Hot Air asks the question. Come, I will conceal nothing from you: my knee-jerk reaction was to mutter Of course Barack Obama wouldn’t have recognized Israels: too many Jews in it for his liking, you understand. But that’s actually, well, unfair. I mean, I don’t actually know that the President is an anti-Semite. Obama may simply think that he can’t run the Democratic party without putting up with all the Jew-haters, and he might even be right.
No, I think that what would have happened is this: in Truman’s place, Barack Obama would have been very much an advocate for Israel… on the cheap. Plenty of pretty speeches and high-minded statements. And this would have continued up to the moment when Secretary of State George Marshall (with the rest of the State Department behind him) told Barack Obama to back down, or face the consequences. At that point, you have to ask yourself: does Barack Obama have Harry S Truman’s grit? – Because say what you like about Truman (God knows there’s plenty to say), but give him this: once he decided on something that was it.
And you can’t say that about Barack Obama. He’s left so many broken promises by the side of the road, they could be used as paving material. Obama would have backed down. And told himself afterward that since all the Smart People were telling him this, then clearly it was the right decision. You have to listen to your advisers, unlike Bush*.
[pause]
I’d almost prefer that the knee-jerk reaction was the correct one, honestly. To paraphrase CS Lewis: cowardice is the only sin that men cannot be taught to be proud of.
Moe Lane
*George W. Bush would have ended that meeting with George Marshall’s resignation on his desk, by the way – assuming that Marshall had pushed as hard on the issue as he had with Truman. Which is not a reflection on either Bush or Truman: same stubbornness, different styles.
So I suspect that he is an anti-Semite, but not one of the hard, frothing variety you see on college campuses these days in the students. Instead I suspect that his is of the soft, European elite disdain variety to which so much of the academic left aspires.
Ah, the “that sh*tty little country” style instead of “Jews leave Palestine and go back to Germany” style?
A lot of people would’ve ended that conversation with Marshall’s resignation on their desk. Both Bush’s, TR, Coolidge ( I hope, though back then there was an isolationist tendency) FDR ( possibly) Reagan, Eisenhower, and Nixon.
Difference is those men with the exception of Coolidge did not inherit the presidency. Truman had yet to win an election of his own, Marshall was a holdover from FDR and possibly saw himself as equal somewhat to Truman.
George Marshall I might add has always been overrated. Bradly, Eisenhower, and Patton were the ones to win the War in Europe. And Halsey, Nimitz, and McArthur were the ones to win it in the Pacific.
And let’s not forget Curtis Lemay and his bombers.
Marshall if I recall spearheaded the abandonment of China to Communism.
Obviously not.
Seriously, the vaunted “Land for Peace” mantra was disproven by Gaza, beyond any possibility of doubt.
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That the Left has gotten more fervently anti-Israel in the aftermath, speaks volumes about them.
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That’s not to mention Obama’s extensive list of openly anti-Semitic friends. (I appeal to the Reasonable Man standard. Would a reasonable man willingly hang out with these people? I submit that the answer is “not a chance”.)