...in his blog, The Spine. But compared to the questions that are raised by her own statements, Marty Peretz’ defense seems pretty thin...
He says: “Samantha Power… is a friend, a good friend, in fact. She has uttered some phrases about Israel that I did not like and that I thought were erroneous. We have quarreled over them. … How can she not grasp deeply Jewish nationalism, its romance and its realities? Has she made mistakes? Have I not made mistakes? The fact is that she truly, truly loves Israel and the people of Israel. They appeal to both her ecstatic imagination and to her understanding of the gravity of the world. To her defiance and to her discipline. If anybody thinks she is an enemy of Israel or even less than that, not a true friend, that anybody needs to know that love and affection always require questions. Adoration does not help Israel. It misleads it.”
Here is an example of what she said: “I actually think in the Palestine - Israel situation, …what we need is a willingness to put something on the line in helping the situation. Putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import; it may more crucially mean sacrificing -- or investing, I think, more than sacrificing -- billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel’s military, but actually investing in the new state of Palestine, in investing the billions of dollars it would probably take, also, to support what will have to be a mammoth protection force, not of the old Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military presence. …you have to go in as if you’re serious, you have to put something on the line. Unfortunately, imposition of a solution on unwilling parties is dreadful. It’s a terrible thing to do, it’s fundamentally undemocratic. ... [But] it’s essential that some set of principles becomes the benchmark, rather than a deference to [leaders] who are fundamentally politically destined to destroy the lives of their own people. … And, unfortunately, it does require external intervention.... Any intervention is going to come under fierce criticism. But we have to think about lesser evils, especially when the human stakes are becoming ever more pronounced.”
Source: “Conversation with Samantha Power,” April 29, 2002
And she says this, on Iran: “The war scare that wasn’t [the recent incident between Iranian speedboats and the U.S. Navy in the Straight of Hormuz] stands as a metaphor for the incoherence of our policy toward Iran: the Bush Administration attempts to gin up international outrage by making a claim of imminent danger, only to be met with international eye rolling when the claim is disproved. Sound familiar? The speedboat episode bore an uncanny resemblance to the Administration’s allegations about the advanced state of Iran’s weapons program-allegations refuted in December by the National Intelligence Estimate.”
Source: “Rethinking Iran,” by Samantha Power Time Magazine, Jan. 17, 2008
There is more in these articles:
“The confused musings of Marty Peretz on Samantha Power,”
By Ed Lasky, The American Thinker, December 05, 2008;
“Samantha Power and Obama’s Foreign Policy Team,”
By Richard Baehr and Ed Lasky, the American Thinker, February 19, 2008
“Samantha Power: the Salon Interview,”
Noah Pollak –Contentions Blog, Commentary Magazine February 19.2008
Compared to all this, Marty Peretz should give us much more, to justify his newfound confidence.
