Michael A. Siegel: Bush's Knessup

by Michael A. Siegel [courtesy of Politics on HuffingtonPost.com]

George W. Bush's approval numbers are quickly approaching his neck size. He so badly wants to keep his presidency relevant. Nobody is certain why, but he found a sure fire way to do so: Inject himself into the presidential campaign in an address before the Israeli parliament marking the commemoration of the state's 60th anniversary.

White House press secretary Dana Perino barely earned her salary with a laughable denial of any implied swipe at Senator Barack Obama's foreign policy platform, as there is no mistaking what her boss was trying to do when he went right to the heart of Isreali security concerns mocking those who "believe we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along."

First, lets dispense with the nonsense: Senator Obama has never said that he would negotiate with terrorists.

What he has said is that he supported direct and unconditional talks with the leaders of Iran and North Korea. This was last July and in the past year he has expanded his argument maintaining that talks should be predicated on a "carrot and stick approach" that exerts pressure through a concerted measure of diplomacy backed by the force and support of international alliances.

Iran, the most contentious player in the Arab-Israeli conflict, is a case in point.

Senator Obama advocates and has repeatedly pushed for crippling Iran's infrastructure through heavy international sanctions, including mandates that companies based in Russia and France divest from their multi-million dollar Iranian operations.

Iran has no capability to convert its oil supply into refined fuel and without gasoline, they can't do much.

It's a smart, tough, and effective means of managing a relationship that pales in contrast to the panicked talk of regime change channeled by an administration through indirect communication via the media that almost put US troops in the crosshairs of further attacks last August in a region that will remain on the brink of destabilization for years because of actions launched under our current president.

There is of course one significant problem that Senator Obama's approach faces. In the past eight years the US has so isolated itself through a "Doctrine of Preemption" no one will listen to us.