An absence of consistency

I have a piece in the Mail today about the global swoon over Princess Obama. Meanwhile the seemingly reflexive instinct by ‘the One’ himself to alter the facts to fit the circumstances is now even being picked up by the mainstream media. The Times, in its story about his visit to Jerusalem, notes the following:

At a news conference in the southern Israeli town of Sderot, Mr Obama was asked about a pledge he made last year to meet without preconditions the leaders of Iran during his first year in office, a vow that has caused deep unease among Israelis and the American Jewish community.

Mr Obama, incorrectly, replied that what he actually said last year was that he would meet leaders of rogue states ‘at a time and a place of my choosing’ and with ‘preparations’. ‘That’s just not true,’ a spokesman for John McCain, his Republican rival, said in a statement.

Indeed it was not. When he was first asked a year ago whether he would meet the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea without preconditions, he said ‘I would’. He made no mention of ‘preparations’. When he was asked in Sderot whether he stood by this, he said:

I think that what I said in response was that I would, at my time and choosing, be willing to meet with any leader if I thought it would promote the national security and interests of the USA. And that continues to be my position...What I also said was that there’s a difference between meeting without preconditions and meeting without preparation...

But he said no such thing last year. Nor did he explain yesterday what the big difference was supposed to be between ‘preconditions’ and ‘preparations’. That’s because his people are using this word ‘preparations’ to pretend that it means ‘preconditions-lite’ and thus enable Obama to speak out of both sides of his mouth at once, both to those who want him to appease Iran and those who want him to attack it.

But putting to one side this rhetorical sleight of hand and taking his remarks as a whole, the key thing is that he is still firmly and explicitly committed to talking to Iran before it undertakes to stop its nuclear programme, on the basis that a ‘stick and carrot’ approach has to be tried. It seems to have escaped his notice that this is precisely what the world has been doing for years -- with the result that, according to Obama’s briefing from Olmert, Iran could achieve the technology to manufacture a nuclear bomb by the end of 2009 or the beginning of 2010. It’s true that the ‘stick’ has been no more than a snapped twig, and that even now more effective sanctions should be tried in order to exhaust all possibilities before reaching the last resort of war. But time quite clearly has all but run out. To talk now about ‘sticks and carrots’ is not only absurd in the circumstances but sends a signal to Tehran that Obama would not ever reach that last resort of force – a signal which can only embolden and strengthen them.

Now look at his slipperiness over Jerusalem, on which his rousing statement to AIPAC that

Jerusalem must always remain the capital of Israel and must never be divided.

was retracted the very next day by his team who said he meant merely that it must never again be divided by barbed wire but was

a final status issue, which means it has to be negotiated between the two parties.

In other words, it could and would be divided. When challenged on this yesterday, however, Obama said:

I didn't change my statement... I continue to say that Jerusalem will be the capital of Israel. I have said that before and will say it again. I have also said that it is important that you don't simply slice the city in half. But I've also said that this is a final status issue, an issue that has to be dealt with by the parties involved, the Palestinians and the Israelis. It is not the job of the US to dictate the form which that will take, but rather to support the efforts that are being made right now to resolve these very difficult issues that have a long history.

But his people did change his statement. This is therefore a denial of a reversal, compounding the original offence of duplicity and bad faith. As I have remarked previously, his new line is to emphasise that Jerusalem will be Israel’s capital without saying that what he means is that only part of it will be. On American Thinker Rick Richman skewers very effectively the tortuous way in which Obama is trying to pretend that his approach to Jerusalem is not what it so clearly is.

The Israelis appear to have been charmed and impressed by Obama. Who isn’t? And however dangerous he may be, they know only too well that they may have to deal with him for the next four years. But he wasn't there to win over the Israelis. As he himself acknowledged, the point of his visit was that he was well aware of the unease about his approach to the region and wanted to persuade American Jews to trust him. When one looks at the slippery way he handled the key questions, however, there is even less cause to do so -- and, for anyone not wearing heavy blinkers, even greater cause for concern.