CrossPosted @ Voices in the Wilderness
Barack Obama seems to be a little confused in regards to his foreign policy vise a vie talking to "terrorist". He laid out, over the past few months, what amounts to the most inconsistent and incoherent policy as it relates to Iran. He has been, in recent weeks, condemning Hamas while constantly putting forward the idea of direct negotiations with Iran. That doesn't seem problematic until you add his other beliefs into the equation. He said in a recent speech condemning comments made by George Bush during a celebration of Israel's 60th anniversary of statehood that Iran was financially backing Hamas, and by proxy, its attacks against Israeli civilians.
Read on...
It must seem like a stretch to even the most hopeful of candidates that the financial backers of a terrorist group are not themselves terrorist.
Allow me to lay out the hypocrisy in plain view:
Obama said he would not negotiate with Hamas because they are a terrorist organization. He then suggests that negotiating with Iran is ok which of course begs to question, who has defined Hamas as a terrorist organization and Iran ok.
The reality is that it has been multiple American and Israeli administrations who have labeled Hamas a terrorist organization. The problem for Barack is: they have also labeled Iran a terrorist state.
So, if Barack is to keep his pledge to not negotiate with terrorist he will have to remove Iran from the terrorist state list (as well as removing the Iranian National Guard from the list of terror groups). Fair enough, but this again begs the question, if you can remove one group from the list in order to allow talks then why not remove both groups from the list?
The policy essentially consists of a few ideologically held positions that have all been joined together through various speeches and packaged as a policy. There does not appear to be any overall purpose to the policy. For example, the question of how Iran will use its new position in the world, as a fair broker (a position that will be granted to it from many anti American nations after the Iranian President has photo ops with the American President), to help Hamas in its cause is, of course, never addressed in Obama's rhetoric.
It is clear that Barack Obama will bring change to the White House if he is elected. He will bring color where there was no color, he will bring more liberal policies and he will carry a liberal ideology. What won't change is the ineffectiveness of American foreign policy as it relates to Iran. If you had any doubt Obama's recent attempts at a coherent policy should have put those doubts to rest.
I have, for 8 years, been certain that the next President could not possibly be worst the George Bush but if Barack Obama's promises become his policies (more than just his foreign policy promises) he may edge out Bush.
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