Some conservatives were upset at Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels for opposing the right-to-work bill that was proposed by the Republican legislature in his state. He was asked about this — and offered a response.

After highlighting in one paragraph the 2011 legislative agenda, Daniels wrote:

I suggested studying it for a year and developing the issue for next year.  No one had campaigned on it; it was a big issue that hit the public cold.  I was concerned that it would provide the pretext for radical action by our Democratic minority that would jeopardize the entire agenda above, with zero chance of passing RTW itself.  And that is exactly what has happened.

We’re not giving up on the agenda we ran on, but this mistake presents a significant obstacle.  RTW never had a chance this year and now the task is to make sure that it doesn’t take a host of good government changes down with it.

That seems entirely reasonable to me. Chief executives and lawmakers should, as a general rule, try to implement what they ran on. There are exceptions to this, of course; but in this instance, it applies. Adding RTW into the mix would actually set back the cause of conservative governance.

Beyond that, the case for right-to-work laws for the private sector is not as strong as the case against public-sector unions, though some conservatives seem to be conflating the two issues. Governor Daniels, of course, took away all the public-sector workers’ collective-bargaining rights through an executive order not long after he took office. So he’s done much more to fight the public unions than even what Governor Walker is proposing to do.

The American Bar Association executive council has considered organizing an effort to combat attempts by states to ban Sharia law, according to CNS News:

Included in the text of the ABA’s “International Policies 2010” is a section which organizes a “task force” to review anti-Sharia legislation that has been introduced in 14 states – Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.

The report reads:

“The goal of the task force is to have a Report and Recommendation against such legislation as well as an informal set of ‘talking points’ that local opponents of these initiatives could use to make their case in each of these states.”

But when contacted, the ABA denied that it was involved in any such efforts. “The American Bar Association has taken no action in support of, or in opposition to, judges considering Islamic law or Sharia,” the group said in a statement.

Measures to prevent judges from considering Sharia and international law in their rulings have been introduced in several states. Supporters say that they are taking pre-emptive action to ensure that Islamic law doesn’t take hold in the U.S., which seems to be a well-intentioned, though perhaps unrealistic, concern.

Muslim-American groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations have helped agitate the situation by fighting these measures, claiming that they’re unconstitutional and Islamophobic. Some proponents of the Sharia ban say this is evidence that these Muslim groups eventually want to import Islamic law into the U.S.

This seems like a fight the ABA would want to distance itself from quickly, which may explain its statement. On the one hand, the idea that Sharia law poses an imminent threat to the U.S. legal system is a tad far-fetched, to say the least.  On the other hand, it’s likely that any argument the ABA makes could be interpreted as a defense of Sharia law. And does the ABA really want to put itself in that position?

My Council on Foreign Relations colleague Elliott Abrams has a compelling op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today that highlights the difficulties and trade-offs of democracy promotion.

Abrams served in the Bush administration when it made a deal with Muammar Qaddafi in 2003. In exchange for Qaddafi’s giving up his weapons of mass destruction and support for terrorism, we lifted sanctions and re-opened full relations with Libya. As a result of this deal, we essentially gave up regime change and sold out Qaddafi’s internal opponents. But Abrams writes that it was the right thing to do — and I agree (which is why I refrained from criticizing the deal at the time).

As he argues: “Had we reneged—taken Libya’s weaponry but then started a campaign against Gadhafi’s rule—he’d have re-armed fast and gone back to terrorism. It’s also not clear what more strenuous and public efforts to promote change in Libya would have achieved. It’s not as if one could reason with Gadhafi.”

Like Abrams, I share a belief that we need to do more to promote democracy in the Middle East. But I do not believe that it can be or should be our only goal. There are times when we have to make difficult trade-offs, such as the one in Libya, to achieve crucial strategic goals even if they come at some cost to our principles. But the time for such compromises has passed in Libya. Qaddafi has lost all remaining legitimacy. It is now well past time for the U.S. to stand with the people of Libya against their bloodthirsty, megalomaniacal dictator. We must make clear to him that the days when he could strike a deal with the West are over. All that we are willing to negotiate now are the terms of his departure from power.

