Category: Keepers

Our Three Year National Nightmare Is Over!

Palin talks to Mark Levin here (her voice is the deeper one). Her explanation is, as usual, opaque. But the idea that this person is protecting her family – after putting them all on a reality show, after deploying an infant with Down Syndrome as a book-selling prop, after pushing her son into the military, after sending her elderly dad headfirst into a ravine for a reality TV shot, and after using another young daughter as a campaign press bouncer … well, it's as ludicrous as almost everything she says. I suspect she knows somewhere that the truth about her will eventually come out in full – as it has already in part, culminating with Joe McGinniss' devastating and exhaustively reported book, The Rogue. And the sheer craziness of this clinically disturbed person would bring it all crashing down. So she's bowing out. Call it cowardice; call it a rare example of sanity; call it a bizarre end to an even weirder game of hide and seek for the past few months. But the bottom line is: we can stop worrying about the threat she posed to this country. That is all I really cared about: the insane gamble with the world that John McCain foisted on us, with no vetting and no reason but desperation and cynicism.

It is hard to describe the relief of this awful person finally going away. (And who cares what she says if she has no "title"? There are RedState comment threads more coherent and persuasive than her deranged delusions.) All I can say now is that a) I was wrong about her intentions and b) I am so so so relieved to be wrong. She will now face the oblivion she deserves, and I sincerely hope I never have to write about this farce again.

I was at the gym when the news broke, hence the late post. And, of course, the news was juxtaposed by the untimely death of Steve Jobs. Leonard Cohen once said of America that it was "the cradle of the best and the worst". Today, we lost one of the very best in American history, a reticent genius and entrepreneur, an inspiration for countless of us who has changed the very fabric of our lives. And we also saw the end of the road for one of the very worst: a nasty, callow, delusional, vicious know-nothing, brewed in resentment, and whose accomplishments could fit on a postage stamp.

It's a fitting comparison: achievement versus resentment, creativity versus narcissism, hope versus fear. I know which one will get the bigger headlines tomorrow. And there is some comfort in knowing it will pain her.

She is now the final asterisk in the GOP race. And there's been a striking silence from Wasilla lately. Reports of her peeps inquiring into primary deadlines are hard to parse, because, as Allahpundit notes, we don't know when they took place. If it was last week, it's news.

Is it a plausible scenario? If you believe Palin (never a good idea), she has taken her time to see if someone else emerges who can bring her point of view (absent the clinical delusion, congenital dishonesty and wigs) to the White House race. And guess what? If Perry's fall from grace becomes permanent, where will the anti-Romney forces go? Yes, Cain is now the recipient. But she is the incumbent vice-presidential candidate. In the hierarchical nature of Republican electoral politics, she is due more than Cain, even though she is out of her tiny mind. Far right fanatic Dan Riehl makes the case:

Barring another late entry, or unforeseen circumstance, by getting in late, Palin could very well become the last gal standing with enough solid baseline support, name recognition and timely trending attention to take on Romney in a serious way during the actual voting within the GOP primary. What on Earth would there be for a serious conservative to do?  If Romney is un-electable, as many have conceded – and, in the view of some, so is Palin – why not fight for principle, as opposed to two ultimately losing candidates?

But is she seriously considering running? Well:

The fact that Palin is touring the early primary states in a giant bus with her name on it would seem, as Jon Stewart has noted, as evidence either that she’s running for president or is crazy (not that these are mutually exclusive options).

Certainly not with Palin. Her main liability – that she is an unstable, adolescent, vindictive incompetent – was fully explored by Joe McGinniss, but the MSM, fearful that their own malpractice in 2008 might be aired, have largely killed the book's chance to get the truth out about this whackjob. I imagine she sees this as another example of her undefeatedness, and further evidence that the MSM needs her for traffic more than it fears her for what she could do to this country and the world. McGinniss thinks the whole thing is a hoax designed for more lucrative speaking gigs.

