Posted on 12/28/2016 4:35:17 AM PST by SJackson
THE AMERICAN vote against Israel in the Security Council Friday was, in a sense, the essential Carter. There was no good reason of state for the United States to reverse its previous refusal (twice to condemn Israel for expelling two West Bank mayors -- not least because a change would mark its previous votes as politically motivated. Moreover, the issue of the mayors, who are indeed their people's authentic representatives but are also spokesmen for violence, is more complicated than any U.N. majority -- and certainly Secretary General Kurt Waldheim, who immediately offered the mayors the comforts of the house for a hunger strike -- could be expected to grasp.
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That issue is whether friends should be treated differently from enemies.It's a tough one. That is, it's a tough one for the United States and especially for the Carter administration.
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At the same time, it cannot be denied that there is a pack and that it hounds Israel shamelessly and that this makes it very serious when the United States joins it.
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To whatever effect, Ronald Reagan will do it differently. He lacks Jimmy Carter's general readiness to court the Third World and to grant it, or at least its left-leaning part, something of an exemption from the standards by which nations are usually measured. He is unlikely to regard the United Nations as necessarily the most proper and useful forum in which disputes involving the Third World can be treated in the American interest. Few would expect him to agonize at length over the question of whether the United States should keep off Israel's back in loaded global forums, funneling its disagreements into bilateral channels, or whether it should join the jackals, as Mr. Carter did on Friday.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Obama voted “present” again.
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