Obama is talking about giving Palestinian Muslims a military shield against Palestinian Jews in Israel.
Meanwhile, America's unwavering support of Israel is at a near record high.
Obama blocks delivery of bunker-busters to Israel World Tribune
The United States has diverted a shipment of bunker-busters designated for Israel.
Officials said the U.S. military was ordered to divert a shipment of smart bunker-buster bombs from Israel to a military base in Diego Garcia. They said the shipment of 387 smart munitions had been slated to join pre-positioned U.S. military equipment in Israel Air Force bases.
"This was a political decision," an official said.
In 2008, the United States approved an Israeli request for bunker-busters capable of destroying underground facilities, including Iranian nuclear weapons sites. Officials said delivery of the weapons was held up by the administration of President Barack Obama.
Since taking office, Obama has refused to approve any major Israeli requests for U.S. weapons platforms or advanced systems. Officials said this included proposed Israeli procurement of AH-64D Apache attack helicopters, refueling systems, advanced munitions and data on a stealth variant of the F-15E.
"All signs indicate that this will continue in 2010," a congressional source familiar with the Israeli military requests said. "This is really an embargo, but nobody talks about it publicly."
And while I disagree with Pipes on the true nature of Islam, he got this right:
America’s shiny new Palestinian militia
The stupidest program the US government has ever undertaken”; that’s how I last year called American efforts to improve the Palestinian Authority military force. Slightly hyperbolic, yes, but the description fits because those efforts enhance the fighting power of enemies of the US and its Israeli ally.
First, a primer about the program, drawing on a recent Center of Near East Policy Research study by David Bedein and Arlene Kushner: Shortly after Yasser Arafat died in late 2004, the US government established the Office of the US Security Coordinator to reform, recruit, train and equip the PA militia (called the National Security Forces or Quwwat al-Amn al-Watani) and make them politically accountable.
For nearly all of its existence, the office has been headed by Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton. Since 2007, American taxpayers have funded it to the tune of $100 million a year. Many agencies of the US government have been involved in the program, including the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the Secret Service and branches of the military.
The PA militia has in total about 30,000 troops, of which four battalions comprising 2,100 troops have passed scrutiny for lack of criminal or terrorist ties and undergone 1,400 hours of training at an American facility in Jordan. There they study subjects ranging from small-unit tactics and crime-scene investigations to first aid and human rights law.
[...]
...............those troops will more likely be a war partner than a peace partner for Israel. Consider their likely role in several scenarios:
• No Palestinian state: Dayton proudly calls the US-trained forces “founders of a Palestinian state,” a polity he expects to come into existence by 2011. What if – as has happened often before – the Palestinian state does not emerge on schedule? Dayton himself warns of “big risks,” presumably meaning that his freshly-minted troops would start directing their firepower against Israel.
• Palestinian state: The PA has never wavered in its goal of eliminating Israel, as the briefest glance at documentation collected by Palestinian Media Watch makes evident. Should the PA achieve statehood, it will certainly pursue its historic goal – only now equipped with a shiny new American-trained soldiery and arsenal.
[...]
• Hamas defeats the PA: Should the PA succumb to Hamas, it will absorb at least some of “Dayton’s men” into its own militia and deploy them in the effort to eliminate the Jewish state.
• Hamas and PA cooperate: Even as Dayton imagines he is preparing a militia to fight Hamas, the PA leadership participates in Egyptian-sponsored talks with Hamas about power sharing – raising the specter that the US trained forces and Hamas will coordinate attacks
on Israel.
THE LAW of unintended consequences provides one temporary consolation: As Washington sponsors the PA forces and Teheran sponsors those of Hamas, Palestinian forces are more ideologically riven, perhaps weakening their overall ability to damage Israel.
On this, I couldn't disagree more vehemently with Pipes. It is their ideology that will damage Israel and has made reason, logic, negotiation and humanity a fool's pursuit. We appease while the monster grows and gets stronger.