But consider this. Palin has a cult following of around 10 percent of the GOP base. And this is a floor, not a ceiling. She's not running right now, which surely depresses this number. If she were to run, she could easily end up in double digits while the front-runner cannot move past around 20 percent in this field. She's also under-estimated as a speaker. Why? Because she can deliver a hell of a stump speech for the base, and retains more cred with the base than anyone else, because of Trig. Ralph Reed knows her typical follower well:

“It’s a person who is a devout Christian and a solid social conservative who also has a lot of credentials with the tea party movement,” Reed said. “When you’ve got Herman Cain beating frontrunners to win [the Florida straw poll] it shows you where the activists are right now and I think that’s right in Palin’s wheelhouse.”

And remember her favorite word and self-branding: the rogue. It's possible she could also run as an Independent or Tea Party candidate next year, especially if Romney wins the nomination, and hits a bump in the road. Think about it:

Palin has held the GOP establishment in contempt since 2008. During the 2010 elections, she regularly railed against the “GOP machine” and “good old boys,” and both she and her supporters have accused the party of trying to muzzle Palin. In fact, Palin’s embrace of the Tea Party movement has regularly been coupled with attacks on the Republican Party, and she’s often keen to note that her spirit and principles are conservative, not Republican.

In short, Palin doesn’t claim loyalty to the GOP, and in fact loathes the party establishment. There’d be no greater blow she could strike to the GOP elite than to run as an independent and siphon off votes from the Republican nominee. Party bigwigs would either fawn over her, trying to coax her out of the race, or attack her mercilessly as they try to discredit her among conservative-minded voters. Either way, Palin would once again be the center of attention.

The obvious problem is that she would all but guarantee the re-election of Barack Obama. Is she delusional and narcissistic enough to plow onward regardless?

You betcha!

(Photo: People gather at theTea Party Express rally on September 5, 2011 at Veteran's Memorial Park in Manchester, New Hampshire. The rally is part of the 'Reclaiming America' bus tour traveling through 19 states and visiting 29 cities before arriving in Tampa, Florida for a presidential debate co-sponsored by CNN on September 12. By Darren McCollester/Getty Images.)

It was odd watching Jon Stewart’s rather inspired take-down of Mitt Romney last night. It was odd because the critique was mind-blowingly obvious and deeply familiar but nonetheless seemed fresh, after his re-tooling. I mean, we all knew that Romney was vulnerable to massive flip-flopping over the years but the visual evidence of it nonetheless devastates:

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“This is beginning to hurt where my feelings should be”: funny because it’s true. Everyone should be allowed to change his or her mind. God knows I have, as events have unfolded. But if Romney’s shifts were connected to new facts, or new arguments, they would have some punch. But what’s amazing about him is that all of them seem clearly caused purely by opportunism in a party lurching toward fundamentalism in religion (the Bible), economics (no revenue increases ever) and politics (the Constitution, as viewed by someone in the late eighteenth century).

The record nonetheless shows Romney as once passionately pro-choice, a man who vowed a decade and a half ago to be more pro-gay than Ted Kennedy, a man who embraced and shaped universal healthcare on lines close to identical to Obama’s but now vows to repeal it, a man who opposed tax loopholes before Obama targeted them, a figure so shape-shifty it’s impossible to know how he’d govern, except by sticking a wet finger into the air. There’s a reason the GOP is uncomfortable with him, why Perry did so well in fundraising this past quarter, why the idiotic Christie-fever ran wild, and why Herman Cain, of all people, is now neck and neck with a former governor.

Where Obama is weak – lacking the kind of Jersey cred of a Christie or even a Biden – Romney is also weak. Where Romney is strong – experience, competence – Obama, as an incumbent president, is just as strong. What we’re talking about right now is simply a function of deep discontent at economic stagnation – and Mitt’s experience in the private sector. That’s really Romney’s core strength.

I suspect he’s more John Kerry in 2004 – one state away from the presidency – than Bill Clinton in 1992. But I also know that in this fluid environment, anything is possible.

