Setting the Record Straight

• Eye Still on the Ball
• Setting the Record Straight | Aug 10, 2010
• “Adverse developments in Iraq will be (and will look to be) increasingly a function of the Obama Team taking their eye off of the ball and rushing to declare mission accomplished. Yes, in such a scenario the Iraqis should bear most of the blame, but the part that is due to U.S. action or inaction will be Obama's responsibility. And it will matter. Iraq is at the center of a region that every president since Jimmy Carter has identified as vital to our national security. Iraq is next door to, and the playground for mischief from, the most thorny national security challenge the United States faces: a nuclear-weapons-seeking Iranian regime. These inconvenient facts mean that if the Iraqi situation demands more focused and costly U.S. attention, it will likely get it. At that point, what sort of domestic coalition will be available for President Obama's Iraq policy?”
  —Peter Feaver, director, Triangle Institute for Security Studies; former director for defense policy and arms control, National Security Council, “Obama’s Iraq Speech: Another Missed Opportunity,” Foreign Policy, August 3, 2010
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• “Iraq is a strategically important place in the Middle East, just by its geographic location, by its population, by the influence it's had in the Middle East for a long time. So neighboring countries from around the Middle East have an interest inside of Iraq.
  
  “But I will tell you that I think Iraqis themselves are nationalistic in nature, and that's why it's important. A strong Iraq will defend itself against interference from outside countries, and I think as we build a strong Iraq and as we continue to build a strong security mechanism and as we continue to help them economically and diplomatically, that will make it less likely of others from the outside being able to interfere.
  
  “Now, for the vacuum as we see today, again, I remind everyone is that we still have a significant presence here, and we are not going to—we will not allow undue maligned influence on the Iraqi government as they attempt to form their government. What we're trying to do is provide them the space and time for them to do that, and we will continue to do that post 1 September. We'll still have a significant civilian presence, and again, we'll still have 50,000 troops on the ground here to ensure that this government can be formed by the Iraqis. And that all the other nations respect their sovereignty as they go about forming their government.”
  —General Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, interview, “This Week” with Christiane Amanpour, August 8, 2010
• Alliance Based on Shared Interests
• Setting the Record Straight | Aug 3, 2010
• “Prime Minister Erdogan, and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) have changed Turkey fundamentally. They do not simply seek good relations with their Arab neighbors and Iran. Instead, they favor the most radical elements in regional struggles, hence their embrace of Syria over Lebanon and of Hamas over Fatah, and their endorsement Iran’s nuclear program. ...
  
  “For too long, American diplomats and officials in both the Barack Obama and George W. Bush administrations have been in denial: They have embraced Turkey as they wished it to be rather than calibrate policy to the reality of what Turkey has become. This is neither realism nor the basis of sound foreign policy.”
  —Michael Rubin, senior fellow, American Enterprise Institute, hearing, “Turkey’s New Foreign Policy Direction: Implications for U.S.-Turkish Relations,” House Foreign Affairs Committee, July 28, 2010.
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• “We hear a lot these days about Turkey’s so-called drift from the West, drift from democracy, drift from secularism. But that’s not surprising because there are multiple agendas at play in the world today. Some raise fears about the so-called Islamist influence, they speak of losing Turkey, as if Turkey were about to spawn a new caliphate and destroy the Christian West. How absurd. The fact is that the United States and Turkey have cultivated a long-term, solid relationship that has been critical in support of American national interests, as well as Turkey’s. ...
  
  “Absent Turkey, Iran would be a hegemon in a region where the United States has vital national interests. The alliance will persist because it’s in our interests and it’s also in Turkey’s interests. Of course, there are changes ongoing in Turkey, and in its relationship with its neighbors. ...
  
