Archive for the ‘Obama’ Category

The incredible lightness of Barack Obama – JNS.org

(November 9, 2023 / JNS)

U.S. President Joe Biden is caught in a quadfecta of corruption, cognitive decline, a failed agenda and eroding polls. Amid this apparent vacuum, an opportunistic Barack Obama, who used to be more discreet in managing his third term, is re-entering the arena.

Last week, he came out as the overseer of the Biden administrations AI agenda, even as his foundations Democracy Forum was warning Americans about the need for inclusive capitalism and the pathologies of material consumptionall this from a multi-mansioned multimillionaire.

Now, Obama is weighing in on the Gaza war by undercutting his third-term presidential proxy.

Yet just as he seems somewhat clueless about the contradictions of an erstwhile community organizer turned into a hyper-capitalist, consumption-addicted elite, so, too, Obama has little self-awareness about how much of Bidens unpopularity derives from his continuation of Obamas own agendas on the economy, border, crime, race, foreign policy and energy.

His apparent obliviousness continues with his most recent odd assertion that, The occupation and whats happening to Palestinians is [sic] unbearable.

But Obama surely concedes that Gaza has been autonomous and free of Israelis since 2005 and governed by a one man, one vote, once Hamas clique since January 2006.

Obama added that if you want to solve the problem, then you have to take in the whole truth, and you then have to admit nobodys hands are cleanthat all of us are complicit to some degree.

In truth, Obamas blanket accusation is absurd.

Over the last 17 years, an autonomous Hamas has managed to create both a hierarchy of billionaires ensconced in luxury Qatari hotels and the most sophisticated subterranean tunnel city in the worldbut little else except corruption, poverty and violence for all concerned.

Obama again seemed unaware of his own confession when he lectured, nobodys hands are clean and all of us are complicit.

Not quite, Barack.

Those most culpable for the current catastrophe are Obama and his team, who invited in Robert Malley to be their point man on Hamas; cooked up the Shiite crescent misadventure; snubbed the grass-roots Green Movement that sought to overthrow the Iranian theocracy; invited the Russians back into the Middle East after a 40-year hiatus; fled Iraq and fueled the ISIS caliphate; lifted sanctions on Iran, giving it a multibillion-dollar war chest that armed to the teeth Hezbollah and Hamas; estranged the United States from Israel; and created the media echo chamber that empowered the disastrous Iran deal.

The rest was history.

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The incredible lightness of Barack Obama - JNS.org

Is Ambassador Jack Lew really a friend of Israel? -opinion – The Jerusalem Post

When an American Jewish politician is simultaneously complimented by the likes of the progressive J Street and the traditional Orthodox Union, it is time to ask what is his true identity?

This unprecedented favorability phenomenon has occurred with the recent nomination and confirmation of Jack Lew as the new United States ambassador to Israel. Thus, in a press release praising Lews nomination, the anti-settlement J Street said that it was personally thrilled that the President has chosen someone with his combination of skill, experience, and commitment to the US-Israel relationship.

Similarly delighted, Rabbi Menachem Genack, CEO of OU Kosher, commented in an op-ed in this newspaper (November 5), that he found Lew to be a deeply sincere and committed Jew of the highest integrity, character, and intelligence in short, a rare mensch of the highest order. In a region where trust is often in short supply, Lews character will undoubtedly serve as a foundation for building fruitful relationships and fostering understanding.

Despite this favorable support from divergent Jewish organizations, all Republican Party Senators, with two exceptions, voted to reject Lews recent ambassadorial nomination. His Senate vote totals were much worse incidentally than the figure he garnered in 2013, in the confirmation vote for Secretary of Treasury, 71-26.

This time, in the closest vote in Senate history on a US envoy to Israel, the vote to confirm was 53-43. Given the pressures Israel will likely face from Washington, related to the war with Hamas, a more solid showing for the new American envoy would have been more convincing.