Well, that was quick. But when a man of no governing experience save a pizza company bests a four-term governor of a major state, it's not looking too good. The key to the turn-around is the Tea Party, where the turn against Perry (almost certainly after he accused them of not having a heart) is getting brutal:

In early September, Perry had a 3-to-1 advantage over any other candidate among those “strongly” backing the tea party, but his supported has plummeted from 45 percent to 10 percent in this group … Among tea party supporters, Cain’s support has surged from 5 percent to 30 percent in a month. The businessman, who scored a surprise win at the Florida straw poll, now has the edge among solid tea partyers.

So barring Christie and Palin, Cain is now Romney's chief rival, which may partly explain the establishment suck-ups now circling back to the former Massachusetts governor. I have to say I find this rather encouraging. What we've seen of Perry's skills in the last few weeks show the atrophied muscles of an easy-goin' good ol' boy who hasn't seen any real competition in years. Romney, meanwhile, looks as if he has been in intensive training for months.

There are some other intriguing aspects of the WaPo poll as well. Republicans place jobs over debt as their first priority by a whopping 51 – 13 percent. There's been no real settling in support since July, with "strong" support for a candidate still only applying to 36 percent of voters (compared with 34 in July). Only 31 percent want Palin to run – but only a slightly larger 42 percent want Christie in the race (with a, er, hefty 34 percent opposed). And despite all this, enthusiasm and confidence among Republicans is high – and Obama's collapse in support this summer during the debt-ceiling fiasco appears to be resilient, especially among Independents. Something evaporated in July. My worry is that this will only encourage the kind of economic terrorism the GOP foisted on the country last summer. In their attempt to destroy the president – even at the expense of wounding the economy – the GOP succeeded.

The incompetent, panic-stricken war-criminal won't give up trying to whitewash his crimes and military disasters by citing Obama. But this weekend was a new low. He cited the al-Awlaki killing as a sign that the Obama administration is no different when it comes to the war on terror than the Bush administration, and demanded an apology. Yes, an apology! He wants to elide surgical, intelligence-based drone attacks with his own torture program. Mercifully, McCain set him right:

Cheney still has no idea what the rule of law is, or what American values are. The idea that anyone owes this war criminal an apology is preposterous. The real apology, it seems to me, should come from Cheney himself, for both betraying core Western values, violating the rule of law, undermining his successor as commander-in-chief with constant self-serving jibes, attacks and condemnations for at least a year and a half after Obama took office, and losing two wars that Obama has largely won.

Bush knew better and with a modicum of dignity, let his successor govern without back-seat driving. And somewhere, deep down, I have to believe, Cheney must surely feel some kind of remorse – or he wouldn't feel so desperate to justify his own membership of the ranks of war criminals through the ages. Why else try to appropriate the victories of Obama in a war the Bush administration hopelessly compromised and bungled? He senses history is not going to be kind. On that, at least, he's right. I just want justice to stay one foot in front of history so this war criminal gets the punishment he deserves – while he is still alive.

Last fall, the Dish hosted an impassioned debate about the morality and ethics and prudence of targeting US civilians who have joined the Jihadist enemy in seeking to attack the US. My own position is that we are at war, and that avowed enemies and traitors in active warfare against the US cannot suddenly invoke legal protections from a society they have decided to help destroy.

And so my response to the death of Anwar al Awlaki is obviously not going to be Glenn Greenwald's, although I respect his consistency and integrity on this question, even though I think his position minimizes the stakes of the conflict, and misreads the nature of war.

My response is to note what the Obama administration seems leery of saying out loud – in line with its general response to al Qaeda which is to speak very softly while ruthlessly killing scores of mid-level and high-level operatives. This administration actually is what the Bush administration claimed to be: a relentless executor of the war in terror, armed with real intelligence and lethally accurate execution. Sure, Yemen's al Qaeda is not the core al Qaeda of Pakistan/Afghanistan – it's less global in scope and capacities. But to remove one important propaganda source of that movement has made all of us safer. And those Americans who have lived under one of Awlaki's murderous fatwas can breathe more easily today.

