Reality vs. Unreality II: Did Obama link “blood and treasure” to Israel?

Republicans are making much of a New York Times story today that suggests that President Obama linked American "blood and treasure" to Israel’s actions.

Here’s what the Times story says:

When Mr. Obama declared that resolving the long-running Middle East dispute was a “vital national security interest of the United States,” he was highlighting a change that has resulted from a lengthy debate among his top officials over how best to balance support for Israel against other American interests.

This shift, described by administration officials who did not want to be quoted by name when discussing internal discussions, is driving the White House’s urgency to help broker a Middle East peace deal. It increases the likelihood that Mr. Obama, frustrated by the inability of the Israelis and the Palestinians to come to terms, will offer his own proposed parameters for an eventual Palestinian state.

Mr. Obama said conflicts like the one in the Middle East ended up “costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure” — drawing an explicit link between the Israeli-Palestinian strife and the safety of American soldiers as they battle Islamic extremism and terrorism in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Here’s Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the minority whip, in a statement this afternoon:

House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) today issued the following statement in response to President Obama’s remarks Tuesday, which appeared in the New York Times, that Israel may be “costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure.”

"Israel is a democracy that has always made the sacrifices necessary for peace despite living under constant threats to their very existence. The true barrier to ending the Mideast conflict is the widespread Palestinian refusal to accept and to live alongside Israel as a Jewish state. While Israel continues its search for a reliable partner in peace, Palestinian terrorism is still celebrated in the West Bank and Gaza. Despite this reality, since day one the White House has applied a severe double standard that refuses to hold the Palestinians accountable for their many provocations. It makes one wonder where the responsible adults are in the administration?

And here’s Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) who hopes to win Obama’s old Illinois seat in the U.S. Senate:

Reports in the New York Times this morning are very disturbing that we are distancing ourselves from our best allies in the Middle East.  And I think the lessons of the 1930s are you should not show any distance between you and your allies because our enemies will take advantage.

A couple of things: This was not a difficult quote to check; it came in remarks Obama delivered at a press conference, after all, attended by reporters from at least 47 nations at the end of his nuclear security conference.

I picked up that presser — and my news takeaway was Obama’s sentiment that he wasn’t about to impose a solution on the Israelis and Palestinians, pace a bunch of leaked reports. So I scratched my head when I saw the NYT story — when did he mention "blood and treasure?"

So I checked again. Here’s what he said, at length, because you need to see how he veers from the general to the particular and back again before he gets to "blood and treasure." I’ve made key phrases bold.

Q    Thank you, Mr. President.  Good afternoon.  Given the progress you have cited in recent days on your foreign policy agenda, to what extent do you feel like you have gained political capital with which to take further to the international stage for the rest of this year, to perhaps rejuvenate some initiatives in trouble spots such as the Middle East and elsewhere?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I think the work that we’ve done in recent days around nuclear security and nuclear disarmament are intrinsically good.  They’re good just in and of themselves.  And so we’re very pleased with the progress that we’ve made.  And we could not have done this without extraordinary cooperation first from President Medvedev when it came to the START treaty, and then from my colleagues who were here today when it came to this Nuclear Security Summit.

What I think it signifies is the fact that so many of the challenges that we face internationally can’t be solved by one nation alone.  But I do think that America’s leadership is important in order to get issues on the international agenda and to move in concert with other countries to have an effective response.

There are a host of other issues, obviously, that have to be addressed and one of the points that was made actually during the communiqué is we’re talking here about the instruments of potential war or terrorism, but obviously there are also the reasons, the rationales, the excuses for conflict, that have to be addressed as well.

And I remain committed to being a partner with countries around the world, and in particular hot spots around the world, to see if we can reduce those tensions and ultimately resolve those conflicts.  And the Middle East would be a prime example. I think that the need for peace between Israelis and Palestinians and the Arab states remains as critical as ever.  

It is a very hard thing to do. And I know that even if we are applying all of our political capital to that issue, the Israeli people through their government, and the Palestinian people through the Palestinian Authority, as well as other Arab states, may say to themselves, we are not prepared to resolve this — these issues — no matter how much pressure the United States brings to bear.  

And the truth is, in some of these conflicts the United States can’t impose solutions unless the participants in these conflicts are willing to break out of old patterns of antagonism. I think it was former Secretary of State Jim Baker who said, in the context of Middle East peace, we can’t want it more than they do.  

But what we can make sure of is, is that we are constantly present, constantly engaged, and setting out very clearly to both sides our belief that not only is it in the interests of each party to resolve these conflicts but it’s also in the interest of the United States. It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them. And that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure.

So: 

* To the degree that he’s talking about Israel at all, he’s talking about the conflict generally and not who is to blame for it; the suggestion that he is saying Israel is to blame for anything is simply unfounded.

* The reporter asked about "trouble spots in the Middle East and elsewhere," and throughout his answer, Obama veers back and forth between the particular and the general. By the time he gets to "blood and treasure" he’s mentioned "these conflicts," plural, three times. He might as easily have been thinking about Afghanistan.

Clearly, he needs to be pinned down on this one (hey! How about a sit-down with JTA?), but to draw not just an implicit but explicit link  "between Israeli-Palestinian strife and the safety of American soldiers" in other parts of the world, as the New York Times does — how? I don’t see it.

* The business about peace-making being in the American national security interest — honestly, this is boilerplate (and in this case, not even directly linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict).

The Bush administration routinely justified its Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking by citing the U.S. national interest, going back at least as far as then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who endorsed the freelance Ayalon-Nusseibeh plan in 2003 specifically because of U.S. challenges elsewhere in the region. Here’s what Wolfowitz said then:

Clearly, one huge factor in our relations with the Muslim world, as well as one of the greatest obstacles to peace in that region, is the continuing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.