Know how some Dissident Right folks have begun whining lately that Trump has accomplished nothing whatever during his first term, even going so far as to join chinless Quislings like Bill French and David Kristol in endorsing Biden?
Yeah. About all that.
While it is not unusual in political circles to describe something as a historic breakthrough, it is unusual when the term is justified. Yet that is the right way to describe the three-way agreement announced Thursday by the Trump White House, Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
Based on its immediate impact alone, you can even call this one an earthquake. In an instant, regional fault lines are redrawn and the door is thrown open for Israel to normalize its relations with other Arab states.
The agreement also dramatically turns up the heat on the Palestinians to make a deal, lest they find themselves further isolated in their standoff with Israel.
“It means they either have to finally come to the negotiating table, or keep going where they’ve been going,” Jared Kushner, the top American official involved in crafting the terms, told me.
Indeed, there is a sweetener in the deal aimed at the Palestinians. Israel’s agreement to suspend its plan to assert sovereignty over much of the West Bank is a huge concession that buys time for the Palestinians, but not endlessly. Kushner defined the suspension as covering the “foreseeable future.”
He said UAE leaders were concerned that the Israeli move would be a “big setback in relationships” and thus pushed for the suspension.
Meanwhile, establishing formal diplomatic relations and starting direct airline flights means Muslims from the UAE will be able to fly to Israel and visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. That opening shreds the claim from Islamists that Israel prevents them from worshiping at the mosques, among Islam’s holiest sites.
The enormous trade-offs vindicate President Trump’s policy of strengthening America’s alliance with Israel and countering Muslim extremists. The usual critics, including Democrats, most European governments and United Nations bureaucrats, predicted that Trump’s decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognize Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights would lead to greater Arab unity and possibly war.
In effect, the critics were endorsing the very policy the Obama-Biden administration pursued, which yielded only negative results. The former team gave Israel, Saudi Arabia and other traditional allies the back of the hand while wooing the Palestinians and Iran. In exchange, it got nothing except Palestinian intransigence and an emboldened and aggressive Iran.
By going in the opposite direction, Trump, Kushner and Ambassador David Friedman are using strengthened American-Israeli ties as a rallying point for Arab states who fear Iran more than Israel.
As they damned well should. Like Real Americans here at home, all Israel really wants from her neighboring Arab antagonists is just to be left alone; granted that, the Israelis are perfectly willing to return the favor. Personally, all I need to know about the agreement is: 1) whey-faced rectal polyp Rashida Tlaib, miscellaneous Ogabe junta Iran-baglappers, and the PLO swine are all unhappy about it, and B) Senile Uncle Gropey immediately committed another act of plagiarism, sort of, to glom credit for himself. With all those bitter malefactors left scrambling and flailing witlessly about, how could it NOT be a very good thing?
Hell, as Glenn says, this one is so damned big even the NYT’s pinko ChiCom pom-pom girl Tom Friedman can’t find a way to downplay it.
For once, I am going to agree with President Trump in his use of his favorite adjective: “huge.”
The agreement brokered by the Trump administration for the United Arab Emirates to establish full normalization of relations with Israel, in return for the Jewish state forgoing, for now, any annexation of the West Bank, was exactly what Trump said it was in his tweet: a “HUGE breakthrough.”…
Just go down the scorecard, and you see how this deal affects every major party in the region — with those in the pro-American, pro-moderate Islam, pro-ending-the-conflict-with-Israel-once-and-for-all camp benefiting the most and those in the radical pro-Iran, anti-American, pro-Islamist permanent-struggle-with-Israel camp all becoming more isolated and left behind.
It’s a geopolitical earthquake.
To fully appreciate why, you need to start with the internal dynamics of the deal. It was Trump’s peace plan drawn up by Jared Kushner, and their willingness to stick with it, that actually created the raw material for this breakthrough.
As far as I know, unlike the previous deals with Egypt and Jordan, this agreement is the first wherein an Arab state expicitly acknowledges Israel’s right to exist without sidestepping that crucial issue. That alone qualifies as historic. I know I registered a complaint about Kushner’s influence in the Trump admin not long ago; knowing what his ideological leanings are, I remain highly skeptical of the guy. But he appears to have done some truly fine and important work on this one, and I doff my cap to him.
Update! Not quite as momentous, admittedly, but still not “nothing” either.
Seth Borenstein, an environmental whack job at the Associated Press, filed a story, “Let it flow: Trump administration eases shower-head rules.”
In it, Borenstein took cheap shots at President Donald John Trump for daring to reverse Obama’s draconian and arbitrary rules on how much water can come out of a shower head.
According to the story, Congress gave the federal government the power to dictate the water flow. This was done to conserve water, which makes no sense because there is plenty of fresh water in the Great Lakes and most if the rest of the nation.
Of course, millions of people chose to live in the deserts of Arizona and Nevada. They have a problem with water supplies. That gave the government the excuse to regulate showers.
In his story, Borenstein wrote, “Publicly talking about the need to keep his hair ‘perfect,’ President Donald Trump has made increasing water flow and dialing back long held appliance conservation standards — from light bulbs to toilets to dishwashers — a personal issue.
Loosening the grip of meddlesome, intrusive tyranny, one tentacle at a time. If the shitlibs, environazis, Jurassic-media “journalists,” and Deep Staters are howling, then it’s a win. And hey, I’ll take it.
It is huge and will be followed by others, and eventually, Saudi Arabia. It will be near complete at that point. Trump is destroying Iran without going to hard war. Now if the president would just seize Iranian oil tankers bound for Venezuela…
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-seizes-four-iranian-tankers-carrying-fuel-to-venezuela/ar-BB17Y6go
ANYTHING that hurts Iran I’m for! I remember when those fuckers took over our embassy and tried to murder all our troops and diplomatic personnel. That was the event that woke me up to the evil nature of Islam.
I really hope they do something stupid, like bomb Israel or try to fuck with one of our ships. Trump + Israel = really bad news for those scumbags.
Buy me some popcorn and a case of a really good IPA. I already have a great bourbon ?. Just need a great ? with which to wash it down.?
Testing, I baited the aged hippies on my neighborhood list with “It’s great to see Peace breaking out! We need more Peace in this World”. I didn’t praise Trump. I didn’t even say what ‘Peace” I was talking about.
I have noted the 3 or 4 thumbs up and yeahs I received back.
At least no one was ugly enough to spit vitriol at Peace.
You can tell the superannuated, baked hippies “Peace on Earth and Peace on you.”