The same goes for al Qaeda more generally. Obama has done in two years what Bush failed to do in eight. He has skillfully done all he can to reset relations with the broader Muslim world (despite the machinations of the Israeli government) while ruthlessly wiping out swathes of Jihadist planners, operatives and foot-soldiers in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He has thereby strengthened us immeasurably both in terms of soft and hard power.

Compare the two presidents. One unleashed a war in Afghanistan he then left to languish, and sparked an unjustified war in Iraq, that became a catastrophe of mass death and chaos. He both maximally antagonized the Arab and Muslim world and didn't even score a major victory against the enemy. In many ways, Bush gave al Qaeda an opening in Iraq where it never had one before, and allowed its key leadership to escape at Tora Bora. The torture program, meanwhile, fouled up our intelligence while destroying our moral standing in the world.

Obama has ended torture and pursued a real war, not an ideological spectacle. He has destroyed almost all of al Qaeda of 9/11 (if Zawahiri is taken out, no one is left), obliterated its ranks in Afghanistan and Pakistan, found and killed bin Laden, in a daring raid pushed relentlessly by the president alone, capturing alongside a trove of intelligence, procured as a consequence of courage and tenacity rather than cowardice and torture.

I know the next election will be about the economy. But what it should also be about is the revelation of the Republicans as fundamentally weak on national security. Caught up in their own ideology, they proved for eight years they'd rather posture and preen than do the intelligent, relentless, ethical intelligence work that is only now leading to victory.

Obama, in other words, is winning the war Bush kept losing. And since Cairo, we have witnessed the real flowering of democratic forces in the Middle East – unseen during the Bush-Cheney years. For all the tireless efforts of the Israelis to cripple US foreign policy against Jihadism, Obama has done the job. If he fails to make this case in the next election, he will, in my judgment, be blowing an important opportunity to reinforce a structural advantage against the GOP on national security.

Back in 2001, I wondered if Bush would be the president to win this war, while hoping he would. I wondered if his errors might lead to a successor who learned from them. That hope has now been fulfilled – more swiftly and decisively than I once dared to dream about.

Corey Robin, directly aiming a challenge in my direction, says yes – that conservatism is about ideology and power rather than restraint and freedom:

It’s not just Burke who makes … arguments in favor of ideological zeal and against prudential restraints. Nor is it in the face of an arguably lethal threat like Jacobinism that conservatives make them. In the 20th century, one finds a similar move in Hayek, arguing against not the totalitarianism of Stalin but the democratic socialism of Britain and France and the liberal welfare state of the New Deal. Again, this is not a widely noted theme in discussions of Hayek, but if you want a full-throated defense of ideology and utopianism against the prudential improvisations of the proverbial conservative, you could do worse than to start with Volume 1 of his Law, Legislation, and Liberty. There, Hayek says, among other things, that the "successful defense of freedom must therefore be dogmatic and make no concession to expediency."

You can see an earlier version of this argument, in a Raritan essay I read a while back. The trouble with running a blog of this pace and volume is that the time to read Robin's new book is short. So I apologize for not having read it yet, but hope to do so soon.

The obvious response to the essays' highlighting the radical or revolutionary aspects of the conservative mind – including Burke – is to agree that, faced with what looked like the end of all settled order in the late eighteenth century, many over-reacted, including Burke at times. The impulse to witness change and regard it as apocalyptic in its implications – and therefore to become more radical in attempting to arrest or mitigate it – is certainly a deep part of the conservative conversation. Burke, one should recall, was a Whig, not a Tory. And he was an Irishman. He contained multitudes. Equally, there's no question that Hayek's critique of the modern welfare state was radical in its prescriptions – just as Paul Ryan's plans for the future of elderly healthcare are.

