Finally Piled Too High

Apparently Team Obama is no longer making foreign policy by gaffe.  A while back Matt Yglesias delivered a classic appraisal of Obama's foreign policy process as it related to the Obama's unconditional pledge to meet with foreign leaders such as Chavez and Ahmadjeinad.  The short version is that Obama just delivers some darn gaffe or other and then his fo-po team struggles to rationalize it.

But now it appears that his team is exhausted and can't figure out any way to push his endorsement (before AIPAC) of an undivided Jersualem uphill.  So it's on to Plan B - admit that Obama mis-spoke, but blame the rest of us for lacking vision:

EW YORK (Reuters) - Democrat Barack Obama misused a "code word" in Middle East politics when he said Jerusalem should be Israel's "undivided" capital but that does not mean he is naive on foreign policy, a top adviser said on Tuesday.

Addressing a pro-Israel lobby group this month, the Democratic White House hopeful said: "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided."

The comment angered Palestinians, who want East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, as the capital of a future state. "He has closed all doors to peace," Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said after the June 4 speech.

Obama later said Palestinians and Israelis had to negotiate the status of the city, in line with long-held U.S. presidential policy.

Daniel Kurtzer, who advises Obama on the Middle East, said Tuesday at the Israel Policy Forum that Obama's comment stemmed from "a picture in his mind of Jerusalem before 1967 with barbed wires and minefields and demilitarized zones."

"So he used a word to represent what he did not want to see again, and then realized afterwards that that word is a code word in the Middle East," Kurtzer said.

So "undivided" means "living together in peace and harmony", not necessarily "undivided".  Sort of like the way New Jersey and New York are undivided.  Sort of.  Kinda.  Or maybe like the US-Canada border with some security checkpoints.  But anyway, peaceful, harmonious, and undivided.  Except for the checkpoints.

It's not clear how this clarification will affect the Hamas 'un-endorsement' of Obama.

                   

Comments

[clarice]

What strikes me as a sign of his arrogrance and refusal to acknowledge his shortcomings is that it was announced that he is about to meet for the first time with his fo-po team.
Either this is a lie or substantial distortion of truth 9i/e, he's meet with them repeatedly but not as an entire group) or he has no concern about how an unschooled dope winging it can hurt his candidacy and party.

[clarice]

**(i/e, he's met *******

[Jane]

So Obama forged his view of Jerusalem when he was 6? He really is the messiah. Was that from Hawaii, Indonesia, Kenya or some other location?

[Jaymac]

Unlike the unconditional-meeting pledge, this one wasn't some off-the-cuff gaffe. It was a prepared policy speech. For AIPAC. On Israeli-Palestinian peace. It was vetted already. SO now the excuse is that he (and his speech writers for the AIPAC speech) was too ignorant of the debate to know the significance of an undivided Jerusalem. And yet we are supposed to believe he had "a picture in his mind of Jerusalem before 1967 with barbed wires and minefields and demilitarized zones." Oy!

[bgates]

So Obama forged his view of Jerusalem when he was 6?
Of course not. He exists outside of time.

In the beginning were Just Words, and the Words were with Obama, and the Words were Obama.

[clarice]

Very good,begates.

[PeterUK]

At the Court of Obama,only the names have been changed.

" THE PRINCE OF WALES:
Ah, my congratulations, Wilde. Your play is a great success. The whole of London's talking about you.
OSCAR WILDE:
Your highness, there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

(There follows fifteen seconds of restrained and sycophantic laughter)
THE PRINCE OF WALES:
Oh, very witty, Wilde ..... very, very witty.
JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER:
There is only one thing in the world worse than being witty, and that is not being witty.

(Fifteeen more seconds of the same)
OSCAR WILDE:
I wish I had said that Whistler.
JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER:
Ah, you will, Oscar, you will.

(more laughter)
OSCAR WILDE:
Your Highness, do you know James McNeill Whistler?
THE PRINCE OF WALES:
Yes, we've played squash together.
OSCAR WILDE:
There is only one thing worse than playing squash together, and that is playing it by yourself.