President Obama’s failure to deliver that message is both shameful and puzzling.

At Foreign Policy, Hussein Ibish lays out an argument for U.S. military intervention in Libya and makes several good points. The humanitarian crisis is reaching a point where the U.S. and other world leaders may no longer be able to stand idly by. Thousands have already been slaughtered, and the death toll is rising by the hour. While military intervention poses risks, Ibish writes that U.S. inaction could be even more of a strategic blunder:

But U.S. policymakers must not only consider the risks of intervention — they, and the rest of the international community, also need to contemplate the grave risks of doing nothing. The United States and its allies are now forced to deal with an emerging new order in the Middle East; it is squarely in their interest to place themselves on the side of popular demands for reform, democratization, and the removal of unaccountable leaders who have held power for decades. It’s not too late for the United States to be perceived as a positive force for change rather than a guardian of the old regional order, but standing idle while Libya burns would send the wrong message to the people of the region. Forging a broad international consensus for strong actions on Libya would be the wisest political and strategic course for the United States.

Ibish writes that symbolic actions — sanctions and so forth — are “long overdue.” He advises that a no-fly zone be put in place immediately to prevent the use of warplanes, while noting the shortfalls of this policy as well. But if a no-fly zone fails to stymie the massacre of the Libyan people (as is likely at this point), then the next logical step may be NATO intervention on the ground.

So while it is undeniable that there are risks in such actions – and it’s still arguable whether that’s the best move for the U.S. to take – it also appears that giving military assistance to the Libyan people could also be in the best strategic and humanitarian interests of the U.S. Of course, Obama’s careful attempts to distance himself from what he sees as the imperialist foreign policy of the previous administration also makes it less likely that he will give military action its due consideration.

And, as Leon Wieseltier points out at the New Republic, we are already seeing an intervention by foreign forces in Libya, now that Muammar Qaddafi has called in outside militias to help him fight the battle against his own people. Wieseltier asks, “Is Qaddafi to be allowed outside help and the people of Libya denied it?” A good question — and one that we will probably be answered in the coming days.

We are looking for an online editor with responsibility for copy-editing and managing our blog, as well as helping to promote our work in social media. The right person for the job would have experience as a copy editor, a high level of political literacy, the ability to interact well with other editors and bloggers, and would share Commentary’s worldview. This full-time position job must be done in our New York offices, so please do not apply if you wish to telecommute. You may send resume, cover letter, and any writing samples you may have to commentaryjob-at-gmail.com.

In my previously posted item, I argued that it would be impossible to delay elections indefinitely in the Arab world. Better, I argued, that we should shape the outcome of those elections by supporting the moderates. There is ample precedent for such action: witness the CIA’s covert funding of centrist parties in Italy and Japan after World War II to prevent Communists from winning elections.

However, the Carnegie Endowment’s Tom Carothers — a well-respected expert on democratization — argues in a Washington Post op-ed that this is a “notably bad proposal.” He writes:

A perennial tension in supporting democracy abroad is maintaining a clear line between bolstering key democratic principles – such as political openness and fair competition – and trying to shape particular electoral outcomes. When we begin to choose favorites from a field of political competitors and seek to give them a boost, we step over this line. Not only do such efforts at engineering electoral outcomes undercut our credibility, they also usually backfire against the very people we are trying to help. Witness the futility of the efforts of U.S. diplomats in Iraq to throw U.S. weight behind certain candidates or parties during the various elections since 2005.