Nonetheless, it is wrong to attribute Republican opposition to Lews nomination to ordinary party politics. In the Senate, Israel is blessed with many admirers and supporters. What influenced many of these Republicans who voted to reject Lew was his record in strongly promoting Barack Obamas (2015) nuclear arms deal, JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action.

Lew, as secretary of treasury, and secretary of state John Kerry were the Obama administrations two main proponents. Since this deal eventually gave Iran $150 billion, Lew as treasury secretary needed to certify the deals financial bona fides.

In addition, Lew pitched the argument that tactically, the deal was doable, that this Iranian despotic state would allow inspections, that it would not hide chemical elements, and that ultimately, in this new era of international goodwill, Iran would agree to not produce a nuclear weapon. Not included in the JCPOA deal was Lews decision to grant Iran a banking license.

SOME QUOTES from Lew about this utopian nuclear future which was, of course, never realized:

The final deal will be built around incredibly robust and intensive inspections This deal will only be finalized if the connective tissue meets a tough standard of intense verification and scrutiny What we are doing is to effectively guarantee that Iran never obtains a nuclear weapon Making sure Iran never gets a nuclear weapon is a national security priority of the highest order.

Fast forward Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearings in October 2023, found that Lew was still a believer in the value of appeasing Iran in a nuclear deal despite all the subterfuges, lies, and terrorism that the Islamic Republic undertook since the original signing. I believe deeply that an agreement to not have nuclear weapons would be a good thing. But this is not the moment.

Questioning Lews credentials on the Senate floor, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, perhaps Israels most thoughtful supporter in that body, argued, Jack Lew is an Iran sympathizer who has no business being an ambassador. Its bad for the United States. Its bad for Israel to have an Iran sympathizer as an ambassador to that country. He helped Iran evade American sanctions and he lied to Congress about it.

Moreover, opponents of Lews ambassadorial confirmation at the committee hearings, cited his defense of the administrations refusal to use a veto of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 directed against Israel for its illegal occupation of parts of Judaea and Samaria. In the past, when such measures were voted on, the United States vetoed them rather than abstained as in the Obama case.

Before Lews confirmation vote, Senator Jim Risch of Idaho, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Lew is the wrong person at the wrong time in the wrong place.

No doubt, Risch was unaware of his prophetic call with the entry of Lews ex-boss, Barack Obama, into the deepening controversy over Gazas next day. While many observers cite Obama as among Israels least supportive Presidents, a grateful Lew claimed, No administration has done more for Israels security than this one.

Just as Lew remains on good terms with the Jewish community, combining the unlikely plaudits of both J Street and the Orthodox Union, he faces a new challenge in Jerusalem over loyalties in the diplomatic arena to either old boss Obama, or current one, President Joe Biden.

Obama wants to be a player in the decision about the Day After for Gaza. Conceptually, however, the two presidents represent different Israel-related outlooks. Obamas orientation comes from the anti-colonial wing of the Harvard Faculty Club. Thus his observation, What Hamas did was horrific and theres no justification for it. And whats also true is that the occupation and whats happening to Palestinians is unbearable.

By contrast, Biden, an old-fashioned Christian Zionist, still tells anecdotes about Golda Meir, and took his children and grandchildren to Dachau concentration camp, instilling in them a respect for Jewish vulnerability.

Ambassador Jack Lew, who are you?

The writer is an emeritus professor of political science at City University of New York.

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Is Ambassador Jack Lew really a friend of Israel? -opinion - The Jerusalem Post

‘Nobody’s hands are clean’: Obama urges reflection amid Israel-Hamas conflict – POLITICO

The former president argued that it was important to acknowledge multiple seemingly contradictory truths: Hamas actions were horrific, but the occupation and whats happening to Palestinians were also unbearable.

Obama previously spoke out on the conflict, saying in a statement that any actions by Israel that ignore the human cost of the war against Hamas could ultimately backfire.

In an address to the Democracy Forum in Chicago on Friday, the 44th president said that it is impossible to be dispassionate in the face of this carnage. It is hard to feel hopeful. The images of families mourning, of bodies being pulled from rubble, force a moral reckoning on all of us.

