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Apr

14

Prediction: U.S. will be at Durban II


I don’t buy it.  I just don’t buy it. The U.S. is going to end up at Durban II.  I hope I’m wrong, but I’ve read enough finessed lingo over the years to guess where this is going.

This pre-conference finagling and fussing is the genius and the danger of President Barack Obama, and I’ve written about it before: to be able to finesse language (in a document as well as in external communications) so that people you need to persuade can be persuaded is an incredibly valuable skill, but the reality is that eventually, as the decider, all that finessed lingo means nothing when it comes down to doing what you want.  You might make us feel a certain way, like a golfer leaning in the direction she wants the ball to go after it’s already been hit.  But there’s nothing that golfer’s leaning can do to make the ball go one way or the other.  Likewise, American Jews, and the NAACP, and all others who oppose the U.S. being at Durban II, are leaning and being asked to lean as the final days before the conference come and go.  But in the end, Obama is that golf ball and only he knows where he is going to land on this.  Well, he and Samantha Power, among others, I’m speculating.  They want those so-called “red lines” to be reconciled, and they will get to Durban and it will be a debacle all over again.

Sigh.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:02 pm April 14th, 2009 in Barack Obama, Civil Rights, Foreign Affairs, Israel, Jewish, Politics, Race, Religion, Social Issues, Whitehouse09, democracy, leadership, middle east 

Comments

2 Responses to “Prediction: U.S. will be at Durban II”

  1. 1 David Schraub on April 15th, 2009 12:15 pm

    I bow to nobody in terms of my revulsion at what happened at Durban I. But I am curious — if we manage to get the last redline (blanket reaffirmation of Durban I) removed, why shouldn’t we attend DII? The scrubbing of those lines was one of the biggest diplomatic coups by the anti-Israel-demonization crowd in years. It was a huge deal, and one I honestly didn’t think we could pull off. It seems like the sort of development we should acknowledge and reward.

    Of course, it’s possible that we’ll be ambushed and the bad guys will try and reinsert the language at the conference. And so I definitely support preparations by the various countries who threatened a boycott originally (US, most of the EU, the UK, Australia, etc.) to coordinate a walkout in response, if it comes to that. But I think it would be a massive squandered opportunity (not to mention a very muddled signal) if we managed to get everything we wanted out of the preparatory document and still refused to attend.

  2. 2 Jill Miller Zimon on April 15th, 2009 12:27 pm

    Hi David – thanks very much for reading and commenting. No argument from me – I believe this is in fact what’s being set up to happen re: we’ll be there.

    And I confess to having enormous apprehension, suspicion and frankly just plain fear that we can only control so much. I’m a wordsmith – so are you. So is Obama and Power. We know just how much words mean in a document, as well as how much they don’t mean when someone does not want to abide. (Just think about Karzai and the wretched rules just approved against women’s freedoms – he still insists that the law treats women with dignity – huh!?)

    So – I support the push on the four redlines. I do not support squandering an opportunity – I agree with you there.

    But maybe what would make me (and others I suspect) feel better is to know or at least be able to trust that Plan B, C, D and E have also been devised and are ready to be implemented in the event that the worst case scenario(s) unfold.

    There must be no backtracking from those redline changes, should they all be made. The document must stand up to be asserted – or else where is the value?

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