I am not aware of the efforts he is referring to in Iraq. Perhaps some covert program took place that I know nothing about. But my distinct impression, based on numerous trips to Iraq, was that, in fact, we had no such program in place. My understanding is that Condoleezza Rice had reached the same conclusion as Carothers: that it would be counterproductive to try to pick winners and losers in the Iraqi political system. Instead, she decided, we should support fair voting and let the chips fall where they may. That approach hasn’t worked out so well: Shiite radicals such as the Sadrists and the Islamic Supreme Council for Iraq have ample funding from the Iranians, and Sunni radicals have ample funding from the Saudis, while pro-American liberals like Mithal al-Alusi are left with virtually no money to run a campaign. That, to me, is a counterproductive state of affairs. If our enemies and rivals are going to throw around massive amounts of money to affect the outcome of an election, why should we adopt a holier-than-thou posture? Read More

The loyal liberal readers of the New York Times Magazine will open this Sunday’s issue no doubt hoping for an article that will cut New Jersey Governor Chris Christie down a peg or two. But what they will get instead is a fairly admiring portrait of a savvy political operator who has become a major political force not just in his home state but nationally as well. The piece, by Times political reporter Matt Bai, has no unflattering revelations about the governor, who comes across here just as he does elsewhere: as a no-nonsense tough guy who won’t be intimidated into kicking the deficit can down the road in order to avoid confrontations with powerful public-sector unions.

Instead, the only original insight this lengthy piece does provide is about Christie’s enemies at the unions, particularly the teachers’ unions who have been his main antagonists: they are utterly clueless. Bai gives a sympathetic hearing to union officials Barbara Keshishian and Vincent Giordano and makes it clear that he agrees with their defense of the exorbitant contracts the teachers have received and that are bankrupting New Jersey, just as other government-worker pacts are sinking many of the other 49 states. Their solution to the problem created by contracts that the state can’t afford is to simply raise taxes, and Bai seems to think this traditional liberal patent nostrum is a good idea.

But when Keshishian attempts to explain why the public is buying Christie’s approach and disdaining the unions, even Bai has to admit that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. The union boss says people listen to Christie because he’s the governor, but as Bai points out: “It doesn’t seem especially likely that Christie is breaking through because he is a politician and therefore people take to heart his every word. What the union’s leadership seems not to have considered is that public sentiment around budgets and public employees has shifted in a fundamental way.”

As Bai notes, the unions’ “self involvement” and refusal to compromise has played into Christie’s hands. The governor is spot-on when he tells the Times that the unions’ inability to view the issue from the point of view of the public good is a testament to their sense of entitlement.

Jersey’s teachers, like the Wisconsin public-sector unions embroiled in a battle with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, think they can turn the argument into one of Republican fat cats trying to oppress working stiffs. But a majority of the voters have come see it the other way around, with thuggish union leaders attempting to hold taxpayers hostage to their demands. While Bai closes his piece with the thought that Christie’s brashness — which he characterizes as “boorishness” — will eventually lose its appeal, it is far more likely that, with such opponents, Christie’s act will not only not wear out but also grow in appeal.

Bernard Lewis, the distinguished historian of the Middle East, offers some provocative reflections on the present turmoil in the region in this interview with David Horovitz of the Jerusalem Post. In it, he expresses great skepticism about applying Western notions of democracy — and in particular of elections — to the Arab world, where it has “no history, no record whatever.” Lewis warns:

In the West, we tend to get excessively concerned with elections, regarding the holding of elections as the purest expression of democracy, as the climax of the process of democratization. Well, the second may be true – the climax of the process. But the process can be a long and difficult one. Consider, for example, that democracy was fairly new in Germany in the inter-war period and Hitler came to power in a free and fair election.

We, in the Western world particularly, tend to think of democracy in our own terms – that’s natural and normal – to mean periodic elections in our style. But I think it’s a great mistake to try and think of the Middle East in those terms and that can only lead to disastrous results, as you’ve already seen in various places. They are simply not ready for free and fair elections….

In genuinely fair and free elections, [the Muslim parties] are very likely to win and I think that would be a disaster. A much better course would be a gradual development of democracy, not through general elections, but rather through local self-governing institutions. For that, there is a real tradition in the region.

