Pres. Obama went before the UN today and delivered possibly the least credible, most irrelevant, and downright disappointing speeches of his career. A career which has seen its share of stunningly wonderful ones. It is yet a another mark of how completely lost his presidency has become.
The major contention of this speech was that statehood would not come for the Palestinians at the UN, but rather must come through direct negotiations between the parties. He's got it precisely wrong. Israel has guaranteed that negotiations between it and the Palestinians, even with U.S. mediation, cannot work and will never work.
France, in the form of Pres. Sarkozy, has it more or less right. The two parties must be given strict time tables and even parameters for negotiation and told that if they fail the UN will recognize a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders. And that if Israel refuses to accept the outcome it will be subject to UN sanctions.
At this point, this is the only language Israel can understand. I hate to express things this baldly since I am a supporter of Israel. But supporting a country means leading it away from the precipice when necessary.
Sarkozy's speech,which really wasn't radical at all, appeared so in juxtaposition to the stale irrelevancies of Obama's. Sarkozy too was capitalizing on the decline in Obama's stature on the world stage. He can expect many more such challenges if his rhetoric continues falling as flat as it has.
Can any U.S. president not realize when he's embraced warmly by Bibi Netanyahu, as he was in the latter's UN speech, that he's in big trouble?
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