Mark Shields takes issue with a Clinton adviser’s suggestion that “the role of the president of the United States is to support the decisions that are made by the people of Israel”:
If Israel decides to bomb and invade Lebanon again, or any place else, is it the duty — by this “Clinton Doctrine” — for every American president to uncritically rubber-stamp such a unilateral action? The same United States that fought for its independence some 233 years ago will now surrender that independence without even a whimper of dissent to a foreign country in the combustible Middle East?
We wait in vain for McCain or Obama — two men whose campaigns remind us regularly that they reject “politics as usual” — to publicly repudiate “the Clinton Doctrine” that the United States president’s role is to give every Israeli government a green light, carte blanche and this nation’s proxy. Where is the leadership?