I sympathize with Lewis’s concerns about rushing willy-nilly into voting — something that has backfired most notably in the case of the Palestinian Authority. Hamas won the 2006 parliamentary elections because it was running against the discredited and corrupt Fatah in a climate where moderates were not able to organize effectively. There is little doubt that the Bush administration made a tactical error in pushing for premature elections in the confidence — which looks foolish in retrospect — that the moderates would come out on top. That is an error we would do well to avoid repeating now. In Egypt, for example, moderate political figures have expressed concern that September is too soon to hold an election. They may well be right, and it may well make sense to postpone an election until next year, giving secular politicos more time to counter the Muslim Brotherhood’s existing organizational structure. Read More

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has had some setbacks recently in its ongoing efforts to position itself as the mainstream voice for American Muslims. But, as we reported previously, CAIR chapters have been urging their members not to cooperate with FBI terror investigations.

Now comes more evidence that the claims that the group is trying to help the authorities stop Islamist terror cells that operate under the cover of religion is bogus. CAIR has teamed up with the American Civil Liberties Union in a lawsuit that seeks to penalize the FBI for sending an undercover agent into California mosques. The ACLU and CAIR say their legal action is a response to the government’s unfairly singling out Muslims for questioning and investigation. The suit itself says that the undercover agent violated the civil rights of mosque members and subjected them to “indiscriminate surveillance” because of their religion.

But there is, of course, nothing “indiscriminate” about targeting a mosque, especially those whose imams and members are known for their radical Islamist beliefs, for a terror investigation. Where else, we might ask, would law-enforcement authorities go to find members of putative Islamist terror cells but in such mosques?

Again, rather than seeking to assist law enforcement in finding and arresting those Muslims who are supportive or even involved in terror, CAIR’s priority is to stop the investigations altogether by creating sanctuaries where no FBI agent or policeman could go except in uniform, rendering the task of preventing a terror attack before it happens next to impossible. Indeed, were this suit to succeed, it might have a chilling effect on future terrorism investigations, since all mosques, including the most radical, would become safe havens for Islamist terrorists and their fellow travelers. Though it still pretends to be mainstream, CAIR, a group that was founded as the political front for a Hamas fundraising operation, never seems to be able to stray very far from its terrorist roots.

If we step back from the individual budget battles taking place in Washington and many of our states, one cannot help but sense that the task for conservatives isn’t simply to engage in a battle about the size of the deficit, unfunded liabilities, and federal debt held by the public. These things matter, of course. The case against profligacy and the dangers of insolvency is obviously important. And more than any time in recent history, these issues are resonating with the public.

But this is a moment in which, as David Brooks has said, the task before us is to (carefully) rewrite the social contract and provide a new way to think about how the government pays for social insurance. If conservatives hope to succeed, then, they will need to make their case not only on economic grounds but also in terms of human character. A friend of mine recently told me that all great public-policy inflection points have depended on making what are essentially moral arguments.

With that in mind, conservatives and GOP lawmakers might consider reading a 1992 book by the late philosopher Shirley Robin Letwin, The Anatomy of Thatcherism. Professor Letwin argued that Thatcherism promoted a moral agenda rather than an economic doctrine or a political theory in order to achieve a fundamental realignment in British politics. She used the term “vigorous virtues” to describe what Thatcherites aimed to cultivate in individual Britons and in the country as a whole. (The kind of citizens Thatcherites preferred were “upright, self-sufficient, energetic, adventurous, independent-minded, loyal to friends, and robust against enemies.”) For understanding Thatcherism, Letwin wrote, “the important point is that a view about character, about the characters of individuals, is at the heart of it.” It was not a theoretical construction so much as an effort to offer a concrete vision of how Britain should be — and at the core of it was a moral vision. Read More

As many commentators have pointed out, the uprisings across the Middle East have once and for all disproved the theory that most of the problems in the Muslim world are somehow related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At the Washington Times yesterday, Israel’s deputy minister of foreign affairs, Danny Ayalon, noted the fallacy of the “linkage” concept and outlines what this means for the peace process:

Precisely those who feel that a utopian Middle East will exist after Israeli and Palestinian leader sign their name on a piece of paper demonstrate a lack of understanding of the issues at stake and make it harder for the conflict to be resolved. …

Unfortunately, radical elements in our region will remain long after the ink on any agreement has dried. To fully grasp this, we just need to listen to the radical elements themselves. In 1996, al Qaeda rose to prominence with Osama bin Laden’s fatwa or “declaration of war.” The long, rambling fatwa stood at more than 11,000 words, railing against everything deemed unacceptable to his brand of militant Islam. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict barely appeared and was nothing more than a footnote to all the general grievances laid out by bin Laden.

