Countdown

Pandering for the Promised Land

By AAI Countdown
Volume 9, No. 11
Posted on Tuesday March 25, 2008

Pandering for the Promised Land
Each presidential campaign was guilty of verbal missteps, over-eager surrogates and careless one-liners last week, causing the already simplified discourse about Middle East policy to be further dumbed-down:

Senator Barack Obama’s speech on race relations included the (largely gratuitous and superfluous) remark condemning "a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam."

While Ann Lewis, surrogate for Senator Hillary Clinton and former White House aide, insisted at a leadership event for United Jewish Communities that "the role of the president of the United States is to support the decisions that are made by the people of Israel…not to pick and choose from among the political parties."

And finally, Senator John McCain, while traveling through the Middle East, iterated—then reiterated—that he "supports Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," contradicting international consensus about the unresolved fate of Jerusalem, recognized by all parties as the most sensitive final status issue, which can only be resolved between Israelis and Palestinians. The remark also negated the two-state solution backed by President George W. Bush, who is pushing for peace between an independent Palestine and independent Israel before the end of the year.

Show Me The Policy!
"At Annapolis, we had a meeting that wasn’t a conference, and certainly not a summit," declared Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-NY) at a recent Middle East and South Asia House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee hearing on two years of progress in the Arab-Israeli peace-making. Ackerman was more candid than usual in his opening remarks to Assistant Secretary of Near Eastern Affairs David Welch, saying that over two years, he witnessed "a lot of movement but not much forward motion" in resolving the conflict and could barely restrain exasperation and mockery: "My questions to you, Mr. Secretary, are going to be very similar to the ones I’ve asked before. What are we doing about this mess other than praying?" Honestly, we can’t make this stuff up.

Making History, Part Two
While all eyes were fixed on primary politics in Ohio and Texas, Andre Carson won the special election for Indiana’s seventh congressional district, a seat held by his grandmother, Julia Carson, until her death last December. Congressman Carson, campaigning under the banner of "taking responsibility, changing America," entered history as the second Muslim ever elected to Congress (the first was Keith Ellison from Minnesota, elected in 2006.) That Mr. Carson earned more press for his first legislative initiative as House representative—co-sponsoring a bill concerning itemization of federal income taxes—than for his religion is, unfortunately, remarkable given the culture of Islamophobia so pervasive in our national discourse. We look forward to hearing more of Carson’s name in association with mundane fiscal policy, instead of paranoid fear-mongering.