All this is taking place against the backdrop of decades of failure to achieve a durable peace for both Israelis and Palestinians, one that is based on genuine security for Israel, a recognition of its right to exist, and a peace that is based on an end of the occupation and the creation of a viable state and self-determination for the Palestinian people, he added.

As president, Obama had a famously frosty relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, including over the nature of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

President Joe Biden has strongly supported Israel in its war against Hamas, providing significant military assistance. However, the administration recently called for humanitarian pauses and warned against inflicting outsized harm on Palestinian civilians.

Former President Donald Trump, whose administration closely aligned with Israel, initially criticized Netanyahu in the wake of Hamas Oct. 7 attack, saying he was not prepared and praising Hezbollah, a regional militant group, as very smart. Trump walked back the comments shortly after.

Former President George W. Bush described himself in a recent video as a hardliner and said: My view is: One side is guilty. And its not Israel. Bush warned that the fighting would be ugly but defended Israels right to retaliate against Hamas.

Former President Bill Clinton posted on social media after Hamas initial attack and condemned the Palestinian militant group, but he has said little since. In the post, Clinton wrote that, Now is a time for the world to rally against terrorism and to support Israeli democracy. I stand with the government of Israel and all Israelis, and urge them to stand together.

South Carolina senator and Republican presidential contender Tim Scott pushed back on Obamas comments in a statement to POLITICO Saturday.

From Obama to Biden, Democrats have a problem: supporting Israel always has an asterisk, Scott said.

Obama is dead wrong and he has a legacy of aiding those who support terrorism, he continued. The truth is simple: Hamas is evil.

The full Obama interview will be released next week, according to Crooked Media, a company founded and staffed by former members of the Obama administration.

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'Nobody's hands are clean': Obama urges reflection amid Israel-Hamas conflict - POLITICO

Biden quietly tapped Obama to help shape his AI strategy – NBC News

  1. Biden quietly tapped Obama to help shape his AI strategy  NBC News
  2. How Obama helped President Biden draft the AI executive order  ABC News
  3. Mission Impossible, Biden Deepfakes And Barack Obama Inspired New White House AI Policy  Forbes

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Biden quietly tapped Obama to help shape his AI strategy - NBC News

Jeffrey A. Bader, Who Helped Steer Obama’s ‘Pivot’ to Asia, Dies at 78 – The New York Times

Jeffrey A. Bader, one of the countrys leading experts on China and an architect of President Barack Obamas so-called pivot to the Pacific during his first administration, died on Oct. 22 in Los Angeles. He was 78.

His death, at a hospice facility, resulted from complications of pancreatic cancer, said his wife, Rohini Talalla. He lived in the Venice Beach section of Los Angeles.

In a statement, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken called Mr. Bader one of the most knowledgeable and insightful East Asia hands of his generation, adding that his intellect was matched only by his heart and his decency.

Few Americans had as much diplomatic or policymaking experience in China as Mr. Bader did. His engagement with the country went back to 1977, when, as a young Foreign Service officer, he was enlisted to help President Jimmy Carters administration implement formal relations with Beijing.

The work put him deep within the machinery of American diplomacy, training that gave him keen insight into how foreign relations actually work not through grand ideologies and statements, but through the day-to-day grind of person-to-person contact.

In the late 1990s, Mr. Bader led the East Asia portfolio for the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton. He reprised that role a decade later under Mr. Obama.

He really was the quintessential effective diplomat, Susan Shirk, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, who worked alongside him in the Clinton administration, said in a phone interview. He was the sharpest operations person.

Mr. Bader advised both Mr. Clinton and Mr. Obama to take a pragmatic, cleareyed view of China. He largely rejected both the sentimental view that China was on a path toward greater openness and democracy and the hawkish pessimism that predicted an inevitable clash between the two powers.