I would simply argue that alongside this strain there is an equally countervailing one of respect for existing institutions, pragmatic prudence in governing, and an understanding of the value of moderation in political life. This is most fully achieved in Oakeshott, in my view, who rather downplayed the mercurial Burke, and famously criticized Hayek for excessive abstraction and too much faith in a too-perfect "system." Reihan conceded:

Robin’s ur-thesis is that the right has shrewdly employed a narrative of victimhood, victimhood for the predatory classes, as a means to win power and sympathy. I definitely think there is something to this, and I think it is an unattractive pose that the right ought to have outgrown. But again, I don’t see this as structural or ancient. Rather, I think it is contingent and particular, and that it parallels forms of victim politics that are deployed across the political spectrum.

I see that sense of angry alienation from modernity as more like a flickering flame through conservative history, one that burns sometimes with ferocity but also has long periods of quiet and calm. And context matters: Thatcher's pragmatic radicalism was in direct response to the unmissable collapse of the social-democratic model in Britain by the 1970s. The over-reach of post-war managerial liberalism demanded a conservative radicalism in response.

But having ratcheted back those hubristic moves (think lower tax rates, welfare reform), the proper conservative position decades later is to let be, to reform where one must, but to be a steady steward of a ship in high seas with currents and waves tossing us to and fro. That's why the increased ideology of the American right after their ideological and political triumphs since the 1980s is so, well, unconservative. Its radicalism is not contextual: tax revenues are at 50 year lows, and balancing the budget on spending cuts alone does not have a chance of winning broad consent in the time we have and would profoundly reset US society back a few decades, if not almost a century.

That's reactionaryism, not conservatism. It's religion, not politics. And the fact that these radical strains and extreme reactions have always been part of the right doesn't mean it is defined by them, or that the tradition that Tanenhaus and I champion is non-existent or incoherent.

The times they are a changin'. John Judis has written a piece I'd never thought I'd read at TNR. It's an elegant, factual, calm dismemberment of where the Obama administration has ended up on Israel-Palestine: on AIPAC's extendable leash, wagging its tail for a treat. On the pure principles of UN recognition of a Palestinian state, John shows exactly how American politics has been slowly but fatally corrupted by the Greater Israel lobby in recent years with respect to Middle East policy. One logical stiletto:

The United States, it is said, should not assist Palestinians in gaining membership at the UN because some Palestinians still don’t recognize the right of Israel to exist. But guess what? In 1947, there were Zionists identified with the Revisionist movement (parts of which later came together to create Likud) who denied the right of Palestinians to a state. They wanted all of Palestine and even Jordan for a Jewish state; and some of them were willing to use terror and assassination to achieve their ends. And there are still many Israelis who deny the right of Palestinians to a state. That didn’t preclude our helping Palestine’s Jews achieve statehood through the UN, and it shouldn’t impede our helping the Palestinians.

Precisely. More to the point, the Greater Israel lobby has actively damaged the interests of the United States on behalf of the illegal policies of a radical religious right government of a foreign country:

America’s standing in the world could only have been improved by being on the side of a Palestinian state. It would have removed an important talking point for Islamic radicals; it would have allied the United States with the reform forces of the Arab Spring, who, as has become clear in Egypt, are very critical of the continued Israeli occupation. American support could also have helped forestall the sort of explosive reaction among Arab publics that might follow rejection of the Palestinian bid in the Security Council. And backing Palestinian statehood would have put the United States in a position to work constructively with European and Middle Eastern countries, many of whom are hoping to see an end to the century-long standoff in Palestine and now Israel. Instead, Obama’s stand has made the United States an outlier in the region. We are identified not so much with Israel (which we have rightly defended against attack from other states), but with Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and with the expansionist ambitions of the Israeli rightwing.

The explanation for the humiliation of Obama at the UN, where he gave the kind of speech a junior congressman might give at an AIPAC break-out session, is pretty simple. Obama was checkmated. Netanyahu and the GOP recognized immediately that the Cairo speech could have opened up a whole new chapter in America's relationship with the Arab and further Muslim world. And so they, in active collaboration, did all they could to stop it in its tracks. They succeeded in handing Obama the clearest defeat of his first term.

