Thursday, September 24, 2009

Obama the Leftist

Small government minded Republicans endured 8 years of government expansion and intrusion under Bush. For me it was enough to drive me out of the Republican party. My hope is that the coming 4 or 8 years of war mongering and big business pandering under Obama will drive some peace loving leftists out of the Democratic party.

One leftist cause for a long time has been the plight of the Palestinians. Bible thumpers tend to side with the Israeli government, but secular leftists didn't. As Obama has disappointed them by expanding wars throughout the Middle East Obama likewise has disappointed them with regards to the Palestinians. He has backed off his demand that Israel freeze settlement construction.

For those that don't understand how outrageous settlement construction is, here's some quick background information. In 1948 Israel declared itself an independent state and Arab nations responded by declaring war on it. Israel won the war and used the opportunity to drive the indigenous population out. 750,000 people were driven from their homes into a couple of refugee camps as well as neighboring states, such as Lebanon. Today these refugee camps are called the West Bank and Gaza.

Palestinians would like to return to their homes from that period, but that's unlikely to happen. But what would be great is if they could at least retain control of the refugee camps. Instead some Israeli's, induced by subsidies from their government, have crossed into the refugee camps and began building homes for themselves, diverting most of the water to their own much smaller population, and built walls to protect those homes. They've likewise constructed walls and checkpoints to make movement within these refugee camps difficult for the Palestinian inhabitants.

Now obviously if anybody wants to have peaceful relations with their neighboring state they can't just ignore borders and grow. Settlement expansion is pretty much a guarantor that there will not be peace. Obama is fine with settlement expansion.

These Democrats I'm afraid will not get it. After all, Obama is pro-choice. And that's critical. I mean, suppose I'm a New York liberal and while I'm driving through South Dakota I need an abortion? If Roe was overturned I might have to drive to Minnesota to get a legal abortion!! So inconvenient. Screw the Palestinians.

1 comment:

Ron said...

Your comment at the end about Roe v. Wade cracked me up! :)