U.S. policy toward a rising China could not rely solely on military muscle, economic blandishments and pressure and sanctions on human rights, he wrote in his memoir, Obama and Chinas Rise: An Insiders Account of Americas Asia Strategy (2012). At the same time, a policy of indulgence and accommodation of assertive Chinese conduct, or indifference to its internal evolution, could embolden bad behavior.

After serving as a close adviser to Mr. Obama during his 2008 campaign, Mr. Bader helped oversee what the president called his pivot to Asia a term that Mr. Bader shied from, finding it overly militaristic (though the policy shift did have a strong military component).

He preferred to call it a rebalancing, a term that recognized the growing importance of China to Americas future and the need to dedicate more resources to managing bilateral relations. He recommended a nuanced approach, recognizing that China was an emerging global power that needed to be addressed but not confronted.

He was not nave about China, but he saw the importance of a constructive relationship, said former Gov. Jerry Brown of California, who now serves as chairman of the California-China Climate Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, and who relied on Mr. Bader for advice in recent years. He had a view that was more realistic and optimistic.

Jeffrey Allen Bader was born in New York City on July 1, 1945, to Samuel Bader, a lawyer, and Grace (Rosenbloom) Bader, a lawyer and homemaker.

He graduated with a degree in history from Yale in 1967 and received a doctorate in the same subject from Columbia in 1975, the same year he joined the State Department.

He married Ms. Talalla, a documentary filmmaker and advocate for Indigenous development, in 1995. Along with her, he is survived by his brother, Lawrence.

Mr. Bader did not start his diplomatic career aspiring to be a China hand. He had studied European history, spoke French and spent his first two years at the U.S. embassy in Kinshasa, the capital of the present-day Democratic Republic of Congo.

But in 1977, Richard Holbrooke, the new assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, was on the hunt for smart, young officers to help with the enormous efforts underway around U.S.-China relations. He plucked out Mr. Bader and set him on the task.

There was much to cover: trade, nuclear weapons, human rights and Americas complicated relationship with Taiwan. There wasnt even a U.S. embassy in Beijing.

Mr. Bader lived in Beijing for several years, an experience he often described in detail to explain how far the country had come.

The city itself was a pretty dreary, dismal place, he said in a 2022 podcast interview with The China Project, a news and information website. There were no restaurants, no publicly available restaurants at all. I had every meal essentially in the Peking Hotel for two years, which is a fate I wouldnt wish on anyone.

He left in 1983 but returned four years later to find clear signs of the modern consumer economy the country would become.

He also saw the dangers in Chinas rise. Mr. Bader was central to framing Americas response to the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, and to the sudden tensions that arose after China carried out a series of missile tests near Taiwan in 1996.

He left the China beat in 1999 to serve for two years as the U.S. ambassador to Namibia. But he returned to it in 2001 as an assistant U.S. trade representative, helping to finalize Chinas ascension into the World Trade Organization.

Mr. Bader left government in 2002 to become a senior scholar at the Washington-based Brookings Institution. Then, in 2005, Mr. Obama, at the time a freshman senator from Illinois, asked him for a briefing about China.

The two spent three hours in the senators office, eating takeout Thai food and discussing policy. Mr. Bader left their meeting convinced that if Mr. Obama ran for president, he would win and that he would want to be a part of an Obama administration.

The Obama White House, especially in its first term, was preoccupied with China. The global recession had set America back but had relatively spared China, which began to assert itself internationally.

Mr. Bader stayed with Mr. Obama for more than two years before returning to Brookings, long enough to see the pivot underway and to believe that America was on the right course. And while he later criticized Donald J. Trumps administration for its protectionist approach to China, he was not alarmed. He remained convinced that the ebb and flow of tensions was simply part of great power relations.

Over time, there are interests that overlap to some degree and differ to some degree, he told The New York Times in 2012. The relationship tends to move up and down over time, as if along a sine curve. But the recent story is mostly a positive one.

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Jeffrey A. Bader, Who Helped Steer Obama's 'Pivot' to Asia, Dies at 78 - The New York Times