  “The simple fact is that the alliance between America and Turkey has served our national interests for over 60 years, and let’s not delude ourselves: we need Turkey and Turkey needs us.”
  —Congressman Bill Delahunt (D-MA), hearing, “Turkey’s New Foreign Policy Direction: Implications for U.S.-Turkish Relations,” House Foreign Affairs Committee, July 28, 2010.
• A Broad-Based Partnership
• Setting the Record Straight | Jul 27, 2010
• “We know that there is a perception held by too many Pakistanis that America’s commitment to them begins and ends with security. But in fact, our partnership with Pakistan goes far beyond security. It is economic, political, educational, cultural, historical, rooted in family ties. That this misperception has persisted for so long tells us we have not done a good enough job of connecting our partnership with concrete improvements in the lives of Pakistanis. And with this dialogue, we are working very hard to change that perception and to deliver results that truly have the concrete effects we are seeking.”
  —Hillary Clinton, secretary of state, opening remarks, U.S.-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue, July 19, 2010
• Special Relationship Unchanged
• Setting the Record Straight | Jul 20, 2010
• “Even if we still need the billions in military aid, the markets, and the ammunition provided by the U.S., and even if our international isolation is growing—we can no longer rely on U.S. support. …"Obama presses the State of Israel to freeze all construction in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, and to accept dictates that will lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state in the heart of the country. In exchange he will be willing to provide us with guarantees on safeguarding our security and our technological advantage, and on demilitarizing the Palestinian state. Yet why should anyone in Israel be willing to assume existential risks while relying on the pledge of U.S. president who betrayed and denied all the pledges made by his predecessors, while also forgetting his own explicit commitments?”
  —Aryeh Eldad, member of Israeli Knesset (National Union), “Time for Reassessment,” YNet, July 6, 2010
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• “I can tell you there is a consistent line. And all U.S. presidents, from everyone that I met including President Obama, share what the president called the basic bedrock of this unbreakable bond between Israel and the United States.
  
  “Israeli prime ministers are also different. Each one of us is different. But we all value the relationship with the United States enormously. Enormously. I think America has no better friend and ally than Israel in the world, and I'm sure that Israel has no better friend and ally than the United States.”
  —Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, interview, Fox News Sunday, July 11, 2010
   
