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Those Great “Transformative” Candidates…Repeat Tired Party Lines

Mitt “Innovation and Transformation” Romney sucks up to the Cuban community in Florida, and Barack “Transform Our Country” Obama makes it clear that he will do whatever AIPAC wants.  Romney said, “I look forward to the day when the stain of Castro is finally washed from the soil of Cuba.”  As, I expect, do most people who give […]

Mitt “Innovation and Transformation” Romney sucks up to the Cuban community in Florida, and Barack “Transform Our Country” Obama makes it clear that he will do whatever AIPAC wants. 

Romney said, “I look forward to the day when the stain of Castro is finally washed from the soil of Cuba.”  As, I expect, do most people who give any thought to the matter. (Incidentally, I had attempted to write a post on The Lost City several months ago, but my browser crashed and I didn’t return to it, but in it I talked about its strong similarities to The White Countess as an anti-ideological, anti-revolutionary movie that functions as a kind of antidote to Casablanca-style romanticisation of causes and political violence.) 

What this Romney statement represents is really the reiteration of a worn-out, absurd policy of embargo that today stands no closer to eliminating the party dictatorship in Cuba than in the 1960s.  Embargoes and sanctions isolate a country and reinforce the power of the party or dictator in power, not least by giving the government a plausible foreign foe to demonise and blame.  Support for the embargo of Cuba is one of these unreasonable litmus tests that an influential ethnic lobby has imposed on the foreign policy of the United States out of a sincere, perhaps originally admirable, but nonetheless effectively misguided attempt to bring down the Castro regime through external pressure.  After nearly five decades of this approach, which has failed as badly as any policy has ever failed, it is surely time to try something else.  The rest of the world pays no attention to our bizarre preoccupation with embargoing Cuba, and we are simply postponing the day when commerce and travel to Cuba begin again.  I don’t see how that benefits Cuban-Americans, and I certainly don’t see how it makes the condition of the people in Cuba any better; it definitely doesn’t hasten the end of the communist dictatorship there. 

However, as will happen with politically influential ethnic lobbies in the setting of foreign policy, the powerful interest and commitment of a relative few will outweigh the basic indifference of the overwhelming majority.  Because of this, a bad policy will be preserved because its defenders are far more willing to punish a candidate over deviations from the policy than supporters of a new policy are likely to rally around a candidate.  That leads us to the other candidate who groveled before a different influential lobby. 

Obama referred to the AIPAC meeting as a “small gathering of friends,” and referred to the captured Israeli soldiers from last summer as those who have been “kidnapped.”  (As a few have pointed out, soldiers in wartime are not “kidnapped” when they are seized, but are captives and prisoners of war.)  He spoke of the “unique defense relationship” between the U.S. and Israel (a phrase that is so ripe for mockery that it is hard to know where to start–it is certainly unique!), and he recited the propaganda version of the Lebanon War without any suggestion that Israel erred at any point in the scale or nature of its response.  He even went so far as to say:

Yitzhak Rabin had the vision to reach out to longtime enemies. Ariel Sharon had the determination to lead Israel out of Gaza. These were difficult, painful decisions that went to the heart of Israel’s identity as a nation.  

However, as I think many Israelis would acknowledge, Gaza has never been seen as being at “the heart of Israel’s identity as a nation” and it does not possess anything like the same symbolic or Biblical associations that are used to justify the ongoing occupation and settlement of the West Bank.  Even for the more nationalistic in Likud and those on the farther Israeli right, while withdrawing from Gaza may not have been popular with them, Gaza never did possess quite the same ideological significance as the claims to the other occupied territory.  It was politically controversial, but it was relatively easy as a matter of national identity for Sharon to order the withdrawal from Gaza.  At every point in the speech when Obama could have demonstrated some shred of that new and “transformative” politics he always talks about but never delivers, he settled for the easy, comfortable and safe path.  That’s good for fulfilling the ambitions of an ambitious pol, but it is neither impressive nor interesting.  Anyone looking for Obama to demonstrate anything like independence on questions of Near East policy and foreign policy more generally will, as usual, be disappointed.

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