(silence)
OSCAR WILDE:
I wish I hadn't said that.
JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER:
But you did, Oscar, you did.

(a little laughter)
THE PRINCE OF WALES:
Well, you must forgive me, Wilde, but I must get back up the Palace.
OSCAR WILDE:
Your Majesty, you're like a big jam doughnut with cream on the top.
THE PRINCE OF WALES:
I beg your pardon?
OSCAR WILDE:
Um ..... It was one of Whistler's.
JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER:
I didn't say that.
OSCAR WILDE:
You did, James, you did.
THE PRINCE OF WALES:
Well, Mr. Whistler?
JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER:
I- I meant, Your Majesty, that, uh, like a doughnut your arrival gives us pleasure and your departure merely makes us hungry for more.

(laughter and congratulations)
JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER:
Yes, thank you. Right, Your Majesty is like a stream of bat's piss.

(gasps)
THE PRINCE OF WALES:
What?
JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER:
It was one of Wilde's.
OSCAR WILDE:
It sodding was not! It was Shaw!
THE PRINCE OF WALES:
Well, Mr. Shaw?
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW:
I, um, I, ah, I merely meant, Your Majesty, that, ah, you shine out like a shaft of gold when all around is dark.
THE PRINCE OF WALES:
Oh, ho-ho, very good.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW:
Right. Your Majesty is like a dose of clap.

(gasps)
THE PRINCE OF WALES:
What?!?
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW:
Before you arrive is pleasure, but after is a pain in the dong.
THE PRINCE OF WALES:
I beg your pardon?
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW:
It was one of Wilde's.
OSCAR WILDE:
Wha-
THE PRINCE OF WALES:
Well, Mr. Wilde?
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW:
Come on, Ozzy.
OSCAR WILDE:
Uh ..... uh, wha-, wha- .....
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW:
Come on, Ozzy, now, tell us all about it.
OSCAR WILDE:
Wha-, what I meant, Your Majesty, uh-h-h .....

(general heckling from the crowd)
JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER:
Let's have a bit of the old wit then!
OSCAR WILDE:
What, what-
THE PRINCE OF WALES:
I'm waiting.
OSCAR WILDE:
What I-, what I meant was .....
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW:
Come on, Ozzy, .....
JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER:
Give us a bit of the wit, Oz.
OSCAR WILDE:
Um, w-w-what I meant, Your Majesty, w-was ..... oh ..... (blows a raspberry)

(The Prince shakes Wilde's hand. Laughter all round.)
THE PRINCE OF WALES:
Oh! Excellent! Excellent, Wilde! Very witty, Wilde.
JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER:
Nice one, Oz!
THE PRINCE OF WALES:
Can you come and do that up the Palace some time? Extremely funny, ha-ha-ha

[SAM]

The sad thing is that the press is largely overlooking these repeated stumbles. He and Susan Rice have had a horrible week, but the press is chasing Michelle Obama, Cindy McCain, two Muslim women in Detroit, while fretting over whether Obama is getting smeared.

SNAP OUT OF IT!

[clarice]

His staff is now working hard to prevent the press from seeing a single unscripted moment--can he run out the clock?

[Porchlight]

The sad thing is that the press is largely overlooking these repeated stumbles.

I agree but I think he won't be able to skate forever. On foreign policy alone, he is so ignorant and error-prone that he will eventually make a gaffe so huge it can't be ignored. It's going to make the "global test" or "I was for it before I was against it" look dinky in comparison.

[LindaK]

A tad off the foreign policy topic, but has anyone scrutinized the sources of BO's enormous campaign chest? According to OpenSecrets, through April he's raised $270 mm compared to RW's $203 mm. Both candidates got nearly 18 mm votes, but how did he raise 33% more? And since he's claiming that the monies come from small donations compared to Hillary's larger ones, this implies that he got significantly more individual donations. IMO, considering that their popularity among voters was basically a draw, this doesn't make sense.

[richard mcenroe]

"Was that from Hawaii, Indonesia, Kenya or some other location?Was that from Hawaii, Indonesia, Kenya or some other location?"