Ayalon writes that, before signing a peace agreement, Israel “needs to know that it is permanent, stable and secure, and not subject to changing circumstances.”

This turns the linkage theory completely on its head. Instead of trying to solve the problems of the Muslim world through the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, it now seems more likely that a peace agreement won’t be signed until the current grievances across the Middle East are resolved.

According to Fox News, Egypt’s young people grilled Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday, asking her why the U.S. didn’t express support for the revolution sooner. “The attitude of the U.S. during the Egyptian revolution was to support the Egyptian regime first,” read one of the nearly 6,500 questions, videos, and audio files users submitted through the Egyptian social-media website Masrawy. “Then, when the revolution turned successful, the U.S. switched sides and supported the Egyptian youth. Why?”

Secretary Clinton disputed that assessment. But in fact, early on the U.S. did cast its lot with Mubarak. On January 25, days after the demonstrations had begun, Clinton declared, “Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.” That happened not to be true. Vice President Biden denied that Mubarak was a dictator. That happened not to be true. And Frank Wisner, who was sent to Cairo by President Obama to meet with Mubarak, said that the Egyptian president “must stay in office” to guide his country through transitions in the coming months. That, too, happened not to be true.

Added to all this, of course, was the belief among the Egyptian people that President Obama himself was timid, weak, and late in supporting their cause. Yet almost inexplicably, Obama, having made this mistake with Egypt, seems intent on repeating it with Libya. As the Washington Post put it in its editorial, “By late Wednesday only one major Western leader had failed to speak up on Libya: Barack Obama.” It went on to ask, “Shouldn’t the president of the United States be the first to oppose the depravities of a tyrant such as Mr. Gaddafi? Apparently this one doesn’t think so.”

These are the kinds of actions that can leave searing impressions on people in foreign lands. Unlike other nations, the United States was founded on certain ideals. When it looks like we’re applying them selectively and cynically, it’s a problem. Now, I understand the difficulty when national interests seem to collide with moral convictions, as some argue was the case in Egypt (though I was in favor of an earlier and more active stance by Obama to take the part of the Egyptian demonstrators). But Libya is a case where a brutal, anti-American dictator is declaring war on his own people. Our moral and security interests are twinned. Yet the president still seems unable to find his voice, to say nothing of taking concrete steps that might mitigate the slaughter.

Everyone from the European Union to the Arab League to John Kerry has taken stronger stands against Muammar Qaddafi than has Mr. Obama. It is a shame, bordering on being a disgrace.

On February 22, Emine Erdogan, the wife of Turkey’s prime minister, was an honorary guest at the UN Commission on the Status of Women. Whereas Turkey once had a female prime minister and women have occupied key posts in the past, Turkey today ranks near the bottom of countries for female representation. As the Turkish daily Hurriyet notes, Erdogan has appointed only two women to his cabinet of 26 ministers, and both to minor portfolios. There are no women among the 25 AKP-appointed undersecretaries, and only 3.5 percent of deputy undersecretaries are women. Of the ministries’ 254 regional directors, there is only one woman.

If the United Nations were serious about women’s rights, Erdogan is exactly the wrong guest. But then again, what can one expect from an organization that has allowed Libya to remain on the UN Human Rights Council even as the scale of its massacres become apparent.