• Isolating Hamas Should Not Mean Isolating the People of Gaza
• Setting the Record Straight | Jun 15, 2010
• “The history of blockades by free nations is an honorable one. Israel’s blockade of Hamas-run Gaza—a blockade that … permits the delivery of humanitarian and civilian aid—stands in that tradition. It preserves a tenuous peace in the short run. And it may result in the liberation of Palestinians from Hamas’s dictatorship, and prevent their exploitation by a terror-supporting Iranian regime, in the longer run.”
  —William Kristol, editor, The Weekly Standard, op-ed, “In Praise of Blockades,”
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• “Well, it's precisely the limitations of that [Gaza] policy that are now apparent. And what people like myself have been arguing for, now for the best part of two years, is that it is, of course, right that we make huge progress on the West Bank … but it's always been a mistaken belief that you push ahead in the West Bank and leave Gaza completely isolated. In the end, what you have to do is, even with the problems there with Hamas, you have to bring people in Gaza to understand that there is an alternative, it is a better way forward. But if they become completely isolated, the danger is not that they turn then towards a more sensible, more moderate path. The danger is then that extremism grows.”
  —Tony Blair, representative of the Middle East Quartet and former British prime minister, interview with Fareed Zakaria, CNN, June 6, 2010 
• Status Quo is Unsustainable
• Setting the Record Straight | Jun 8, 2010
• “[W]e use all our chips for the negotiating sessions, instead of applying them to the hard work of nation building. ... We use American influence with Israel not to promote economic growth in the West Bank, but to try and impede Jewish (never Arab) construction in Israel's capital city. This set of priorities is perverse and will not lead to peace. Instead, a pragmatic approach that seeks to create in the West Bank a decent society and a state that will maintain law and order should be our goals.”
  —Elliott Abrams, former deputy national security adviser to President George W. Bush; senior fellow, Council on Foreign Relations, "The Future of an Illusion," The Weekly Standard, April 5-12, 2010
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• “[T]he status quo is not sustainable. It is not sustainable for Israel's identity as a secure, Jewish, and democratic state, because the demographic clock keeps ticking and will not be reversed. The status quo is not sustainable for Palestinians who have legitimate aspirations for sovereignty and statehood. And the status quo is not sustainable for the region because there is a struggle between those who reject Israel's existence and those who are prepared to coexist with Israel—and the status quo strengthens the rejectionists and weakens those who would live in peace. … The United States stands ready to do whatever is necessary to help the parties bridge their differences and develop the confidence needed to make painful compromises on behalf of peace. As we do so, we will also strongly support the Palestinian Authority's efforts to develop its institutions from the ground up and call on other states, particularly in the region, to do their part to support the Palestinian Authority as well.”
  —National Security Adviser James L. Jones, remarks, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, April 21, 2010
• Realistic Approach Required
• Setting the Record Straight | May 25, 2010
• “Even assuming the degree and kind of ‘destabilization’ would be the same in both the cases of attack and appeasement (which I don't think would be so), one scenario—attack—leaves Iran without nuclear weapons, at least for now; the other—appeasement—means Iran would have nuclear weapons going forward. Which unstable outcome is less damaging to U.S. interests? I think the answer is pretty clear: An attacked Iran that does not have nukes.”
  —William Kristol, editor, The Weekly Standard, “Mullen's Myth of Geostrategic Equivalence,” April 19, 2010
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• “Some people say, ‘Well, it doesn’t matter, sanctions will never work.’ But after what we went through in Iraq, does anyone believe that the American public or anybody else will go for a military strike if they don’t see that the administration has tried other approaches? Clearly, then, we have to work through this. You know the administration is working hard when they say to you—or maybe they don’t say to you—that the president held fifteen different sets of bilaterals at the nuclear summit. And it was all about Iran. But that’s not made public.”
  —David Makovsky, director, Project on the Middle East Peace Process, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2010 Soref Symposium, April 22, 2010
• Working Together to Build a Viable State
• Setting the Record Straight | May 18, 2010
• “This time things will be different, insist the proponents of counterinsurgency. Yet Americans need to look past all the happy talk about winning hearts and minds to see counterinsurgency for what it really is: coercive nation-building. It rests on this underlying premise: We know how you should live your life. It usurps any right to self-determination; it imposes norms. In this case, Western soldiers and civilian cadres are hell-bent on transforming a tribal culture imbued with a traditionalist form of Islam. … The prospect of the United States bankrupting itself through perpetual war provides a great gift to the jihadists. So is the Afghanistan surge working? You bet—just not for us.”
  —Andrew J. Bacevich, professor of history and international relations, Boston University, “Is President Obama's Afghanistan Strategy Working?” The Washington Post, May 9, 2010
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• “I think that, when people talk about graveyards of empires, we're not an empire, and we don't desire anything for Afghanistan, except Afghan sovereignty. And I think that changes everything. What we want is an Afghanistan that can defend itself, an Afghanistan that can develop its own resources, human and physical. And so it goes back to strategic partnership. And I think that that allows us a tremendous opportunity to be successful.”
  —Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander, U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, interview with PBS NewsHour, May 13, 2010
• ‘United Jerusalem’ Already Divided?
• Setting the Record Straight | May 11, 2010
• “The Israelis have no intention of ever again being prevented from living throughout the city as they were between 1948 and 1967 when, under Jordanian control, Jewish communities were ruthlessly and violently driven out of areas where they had lived for centuries. Israel has a very different perspective. To Israelis, there is no Jewish Western Jerusalem and Eastern Arab Jerusalem.”
  —Mortimer Zuckerman, editor-in-chief, U.S. News and World Report, “On Israel, Obama Playing the Mideast Game Wrong,” April 23, 2010
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• “The State of Israel has given up. The [Palestinian] neighborhoods are outside the jurisdiction of the state, and certainly the municipality. For all practical purposes, they are Ramallah. … Outside the half delusional right wing camp, I don't know anyone who wants to enforce Israeli sovereignty over this area.”
  —Yakir Segev, holder of the East Jerusalem portfolio in the Jerusalem municipality, address, Hebrew University, January 8, 2010
• Economic Development is No Substitute for Two-State Solution
• Setting the Record Straight | May 4, 2010
• “The West Bank governs itself. It’s not a country exactly, but then neither is Kosovo or Nagorno-Karabakh. The international community does not invest much energy worrying about the precise status of either of these autonomous self-governing regions. Why not allow the Palestinian Authority to stumble along in the same way? … Then, for the time being—a time that may stretch for decades—everybody tacitly agrees to live with the status quo: The Israelis keep what they have, the West Bank Palestinians commit to keep order on their side of the fence, Hamas remains an international pariah, foreign aid continues to flow to the West Bank so long as good behavior continues. No process, no treaty, just quiet and development.”
  —David Frum, “Peace Without the Process,” National Post, May 1, 2010
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• “Even though the economic situation in the West Bank has improved over the last two years and Abu Mazen and Fayyad repeatedly declare that they oppose a resumption of the violent confrontation with Israel, such pronouncements do not guarantee security stability over time. Although the population's sense of economic welfare is gradually evolving, given the occupation and settlement construction, there will always be motivation to resume the confrontational approach. … The absence of a political process will deny the PA legitimacy to continue working intensively against Hamas on the West Bank.”
  —Col. (Ret.) Ephraim Lavie, director, Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace, Tel Aviv University, “Between Settlement and Crisis: The Next Round of the Palestinian Issue,” Strategic Assessment, INSS, February 2010