The Obama goal was simple: win back global soft power in the war against Jihadist terrorism by demonstrating even-handedness again with the Israelis and Palestinians; use hard power much more effectively by lethally targeting al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The latter has been a big success. The former a major failure – fundamentally caused, as Judis beautifully explains, by Netanyahu's adamant resistance to any serious attempt at a two-state solution on 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps, the only formula with any chance of success.

Many of us who supported Obama partly on his potential to transform America's Muslim relations, especially in the wake of the extraordinary Arab Spring, have been crushed and angered. But the anger has by now led to total resignation. I mean: what, in the end, was Obama supposed to do? Many of the chieftains in his own own party – Reid, Hoyer, et al. – are more loyal to the Israeli prime minister and their core donors than to their own president. The GOP is even worse: actively going to Israel and colluding with the Likud against the US administration to enable more and more illegal settlements on the West Bank. AIPAC's roll-call at its last conference revealed a veto-proof majority of Congress. Veto-proof. I doubt that was a message designed to be buried.

So any genuine attempt to put any serious pressure on Netanyahu would be immediately undercut by the Hill. So would have recognizing the Palestinian state at the UN. If Obama had followed through, the Congress would have responded by cutting off aid to the Palestinians, backing Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank, and would reveal triumphantly that even a president who has done as much for Israel as Obama (bunker-busting bomb sales, rescuing embassy staff in Cairo spring immediately to mind) cannot break out of the constraints any president is under when tackling this subject.

In that sense, I believe the pro-Greater Israel skeptics of the sincerity of Obama's UN speech are largely right. Obama simply has run out of options. So he has cut his losses and capitulated – what any serious leader does when he recognizes the forces against him are so massive there's no hope but to wait for a recapitalization after another election victory. Meanwhile, Netanyahu remains in Israel an extension of the GOP at home – and more secure than ever because the GOP has adopted wholesale the Christianist support for Greater Israel on theological grounds. What is at stake is nothing less than America's global credibility as a power able to act in its own interests, outside the demands of religious fundamentalists and Democratic donors. That has now been revealed, when it comes to Israel, as essentially impossible.

We had a window. It's important to remember who shut it, and tried to lock it tight.

I have become used to hearing gay people and our lives either ignored or stigmatized or demonized in Republican debates. It is a function of a political party becoming a religion. And so my skin is pretty thick at this point, and my outrage button eroded by two decades of learning to ignore this stuff and focus on the positive arguments we have to make. It's not that I didn't react at the time:

10.18 pm. Santorum claims bizarrely that repealing DADT means permission for sexual activity for gays in the military. This is a lie. The same rules of sexual misconduct apply to gays and straights alike. And a gay servicemember is booed by this foul crowd. Santorum keeps saying "sex is not an issue." But that's the current policy! This has nothing to do with sex, as Santorum surely knows. And again, the crowd reveals itself as hateful – even when it comes to those serving their country in uniform. This is one core reason why I cannot be a Republican. So many are bigots – and no one – no one – stands up against them. They're a bunch of bullies congratulating themselves on rooting out the queers.

But as I went to bed last night, the scattered boos for an American soldier in the field at any debate began to sink in. And Santorum's despicable lie in response – that repealing DADT somehow means license of gay sexual misconduct in the armed services – was intended to reduce that soldier, his life and work, to Santorum's obsession: the intrinsic evil of gay sex. Again, this is usual. Gays are used to being reduced to sexual acts rather than being seen as full human beings, like straight people, with sexuality sure, but a whole lot of other things as well.

But somehow the fact that these indignities were heaped on a man risking his life to serve this country, a man ballsy enough to make that video, a man in the uniform of the United States … well, it tells me a couple of things. It tells me that these Republicans don't actually deep down care for the troops, if that means gay troops. Their constant posturing military patriotism has its limits.