From freaking Mars, Baby...

[Porchlight]

IMO, considering that their popularity among voters was basically a draw, this doesn't make sense.

At first I wondered if he's raised a lot of money from teenagers who aren't yet eligible to vote. His site makes you click something that says you are at least 16 years old.

But then there's this: I just searched Open Secrets and found a donor, Svetlana Messerly of Honolulu, who in 2008 has made 4 donations to Obama of $2300 each and 2 donations of $1300 each, as well as $1000 in 2007. Two of the $2300 donations were kicked back to her, but still, even allowing for the max contribution of $2300 to both the primary and the general, she's still over her 2008 limit by $7200.

And that was found by doing one search on a random surname. What else is out there?

[Jim Hu]

Speaking of code...
Did Kurtzer use code for the idea that US foreign policy is run by Israel?

[kim]

Your link, JH, brings up a good question. Why did Kurtzer remain Ambassador to Israel for Bush's first term?
========================

[MikeS]

I'm concerned about these gaffes. I'm not even sure that's the right word for them. It's not as though Obama mispronounced a word, or garbled a sentence, or lost his train of thought during a speech.

The gaffes Obama had been making are what he thought at the time were wise statesmen-like comments. These are things he is generally willing to argue in favor of after the gaffe. And it's not as if they are rare. Obama seems to misspeak every time he strays from prepared statements.

[hit and run]

Well. If you take the codeword undivided Jerusalem gaffe and couple it with the walking back his unilateral renegotiating of NAFTA gaffe, I think it simply illustrates one of Obama's greatest weaknesses. His inability to admit mistake.

I mean, I just can't figure out why Obama can't simply admit the true nature of his mistake and move on.

He clearly intended to say that NAFTA must remain undivided, and that he would unilaterally open up Jerusalem for negotiation.

[GMax]

he would unilaterally open up Jerusalem for negotiation anhiliation.

Fixed that for you.

[clarice]

Heh.
Hit-- you know I'd never say anything to drive a wedge between you and Jane, but she's been leaving clues all around the board that Tiger is her real sweetie.
Just saying because I wouldn't want you to be hurt.

[hit and run]

You're right, of course. I should have put "negotiation" in scare quotes to indicate it as a "codeword", which you ably translated as anhiliation.

[hit and run]

Well, Elin Nordegren is no slouch either.

She's no Clarice, of course. But she's no slouch.

[GMax]

Wasn't the pig in Animal Farm who said something like this "words only have the meaning we assign to them, no more and no less."

[clarice]

Hit............

[Porchlight]

The gaffes Obama had been making are what he thought at the time were wise statesmen-like comments.

Exactly. Presumably one would know if one had made a gaffe. Obama has to be told afterwards what a mistake it was to say X, or that Y is factually inaccurate. These are not slips of the tongue.

[Sue]

I have a new laptop computer. I hooked up my wireless router myself. And the funny thing is it's working. ::grin::

[Sue]

I agree. Obama needs a script or he is useless.

[hit and run]

Sue, I'm impressed. mrs hit and run has done all the wireless routering in our household.

[hit and run]

Sue:
Obama needs a script or he is useless.

Was "Jerusalem...undivided" on the script or not? It was a prepared speech, afterall.

He might well be useless even with a script.

[Sue]

I impressed myself. I am having more trouble using the laptop than I did hooking up the router.

[Sue]

I haven't gotten copying text down yet. I'm still practicing. Actually, the touchpad and I are about to have a fight. I can't make it hi-lite text.

[Sue]

Actually, the touchpad and I are about to have a fight.

I won!

[Sue]

Okay. I did my part to boost the economy with my stimulus check. I couldn't justify the cost but decided since the government wanted me to spend my money which they informed was their gift to me, I decided to go ahead and buy one.

[Jane]

Hit-- you know I'd never say anything to drive a wedge between you and Jane, but she's been leaving clues all around the board that Tiger is her real sweetie.

Harummmph! I excel at multi-tasking!

[cathyf]

Yeah, our stimulus check went into a new macbook pro for my husband. It's not what I wanted to spend it on, but his iBook developed a loose solder joint on the motherboard, and that's a $400 repair, and not worth it for an old computer...