Susan Rice was instrumental in pushing the Obama administration to join the UN Human Rights Council, insisting that engagement would allow the U.S. to “shape” the council’s policies and membership. That proved to be a somewhat inflated assessment when Libya was soon afterward — and quite easily — elected to the notorious Israel-bashing body. Rice subsequently declined to criticize the ascension of the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, instead complimenting the election.

So it’s entirely appropriate that the ambassador was unable to attend the emergency UN Security Council meeting on the violence sweeping Libya, on account of a global-sustainability conference in South Africa that had greater purchase on her attention:

At great personal risk to himself and his family, Libya’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Ibrahim Dabbashi, pushed the UN Security Council to take up the violence in his home country. … The dramatic event prompted the first UN meeting of the 15 member Security Council on the uprisings sweeping across the region since the beginning of Tunisia’s revolution. … The United States was represented by Foreign Service officer and Ambassador Rosemary DiCarlo. … Rice, skipped the Libya meeting and instead flew to South Africa to attend a UN panel discussion on global sustainability.

It’s probably unfair to lay out the timeline this way, implying as it does that Rice’s absence was a Libya-specific thing. She misses lots of events that clash with her internationalist sensibilities and multilateral promises. The ambassador quite literally wasn’t in the room when Iran — a state that uses serial rape as a weapon against imprisoned dissidents — was elected to the Commission on the Status of Women committee. Presumably, someone didn’t like the optics of that debacle, coming as it did a few months after Rice insisted that the UN mission was spearheading Obama’s “change in the nature and tone of our relationships … [which] is yielding concrete and tangible benefits here at the United Nations.” Read More

Every month, the State Department publishes an in-house magazine that features a “Post of the Month.” A few years ago, I penned a tongue-in-cheek article entitled “Living in a Dream World,” lampooning the diplomatic culture portrayed in State Magazine. The Arab uprisings led me to revisit the magazine and the posts of the month in which we now witness rebellion.

Here’s what the State Department said about life in Cairo:

Members of the mission community often reflect on the vitality and spirit of one of the world’s most ancient and beautiful cities. “Every morning, as I walk into the sunny courtyard of the U.S. Embassy, a smiling Egyptian colleague wishes me a day full of jasmine flowers,” said Natasha Greer, who returned to Cairo to serve as an office management specialist after a decade away. “Whether you are an extrovert with a passion for exploration or an introvert looking for a peaceful spot to read a book, you will be able to find your perfect place in Cairo. The noise, pollution and crazy traffic will dissipate in the smiles of people who welcome you everywhere.” … A day at Embassy Cairo can involve professional development training, a visit to Arab League headquarters, a discussion with students in Arabic about the Middle East, a sampling of sugarcane juice produced by a recipient of a USAID micro-loan or even a night dancing to an embassy-sponsored musical group like the Latin hip-hop band Ozomatli.

Engaging Egyptian students could be a worthwhile endeavor, but not when the ambassador’s idea was to sing Mubarak’s praises. Read More

At the Corner, John Hood points out one theory about the Arab uprisings that, fortunately, doesn’t seem to have gained much traction yet. Two writers at Bloomberg BusinessWeek are speculating that global warming — not the oppressive policies and corruption of autocratic Arab leaders — sparked food shortages and led to the uprisings across the Middle East. Hood writes:

You knew this was coming, didn’t you? A major cause of the revolutionary fervor sweeping the Arab world, according to a recent Bloomberg Businessweek article, is catastrophic climate change caused by human beings. The causal link is famine, say the authors of the piece: “Could hunger, and the threat to power that accompanies it, be what finally forces political leaders to act” against greenhouse-gas emissions?

The authors of the article, of course, call on the government to take immediate action:

Civilization has faced down pandemics and world wars — and has emerged stronger for having met the test. The current series of droughts and floods are not simply wreaking havoc on food supplies. They’re harbingers of life in a hotter and more chaotic climate. Could hunger, and the threat to power that accompanies it, be what finally forces political leaders to act?

If only “climate change” really were the problem in the Middle East. Think of how much more forceful Obama’s speeches would be.

