from NY to Israel Sultan Reveals
The Stories Behind the News

Posted: 16 Jun 2009 06:45 PM PDT

A fundamental tenet of the liberal approach to foreign policy
has been that the attitudes of other countries are not shaped by their own
beliefs and motivations, but rather purely as reactions to good or bad
diplomacy.

Not only is the sheer arrogance of such a diplomatic worldview
reserved only for superpowers or ex-superpowers, but that same arrogance
ensures its failure. If the neo-conservative belief that the Middle East's
Muslim dictatorships could be reformed with a show of force and some
determination presumed to do too much with limited leverage; the liberal
view that everything can be brought into harmony with an apologetic and
open diplomatic tone presumes to do twice as much with no leverage at
all.

When Hillary Clinton came bearing a "Reset Button" for Russia,
she projected that same delusional belief that history has a reset button
and that the expansionism of aggressive nations and ideologies can be put
away with the right word. But of course history has no reset button and
those who want Lebensraum will only be emboldened by an America all too
eager to showcase its weakness.

Obama's Cairo speech similarly went
long on flattery toward Muslim egos and short on leverage. In return he
received the same kind of slap from Iran, that North Korea had been
ladling out to the Clinton Administration. The rigged election and the
brutal suppression of dissidents in Tehran's streets was a bloody
demonstration that nations like Iran are driven by ideological and
political goals that will not be set aside with a kind word or a
diplomatic reset button.

For liberals to cope with Obama's utter
failure on the diplomatic front, they must disabuse themselves of their
long cherished idea, that all of America's global problems stem from
George W. Bush's militarism or conservatism. Nor is the Islamic Jihad that
expresses itself in the form of terrorism a knee jerk reflex reaction to
American foreign policy. Rather it is the fundamental expression of over a
1000 years of Muslim history and belief, as embedded in the Koran.

A liberal view of foreign policy that insists on treating
terrorism as an Islamic reaction to a Western provocation, repeats
Chamberlain's folly of perceiving Hitler's expansionism as purely a
reaction to the injustices of WW1 that would go away once properly
appeased.

When diplomats insist that the Middle East can be
stabilized by rolling Israel back to before the 1967 war, they repeat
Chamberlain's folly in believing that history has a reset button, and that
giving totalitarian states back some of their pride by giving them back
more territory, even if it has to be carved out of an independent and
prosperous nation like Czechoslovakia or Israel, will stabilize the
region.

But history has no reset button, and the Middle East can no
more be stabilized by carving up Israel, than Muslim expansionism and
aggression toward the West can be put away in a box with some of Obama's
well chosen flattery. Islamic expansionism and hostility toward the West
did not begin in 1948 or 1919. It is a very old Jihad that awaits only the
right circumstances in which to catch fire and burn again.

Nor can bringing a mislabeled "reset button" to Russia change
the fact that its current regime is nothing more than a capitalist
makeover for the USSR, along the lines of the People's Republic of China.
A reset button will not wash away the radioactive toxins in London, the
ongoing murders of Westerners in Moscow or the Russian troops and
mercenaries straining at the least to gobble up the liberated territories
of the old Warsaw Pact again... as we recently saw for ourselves in
Georgia.

Rather than learning the lessons of history, liberals have
found it more convenient to blame them on conservatives, on capitalism and
on their own middle class for wanting to be secure and well off. Their
pursuit of open handed diplomacy however has only led them to be the
weakest players in a zero sum game.

While liberals rejoice because
the government has changed in Washington D.C., nothing has changed in the
Middle East, where power and wealth fuel political and military goals.
History has not gone away because of the 2008 Presidential election. Nor
has the world changed. Elections may change American goals and tactics,
they do not change the tactics and goals of our enemies, they only mediate
them. Obama's victory has served not as a reset button, but as a loud
whistle warning everyone in the seamy bar that a pigeon has just walked
into the room waiting to be plucked.

There is no reset button for
history. Luckily in a democratic country there is one for bad leaders. In
2012, Obama's "historic" victory may itself become history.