[Sue]

Well, I had to sweet talk my husband into it. He wanted to spend it on something useful or save it. Probably the smarter thing for us to do, but oh well. I looked at it as money we weren't expecting, wouldn't miss, and I wanted one. And since Rush infomred me it was his gift to me, I decided to go for it.

[Elliott]

Hit............

Was that a rebuke, Clarice? Given all the worrying to which he has subjected you, I would have thought you'd be all in favor of Hit being supervised by someone with a background in childcare.

[Sue]

Sharpton is blaming Bush for his IRS problems. I await his blaming global warming. The only 2 things that cause anything anymore.

[hit and run]

Well, that's exactly what I meant, Elliott...thanks!

But seriously, where the snot do you pull stuff like that from?

It's impressive.

Encyclopedia Elliottanica.

[Ann]

I was thinking the same thing Hit, I am never telling Elliott my birthday. :)

By the way, Clarice has a nice article "Michelle Obama's Pander" over at AT. And James Taranto mentioned Tom Maguire's blog in his "Best of The Web Today".

Sorry. if someone already mentioned it. I was running my cab service all day.

Oh, and kudos to you for THE CORNER piece.

[SukieTawdry]

So Obama forged his view of Jerusalem when he was 6?

Well goodness, why not? After all, the "overt poverty, the corruption, the constant scramble for security" he encountered in the mean streets of Djakarta forged his "relentless skepticism" of government and he was barely ten when he left Indonesia. Obama was a precocious child. A statecraft prodigy if you will.

[Sue]

What Corner piece?

[hit and run]

Ann, I am ok if you never share your birthday.

EVERY day is Ann day.

[hit and run]

Sue, it was the reference to my first ever "from a reader" quote on the Corner...on the moveon/ACFSME thread. It was 2006 -- and, believe it or not, was on topic for the conversation at hand over there.

[Ann]

Sue,

Global Warming Cabal [Jonah Goldberg] NRO

Reader Hit and Run

[Sue]

Okay.

[Ann]

Sue,

Do you ever feel like changing your plain screen name to something great like Sukie Tawdry? I do!

Sukie Tawdry,

Are you the same: "A horse riding, God fearing, southern, white, Republican woman" ?

[Elliott]

Ann,

Very well, another one for the random birthday generator. ;)

[Elliott]

Hit and Run,

If we are going to have a JOM comment reference work, it would have to be the Encyclopedia narcisica.

[Ann]

Yikes! I love you Elliott... Please be nice! I really will have to change my screen name and go under some kinda of blogging idiot protection service. ;)

Besides, I think I was the first one to welcome you here and wished you would blog more often. You owe me.

Double Dare: Bet you can't find that comment of mine!

[Elliott]

Please be nice!

Of course I'd be nice. Your lists are great and I would probably countdown "Ann's Top 10 lists."

I'm not going to look for the comment you have in mind because I believe I can come pretty close to quoting the last part of it: "I like Elliott. I wish he would post more."

However, I think maryrose and MayBee were the first to welcome me to JOM. Thank you!

Finally, I saw a cable commercial today saying that satellite TV providers hate puppies. Seriously.

[Elliott]

Okay, I broke down and looked. I'm glad I said "pretty close," otherwise my recollection might have proven unsatisfactory to the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.

[Elliott]

What I really want to find but haven't been able to is TM's account of the dinner party in which another guest was a reader of this blog.

[Ann]

LOL Elliott, you are GOOD.

I love puppies. I here Obama will not let HIS GIRLS have one until they are mature enough to take care of it. Unlike babies, where that is a punishment.

I should add that to my list.

[Ann]

**hear**

[JM Hanes]

For folks following the Alsammarae biz, Gateway Pundit has a new post and links to Bill Baar who has half a dozen additional items, if you just start scrolling down. Here, for example, Alsammarae Will Go to Prison if he returns to Iraq where:

Alsammarae’s financial crimes are widely perceived by the Iraqi public as the reason behind the government’s continuing failure to provide enough electrical power to Iraq’s population. Another widely-held perception is that Alsammarae embezzled hundreds of millions of dollars during his tenure.

