Suffice it to say that Matthew Lee is not Ashleigh Banfield. US ally Turkey has taken this moment in history — the US facing a fiscal cliff which would slash the world’s most powerful military to the bone while sending the world’s largest economy deeper into recession; Hamas terrorists uncrating their thousands of rockets and firing them at Israeli civilians; Egypt sounding more and more like mini-Iran; Jordan and Syria both engulfed in the kind of domestic turmoil that authoritarian regimes might seek international distraction from; and Iran biding its time in the background — to announce that Israel is a “terrorist state.” The United States has chosen to remain silent, neither condemning the Turkish PM’s remarks nor backing Israel except in its right of self defense directly against Hamas and its inaccurate rockets. Israel is spending about $40,000 per shot to knock those cheap but deadly rockets down. President Obama still has not visited and has no plans to visit Israel, by the way.
To understand just how significant Erdogan’s statement is, Turkey has spent the past several decades as Israel’s lone friend in the region. Secular Turkey sold arms to Israel and served as a lynchpin to the West’s strategies in the restive Middle East. As a non-Arab majority Muslim state with a significant Christian population, Turkey was the shining example of secularism in an increasingly Islamist region, and a shining example of responsible forward-thinking behavior in a region of oppressing and state-sponsored terrorism.
All of that is gone now, or going away. Turkey complicated the US war in Iraq by disallowing our troops a northern thrust against Saddam Hussein’s forces, it assisted the Gaza flotilla against Israel, and Prime Minister Erdogan has now declared that its ally Israel is itself a “terrorist state.” To those of us who thought the best case outcome for the new Islamist Egypt is something like Islamist Turkey, well, that’s not a lot to hope for anymore.
Matthew Lee of the AP apparently had all of this and more in mind when he questioned State Departement podium occupier Victoria Nuland on Monday afternoon.
And there goes Matthew Lee’s press credential…
Weasel Diplomacy, the hallmark of effective foreign policy.
And there goes Matthew Lee’s press credential…”
Yep, any journalist who does his or her job, as Lee did here, gets canned, forthwith.
“Must be a descendant of the Confederate General”- Thought Banfield to herself
Obama’s been wearing a ring he apparently cherishes a great deal since college. On is a line from the Koran. ‘Nuff said on that. Obama may not be an anti-colonialist because of the reasons a man like D’Souza said, but he is an anti-colonialist down to his boots.
I think that there is wide gulf between how Obama speaks and generallly presents himself in public and what his actual world view is. Obama’s view is generally angry at the run of historical events in the last few hundred years. Ironically, Obama is then anti-success, since in his mind, identity and race trump the reality which history has showed us. Obama and his kind, believe the deck has been stack, and they propose to unstack it. The way Obama has appointed people in his administration has clearly considered race and gender.
Obama is dedicated to an affirmative action America and world and one that reeks of political correctness. Commies were the first AA; Obama’s just going in that direction a different way. Implementing some of the basics and calling it something else – “fair share.”
I am so very proud of Matthew Lee for standing up to the arab loving State Dept. My friends, my family and I would love to give him a bog group hug!
If Cuba started lobbing missiles into the US and Canada said that the US was committing acts of terrorism for defending itself, how long would the State department stay silent?