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President Obama will lay out a vision for his policy toward the Middle East at 11:40 am ET.
Source: http://blogs.reuters.com/frontrow/2011/05/19/live-president-obamas-arab-spring-speech/
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to a joint session of the U.S. Congress for the second time today (and for the first time in fifteen years), fresh off a meeting with President Obama on Friday, Obama’s Middle Eastern address Thursday, and dueling weekend speeches between the two leaders at AIPAC.
The first few minutes were well-used defining the scope of the current fight against Islamist extremism (”from the Khyber Pass to the Straits of Gibraltar”), pointing out the genocidal rhetoric and growing nuclear capability of an Iranian regime whose only pause in its drive toward becoming a nuclear weapons state came when it truly feared military action, and welcoming the Arab revolutions while cautioning that 1979 Iran provides a foreboding precedent that should inform us all of how wrong such actions can go, even when undertaken with the best of intentions:
So as we share the hopes of these young people throughout the Middle East and Iran that they’ll be able to do what that young woman just did — I think she’s young; I couldn’t see quite that far, we must also remember that those hopes could be snuffed out, as they were in Tehran in 1979.
You remember what happened there. The brief democratic spring in Tehran was cut short by a ferocious and unforgiving tyranny. And it’s this same tyranny that smothered Lebanon’s democratic Cedar Revolution and inflicted on that long-suffering country the Medieval rule of Hezbollah.
So today the Middle East stands at a fateful crossroads. And like all of you, I pray that the peoples of the region choose the path less traveled, the path of liberty.
No one knows what this path consists of better than you. Nobody.
This path of liberty is not paved by elections alone. It’s paved when governments permit protests in town squares, when limits are placed on the powers of rulers, when judges are beholden to laws and not men, and when human rights cannot be crushed by tribal loyalties or mob rule.
Israel has always embraced this path in a Middle East that has long rejected it. In a region where women are stoned, gays are hanged, Christians are persecuted, Israel stands out. It is different.
Speaking specifically of the genocidal threat posed by Iran, and the threat to the world – including Muslims – posed by militant Islam, he continued:
[Fifteen years ago] I stood here and I said that democracy must start to take root in the Arab world. Well, it’s begun to take root. And this beginning holds the promise of a brilliant future of peace and prosperity. Because I believe that a Middle East that is genuinely democratic will be a Middle East truly at peace.
But while we hope for the best and while we work for the best, we must also recognize that powerful forces oppose this future.
They oppose modernity. They oppose democracy. They oppose peace.
Foremost among these forces is Iran. The tyranny in Tehran brutalizes its own people. It supports attacks against American troops in Afghanistan and in Iraq. It subjugates Lebanon and Gaza. It sponsors terror worldwide.
When I last stood here, I spoke of the consequences of Iran developing nuclear weapons. Now time is running out, the hinge of history may soon turn, for the greatest danger of all could soon be upon us: a militant Islamic regime armed with nuclear weapons.
Militant Islam threatens the world. It threatens Islam.
Now, I have no doubt, I’m absolutely convinced that it will ultimately be defeated. I believe it will eventually succumb to the forces of freedom and progress. It depends on cloistering young minds for a given amount of years, and the process of opening up information will ultimately defeat this movement.
But like other fanaticisms that were doomed to fail, militant Islam could exact an horrific price from all of us before its eventual demise. A nuclear armed Iran would ignite a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. It would give terrorists a nuclear umbrella. It would make the nightmare of nuclear terrorism a clear and present danger throughout the world.
I want you to understand what this means, because if we don’t stop it, it’s coming. …Now, the threat to my country cannot be overstated. Those who dismiss it are sticking their heads in the sand. Less than seven decades after 6 million Jews were murdered, Iran’s leaders deny the Holocaust of the Jewish people, while calling for the annihilation of the Jewish state.
Leaders who spew such venom should be banned from every respectable forum on the planet.
The fact that Iran’s leaders haven’t yet been “banned from every respectable forum on the planet,” and that their statements and actions (both toward Israel, and directly against the U.S. in places like Iraq and Afghanistan) haven’t yet been taken seriously by far too many western leaders and citizens, demonstrates the lack of understanding currently possessed by the West regarding just what a threat the Islamic Republic poses. Further, the fact that a national leader can repeatedly declare the impending end of a sovereign state, and publicly wish for a world without Zionism, with no repercussions whatsoever demonstrates a fact which has been apparent for almost the entirety of Israel’s 63 year existence. That fact is simply this: of all those nations and peoples who repeat the mandatory post-Holocaust mantra of “never again,” only Israel both understands what it means, and means what it says. Even in the U.S., this rote phrase is not afforded the seriousness it deserves.
Netanyahu’s speech received several standing ovations (over three dozen), and in it the Prime Minister was very gracious toward the same president whom he’d had to school on recent Middle Eastern history only a few days before, thanking Obama for his “steadfast commitment to Israel’s security.” This phrasing is interesting, as it comes on the heels of Obama declaring an Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 armistice lines to be the required outcome of Israeli/Palestinian peace negotiations — a declaration which, as might be expected, allowed some Palestinian leaders to use those lines as the effective starting point for negotiations. Mahmoud Zahar, a senior leader of the terrorist organization Hamas (which rules the Gaza Strip and which is set to be a participant in a Palestinian ruling coalition once again), said that a return to the 1949 borders, “while sacred,” were nowhere near enough of a concession “Why won’t we talk about the 1948 borders?” he asked. “Why won’t we discuss the partition plan which was internationally recognized?”
Of course, that “internationally recognized…partition plan” was the one that Israel accepted, but that its neighbors violently rejected. Palestinians, Syrians, Egyptians, Jordanians, Lebanese, and Iraqis – backed also by the Saudis and Yemenis – went to war with the tiny upstart state, and the result of the seven-on-one battle was an Israel that was bigger in 1949 than it had been in 1948. (In 1967, again pushed to war by its much larger neighbors Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, Israel finished a David vs. Goliath battle still larger than it had been before the Six-Day War, having taken possession of the Golan Heights, the West Bank of the Jordan River, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Gaza Strip.) The talk of borders is immaterial, of course, when one side in the conflict still refuses to acknowledge the right of the other to exist – a point which Netanyahu made more than once in his speech:
The Obama administration has created and staffed a new position tucked inside their communications shop for helping coordinate rapid response to unfavorable stories and fostering and improving relations with the progressive online community.
Glenn’s performing in Glenn Beck Live (aka “Elegant Eliminations”) tonight in Chicago, IL. He had some down time yesterday and decided to take a tour of the city (no word if Rahm Emmanuel or Barack Obama are planning to show up).
Source: http://www.glennbeck.com/content/blog/show/tour-blog-chicago/
“We could save all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling if everybody was just inflating…
Source: http://www.gop.gov/policy-news/11/04/26/mr-president-time
Glenn’s performing in Glenn Beck Live (aka “Elegant Eliminations”) tonight in Chicago, IL. He had some down time yesterday and decided to take a tour of the city (no word if Rahm Emmanuel or Barack Obama are planning to show up).
Source: http://www.glennbeck.com/content/blog/show/tour-blog-chicago/
Right off the starting line, Republican Tim Pawlenty is fashioning himself as the Chevy of presidential candidates.
Source: http://blogs.reuters.com/frontrow/2011/05/23/washington-extra-t-paw-power/
WASHINGTON – House Republican Conference Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) issued the following statement today regarding Senate Democrats’ continued failure…
Source: http://www.gop.gov/press-release/11/04/04/hensarling-statement-on-spending-negotiations
