Monday, July 14, 2008

Obama's Fine Tuning Reveals He Is Tone Deaf

It's getting to be a bad habit--Obama is still backtracking on his speech to AIPAC on Jerusalem remaining an undivided city:
"The point we were simply making was that we don't want barbed wire running through Jerusalem, similar to the way it was prior to the '67 war, that it is possible for us to create a Jerusalem that is cohesive and coherent. I was not trying to predetermine what are essentially final-status issues," he continued.
David Hazony points out that Obama's inexperience is once again revealing itself:
As clarifications go, this one’s a doozy. What could it possibly mean to want a “coherent” city that is the capital of two different countries, one of which has been teaching its entire population to hate the other and commit suicide bombings in its restaurants for 15 years now — and all this without a proper border? I live in Jerusalem. The border between Israel and the Palestinians, wherever it may run, and no matter how long peace reigns, will never be like that between Massachusetts and Connecticut. It is unlikely ever even to be like the one between Arizona and Mexico. If there is ever a division of Jerusalem, there will be more than just barbed wire separating the two halves of the city. We are talking about different worlds entirely, and security arrangements will reflect this.

So either Obama understands all of this, and is not being honest with voters when he backtracks from the “undivided” position. Or he doesn’t understand this, in which case he was better off not clarifying. It would be nice if an interviewer would push him hard on this point. We might learn something new.
Like that without experience, being a charismatic speaker only takes you so far.

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