Obama picks Ross as Mideast envoy
By Daniel Dombey, Financial Times, January 8, 2009

Dennis Ross, a former top diplomat for the George H W Bush and Clinton administrations, will become the Obama administration’s top envoy on the Middle East, an internal email from Mr Ross’s current employer has revealed.

Mr Ross, who previously served as the US envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is set to take a wider role as Hillary Clinton’s top adviser for the Middle East as a whole. Ms Clinton herself is due to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for her confirmation hearing for Secretary of State next Tuesday. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — As Augustus Norton said: “Dennis Ross who was a dead-hand on the wheel as peacemaker in the Clinton [and Bush senior administrations]. His chief accomplishment the Hebron agreement –enough said.”

Can Obama change the Middle East? No, he can’t
By Charles Glass, First Post, January 6, 2009

Many Americans who voted for Barack Hussein Obama are hoping that his administration will at last break with America’s traditional, and invariably harmful, behaviour in the Middle East.

That would mean letting American oil companies fend for themselves in the free-for-all to control Mideast oil, leaving Israel’s colonists on the West Bank to pay their own way and abandoning the dictatorships in Egypt and Saudi Arabia to face the wrath of their populations without protection from American weapons and spies. And that is as likely as President Obama naming Ralph Nader to head the Securities and Exchange Commission and Patrick Fitzgerald, the US Attorney now prosecuting Obama’s Democratic Party comrades in Illinois, to be Attorney General.

Obama has improved the rhetoric, but no one who asked Hillary (“annihilate Iran”) Clinton to preside over the State Department or the failed Clinton-era hatchet man Dennis Ross to advise on Palestine has any intention of making the Middle East safe for democracy. [continued…]