The shocking silence on the stage – the fact that no one challenged this outrage – also tells me that this kind of slur is not regarded as a big deal. When it came to it, even Santorum couldn't sanction firing all those servicemembers who are now proudly out. But that's because he was forced to focus not on his own Thomist abstractions, but on an actual person. Throughout Republican debates, gays are discussed as if we are never in the audience, never actually part of the society, never fully part of families, never worthy of even a scintilla of respect. When you boo a servicemember solely because he's gay, you are saying he is beneath contempt, that nothing he does or has done can counterweigh the vileness of his sexual orientation.

And then I think of all those gay servicemembers who have died for this country, or been wounded in battle, or been on tours year after year … and the fury builds. Even GOProud, the two gay guys who love Ann Coulter, issued this statement:

“Tonight, Rick Santorum disrespected our brave men and women in uniform, and he owes Stephen Hill, the gay soldier who asked him the question about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal, an immediate apology. That brave gay soldier is doing something Rick Santorum has never done – put his life on the line to defend our freedoms and our way of life.  It is telling that Rick Santorum is so blinded by his anti-gay bigotry that he couldn’t even bring himself to thank that gay soldier for his service.

Stephen Hill is serving our country in Iraq, fighting a war Senator Santorum says he supports.  How can Senator Santorum claim to support this war if he doesn’t support the brave men and women who are fighting it?”

He can't. Apologize, Santorum.

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Judging from his actions, the Israeli prime minister has two over-arching goals: the permanent annexation of the occupied territories and the electoral defeat of Barack Obama in the US. He will deny both – but he is a practised liar, and his actions speak so much louder than his words. He is gaining on both fronts, as inaction means more and more settlers on the West Bank, and as Obama reels from a poor economy and as an "ungrateful ally", in Bob Gates's words, focuses primarily on his electoral destruction.

Netanyahu is not stupid. Obama represented a real threat to the neocon rubric: an American president very close to Israel but uniquely capable of advancing America's long term interests by forging a better relationship with the Arab and Muslim world. But the House GOP and a few Greater Israel-obsessed Democrats, in a close alliance with Netanyahu, have destroyed that potential. Between advancing America's long term interests and challenging the Israeli government, the Christianists and neocons have no hesitation in choosing Israel's short-term and self-destructive intransigence over their own country's long-term global influence.

So watching the US president be humiliated at the UN must have made every neocon and Christianist very happy, even as it made me wince. To contrast this speech with last year's reveals just how impotent any American president is in dealing with this matter. To go further back, from Cairo to New York represents an arc from real potential change to total, bitter stasis, with the added humiliation of Obama now vetoing the very Palestinian state that has been America's policy for decades. In this case, the arc of history is short and it points to mounting injustice.

But in some ways, the crude demonstration of the impotence of a US president in this area is clarifying. It's clear to the entire world that America – for domestic reasons – simply cannot be an honest broker between the Israelis and the Palestinians. America cannot even advance its own interests in a world transformed by the Arab Spring – because of the force of the evangelical right in determining Republican policies and the passion of the Greater Israel lobby in swaying the Democrats. If Obama was helpless in the face of this pincer movement, what hope any successor? The only way forward therefore is by reducing America's control of the peace process, and handing the issue to a wider international forum.

A first step is surely Sarko's option: backing observer member status at the UN as one desperate measure to force the Israelis to stop aggressively colonizing land captured in war. I don't see why the US should vote against that, even though the US will, because the US is domestically forced to do so. But the rest of the world may well vote in overwhelming numbers for this proposition, because they see it as the only real leverage against the deepening colonization of the West Bank.

This is Netanyahu's achievement: the alienation of Turkey and Jordan, the suspicion of the Arab Spring, the potential loss of Egypt's support and the dramatic reduction in US power and influence in the region. There was a window these past couple of years. Israel, the Greater Israel lobby and the Christianist GOP closed it. The best the US can do now is bow out of the responsibility for an ally it has no sway over, and work through more indirect fashion for a two-state solution that, at this point in time, seems further away than ever.