Just like Republicans are idiotic to refuse to meet enemies as a general rule - therefore guaranteeing they won't get anything but tension - Democrats would be idiotic to take the stick off the table before offering to meet and negotiate.
Diplomacy is talking for sure, but you can't talk without some leverage. Preemptively closing the door on the military option is depriving yourself of your trump card in a poker game. It is stupid.
Noone thinks he plans on going to war.

Here's a personal incentive for a future President: if you ever manage to help push through a real peace deal establishing a sane and operable state for the Palestinians and resolve remaining Syria issues, you will take away from those who think that only the most nutty hawk policies can help Israel the controversy and public attention they desire to keep pushing that narrative.

In other words, fix the problem and this sort of genuflection to partisans of pure hawkishness on Israel (AIPAC, which is anything but some neutral advocate for Israelis) will recede in importance quite rapidly.

The contradiction is that the exact same groups will oppose any attempt to actually move toward any real and sane solutions.

Still, the incentives are there.

I give Obama partial credit for using the words "two-state solution", which neither Clinton or McCain were willing to do in front of AIPAC. And he did at least say that dealing with Iran starts with diplomacy.

I'm trying to understand why Obama is specifically worried about the image that he's Bad For The Jews that he tones down the straight talk to such a degree.

Even though I believe the policies pushed by AIPAC are damaging for the long term existence of a Jewish state, you gotta respect the sheer political skill it must have taken to make adherence to a minority view in to a shibboleth for anyone seeking a serious political office in the United States

Until there is a correspondingly strong US-Jewish interest group to offset the dominance of AIPAC (and until a stronger, less stonewalling Israel government is in place), Obama really doesn't have an alternative: he can't be out-hawked by McCain or he'll never have a chance to produce mideast solutions more in atune with reality.

So, I join Ezra, and sigh, and sigh. Olmert is likely to gone soon (or perhaps even in jail, though less likely) and who knows what will follow. Maybe even Bebe, if he is annointed next, will be forced (like Sharon) to confront the reality of demographics and produce a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine.

Sigh.

It's clear that you need to fellate AIPAC and the Israel lobby to become president. I think Obama is just doing what he needs to do to become president. It's true that he's all about talking tough truths, but Israel is just not something you talk honestly about in American politics. The risks are simply too high.

I know that Ahmadinejad is a hardliner, and I know the war in Iraq has emboldened neighboring hardliners, but I was under the impression that he was elected primarily on a platform of (spectacularly unfulfilled) economic populism. True or not?

...The Republican strategy on Iran has been to invoke it much they did Iraq: As a looming threat that requires tough leaders able to stomach coming confrontation...Ezra Klein 10:50 AM
How can you trust Democrats who echo the Republican toughguy talk on Iran? You can't unless you're so far in the tank that you accept all the crap that's handed to you.
What is he talking about in this speech about Iran?
Democratic presumptive presidential nominee Barack Obama vowed Wednesday he would work to "eliminate" the threat posed by Iran to security in the Middle East and around the globe....
Hasn't he heard of the NIE that said the opposite? What is he talking about in this speech to AIPAC?
US Democratic presumptive nominee Barack Obama said Wednesday that Jerusalem must remain the "undivided" capital of Israel in a speech to a powerful US-Israel lobby group here....
Doesn't he know that Tel Aviv is the capital and that talk of Jerusalem is a slap in the face to Palestinians and the Arab world?

.... Israel is just not something you talk honestly about in American politics..... joey
Pandering to the Zionist extremists while denigrating Clinton's admirable efforts for a peace deal do not bode well. Of course, Obamacans like Klein who have completely sold out will provide the cheerleading for Obama's Republicanism.

I'm confused, Benjamin. What variant of poker uses trump cars?

There was another aspect of this speech that was extremely disappointing, which was caught by Dana Milbank of all people. Obama said it was right to designate the Iranian Quds Force as a terrorist organization. Unless I'm misreading something, this was the complete opposite of his admirable position during the primaries, where he criticized Hillary Clinton for her vote to designate the Iranian army as terrorists.

It's worth remembering that even Ehud Olmert can't give the same speech to AIPAC that he could to an Israeli audience.

That's how fucked up the relationship is between Israel the country and Schmisrael the abstract foreign policy construct beloved of AIPAC's members.

The truth may be that Obama held his breath telling you what you wanted to hear to get the base on board for the nomination. Then once clinched, starts his run to the middle to pick up the swing voters.

He's a politician. What do you expect?

Ezra, you didn't mention Obama's "undivided Jerusalem" comment at AIPAC. Yikes. Another step to the right that was later "clarified" by a campaign adviser, according to the Jerusalem Post. But this adviser was unnamed in the Post article. I am hopeful you can do some reporting to clarify whether Obama is still committed to a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. The most hopeful interpretation is that he simply means that there can't be a East/West Berlin-style, barbed-wire and gunposts division of Jerusalem. But however you slice it, the Palestinians lost real ground (possibly even literally, for won't this speech encourage more Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem?) with this sad moment of pandering to a group that represents only the most hawkish of American opinion on Israel.

This should be a little disappointing to those like me who've bought into the idea that Obama is a different type of politician, one who speaks honestly about how he feels. Right now, he either actually believes that or is just selling shit, neither of which is particularly appealing to me.

Noone thinks he plans on going to war.

Posted by: Benjamin

LOL!!!

Were you been the last 7 years?

.

The "swipe at Bill Clinton" aspect of "last-minute" is nonsense, as Haggai showed at AmericanFootprints and as I've probably pointed out here before. There was nothing Clinton could reasonably do until late in his presidency given the regional politics before then. But hopefully this line wasn't meant that way this time.

And as I surely pointed out here last time "divided Jerusalem" came up, it's a term of art with a history - if you don't know what it means to various groups, you can't understand its import.

Agave some of us knew that 43 would drive us to war long before he was ever installed. It was obvious.