Patriotic Americans, Supporters of Israel, and of Peace Through Strength Should Not Kid Ourselves That Obama’s Brand of Change Will Be Good

Granted, Jesse Jackson is not an official spokesman for the Obama campaign. But I don’t hear Obama repudiating the alarming statements Jackson has made in recent days concerning Barack Obama’s plans for U.S. foreign policy generally, and specifically with regard to Israel.

Last week at the First World Policy Conference in Evian, France, Jackson, who describes Obama as a close friend, told columnist Amir Taheri Obama promises “fundamental changes” in U.S. foreign policy, and charges that the U.S. must “heal the wounds” it has caused to other nations.

He adds, “Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades” will lose a great deal of power when Obama enters the White House.

Says Jackson, “Obama is about change … and the change that Obama promises is not limited to what we do in America itself. It is a change in the way America looks at the world and its place in it.”

Think about that statement. Obama’s presidency, should he be elected, will usher in an era in which America’s place in the world changes. Ask yourself, “What is America’s place in the world?”

The U.S. is the world’s superpower. If under Obama’s leadership, America’s place in the world changes, presumably the U.S. cedes that position.

Ask yourself, “To whom?” To regimes like China and Russia, with little to no regard for human rights? (In Russia, critics of Putin’s regime are routinely beaten, jailed, and sometimes killed. In China, so widespread is discrimination against girls, and so common is sex-selective abortion, that as of the last census in 2000, there were nearly 19 million more boys than girls in the birth-to-15-year-old age group.)

Not to mention how these, and virtually every other country in the world, would deal with Israel. Israel, which was universally condemned several years ago in the International Court of Justice for daring to build a fence to make it more difficult for Palestinian terrorists to murder civilians. Almost every other country in the world voted to condemn Israel for that life-saving measure.

Ask yourself, how would Israel have fared had she not had a strong ally in the world’s only remaining superpower? Would that fence have been built? Or would we be turning on the TV today to hear about another 100 Israelis killed and dismembered on the streets of Jerusalem because of so-called Palestinian “desperation?”

Again, Jesse Jackson is not an official Obama spokesman, but I don’t hear Obama repudiating these remarks. And whether or not he does, they are perfectly consistent with Obama’s repeated statements regarding willingness to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, without preconditions. Again, I would ask my fellow Americans, fellow supporters of Israel and of human rights around the world to think past the repetition of soothing words like “hope” and “change” and consider the nature of this world, and what such attitudes are likely to mean.

World leaders do not meet with other world leaders unless they feel there is something worth negotiating. High level diplomatic talks don’t mean just talking, they signal a potential willingness to make diplomatic concessions. Ask yourself what Iran wants. This is a country ruled by a religious theocracy that has stated its intention to destroy Israel as a nation. Ask yourself what Barack Obama – or anyone – can offer them in the way of diplomatic concessions that might appease them?

Use your brains, folks. Not all change will be good for us.

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