Apparently the amnesty Alsammarae was hoping to ride back into Iraq doesn't actually cover all his crimes. This was a bit of an eye opener, Alsammarae as a Saddam snitch with material that Baar says has been disappeared from Wikipedia:

Al-Samarie was the highest Baathist official in North America; he held the rank of Branch member in the Baath Party. He was in charge of the Regional baath party command and National baath command in North America, as matter of fact, the former Iraqi Ambassador 'Mr. Nazar Hamodoun' was reporting to AlSamarie, also Saddam Nephew 'Fadel Alsafige' used to report to AlSamarie.

And, of course, talisman gate (thanks for the pointer, Jane!), has the latest, (including the first post excerpted by Baar, above) which in this case is the pushback on Zebari:

Robert Dreyfuss, the leftie Obamist who in his spare time pretends to be a journalist, attacked Iraq’s Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari on his The Nation-linked blog today and denounced him as a “puppet” for presuming to give leftie candidate Barack Obama a much-needed geography lesson on Iraq. Marc Lynch, another leftie Obamist—he of that curious knack for passing the original thoughts of others as his own—summoned the meager reserves of Iraq ‘expertise’ at his disposal to snidely peg Zebari as the “epitome of Green Zone elite” while commenting on Dreyfuss’s piece.

It's still something of a shock to hear folks actually quoting Zbigniew Brzezinski again.

First try was flagged as spam, so links for talisman & Dreyfus will follow.

[JM Hanes]

Here's talisman gate and here's Dreyfuss.

[bgates]

It's still something of a shock to hear folks actually quoting Zbigniew Brzezinski again.
You want to know what the kids hear about Carter these days?
-The 'malaise speech', "written by Hendrik Hertzberg and Gordon Stewart, was well-received by some....Three days after the speech, Carter asked for the resignations of all of his Cabinet officers, and ultimately accepted five."
"President Carter...promoted a foreign policy that put human rights at the front. This was a break from the policies of several predecessors, in which human rights abuses were often overlooked if they were committed by a nation that was allied with the United States. The Carter Administration...gave aid to the new Sandinista National Liberation Front government...." (This note about the Sandinistas, and Carter's success in getting Mugabe into office, are placed under the heading "Human Rights".)
Here's one I didn't know:
"Carter and Brzezinski started a $40 billion covert program of training insurgents in Pakistan and Afghanistan as a part of the efforts to foil the Soviets' apparent plans....Critics of this policy blame Carter and Reagan for the resulting instability of post-Soviet Afghan governments, which led to the rise of Islamic theocracy in the region" - has anyone reading this heard Carter share blame with Reagan for this, ever?

Anyway, that's the view of James Carter, Elder Statesman that the under-30 crowd will get, unless they do some digging.

[kim]

Well, if the Nation doesn't like Zebari, I do.

Obama is giving plenty of clues to oppo research about where to look. He shows all of the signs of a guilty conscience, trying to distract us from Ayers, Rezko and Co., and in the way back past, Wright.
===========================

[RichatUF]

JM Hanes-

From your link, I wonder if this guy might have something to say.

graf from my link-

He bought the condominium where he still lives from his brother in early 1998 and almost immediately started a series of frequent refinances and home-equity loans that continued until his 2003 filing for bankruptcy.

Curiouser and curiouser.

[SukieTawdry]

Sukie Tawdry,

Are you the same: "A horse riding, God fearing, southern, white, Republican woman" ?

Well, Ann, I'm certainly some of those, but no.

[JM Hanes]

Rich:

Must have been a bummer when Saddam went belly up, no? It's beginning to sound like Chicago was a regular hotbed of Iraqi activity -- which is curiouser & curiouser indeed.

[Sue]

Do you ever feel like changing your plain screen name to something great like Sukie Tawdry? I do!

Sure. I even changed it for a few posts one day. I am not good at searching JOM archives to find it, but it was truly delicious, but took up too much of Tom's space on the sidebar.