinians, which was the Clinton/Rabin and Bush/Sharon combination, Israel must respond.
The Iranians don’t want the same thing we do in Iraq, not really; they want to control Iraq… the Ayatollah hates the United States; the Iranians are enemies of the United States.
The story of the Jews in the Bible is replete with incidents of their ingratitude to God for His gifts to them: incidents that just as repeatedly merit and receive punishment.
History may someday record that the Arab awakening that began with the Arab revolt of 1916 against the Ottomans ended about a century later with a whimper.
I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders – leaders not compromised by terror.
People are entitled to believe the government is constantly lying to them, but it isn’t.
The ultimate goal is to change Syria’s behaviour on a variety of issues – on its interference in Lebanese internal affairs, on its support for Palestinian terrorist groups that oppose the Palestinian Authority, on, most importantly, acting as a land bridge between Iran and Hezbollah, where Hezbollah gets all its arms.
Thousands of members of Congress have come and gone over the years, their individual achievements hidden in committee reports, private compromises, amendments pushed through or blocked, and innumerable, unnoticed meetings.
Syria’s population is 74% Sunni Muslim.
Obama’s foreign policy is strangely self-centered, focused on himself and the United States rather than on the conduct and needs of the nations the United States allies with, engages with, or must confront.
President Bush was disgusted by the Assad regime’s oppression of the Syrian people as well as its support for terrorism, interference in Lebanon, and encouragement of jihadist attacks on Americans in Iraq.
In the Philippines, Gloria Arroyo is the daughter of Diosdado Macapagal – but his term ended in 1965, and she was elected in 2001. Hardly a hand-off.
Mass killing has very clearly not been eliminated, nor has the ‘international community’ developed a response that will avert it or bring it to a quick end.
In 2007, early in the improbable presidential candidacy of Barack Obama, the young first-term senator began a series of foreign-policy speeches that seemed too general to provide a guide to what he might do if elected.
Olmert made a proposal on the governing of Jerusalem that I do not believe his cabinet or the Knesset would have accepted.