Security forces have reportedly killed more than a thousand people in Libya, several hundred in Egypt, several dozen in Yemen, and a handful in Iraqi Kurdistan. Normally, American courts would not have jurisdiction over these killings, but there is one scenario in which they will: when those giving the orders to murder civilians are also permanent U.S. residents or American citizens.

Dual citizenry is common in the region, and even more so in elite circles in which people seek multiple passports for business purposes. I do not know who among the Libyans, Egyptians, and Yemenis have dual citizenship, but the man who gave the order to fire into demonstrators last week in Iraqi Kurdistan is certainly a permanent resident and, according to several correspondents, an American citizen as well. Talking to some protesters, it seems that the street skirmishes may be only one battle in a larger war against some of the officials for whom there is credible evidence of torture and abuse.

In reading Barack Obama’s long-delayed statement on Libya yesterday, I was reminded of Harry Reid’s recollection of Obama’s response to a compliment on one of his speeches: “I have a gift, Harry.”

We have since learned a lot about Obama’s oratory, and its relation to reality. He was able to call forth visions of the seas receding; he caused people to faint during campaign appearances; he provided the lyric for a video in which Hollywood stars endlessly repeated a single sentence; he caused a columnist to rank one of the speeches on where it stood in Obama’s lifetime oeuvre. We learned that the key point was always the let-me-be-clear moment — and sure enough, there was one in the Libya statement.

The statement consisted of 14 paragraphs that mixed strong adjectives with weak verbs. The only action items were to ask his administration to prepare options; to send an undersecretary of state to talk to other nations; and to send his secretary of state to a meeting of the Human Rights Council next week. The let-me-be-clear moment came in the 13th paragraph:

So let me be clear. The change that is taking place across the region is being driven by the people of the region. This change doesn’t represent the work of the United States or any foreign power. It represents the aspiration of people who are seeking a better life.

The one thing he wanted to make clear was that we had nothing to do with the “change” — perhaps afraid the unnamed Libyan dictator might blame him for it. In the final paragraph, Obama conveyed a commitment to “continue to stand up for freedom, stand up for justice, and stand up for the dignity of all people.” You have to admit, he has a gift.

As Ambassador Dennis Ross prepares to speak at the upcoming J Street conference, he might want to think about addressing a few serious concerns during his speech. While Ross has certainly been a friend to Israel, some of the people he’ll be sharing the spotlight with at the conference have not. Far from it — quite a few of them can’t be characterized as anything other than outright enemies of the Jewish state. And so by lending his profile to the event, Ross is giving credence to the noxious ideas of his fellow conference speakers.

The Emergency Committee for Israel has outlined some of the troublesome statements made by other conference speakers in a letter it sent to Ross today. These include the claim that Israel is “a full-fledged Apartheid system,” as Ross’s fellow speaker Mustafa Barghouti alleges. Add to that the insistence, by Nadia Bilbassy-Charters, that Hamas shouldn’t be “lumped in” with other terrorist groups. And Edina Lekovic’s designation of Osama bin Laden as a “freedom fighter.” Consider also the allegation, by James Zogby, that the IDF is waging a “Holocaust” against the Palestinian people. And the dangerous theory that Jewish members of the Bush administration were surreptitious agents of Israel, as advanced by Lawrence Wilkerson.

If all that isn’t sufficient to dissuade Ross from attending the conference, how about the contention that Israel is illegitimate or that it must be boycotted or that its government officials and soldiers are war criminals, or any of the other delegitimization themes promoted by NGO leaders like Naomi Chazan, Rebecca Vilkomerson, and Oded Na’aman.

It can be assumed that Ross doesn’t buy into these toxic claims. So why would he give them legitimacy by tying his name to this event? Will he address and reject them unequivocally during his speech? And is he prepared to deal with the consequences to his reputation if these sort of outlandish statements are made during the conference he’s keynoting?

The Emergency Committee for Israel has rightly asked Ross to “seize this moment to explain why the Jewish State is not just one of our closest allies, but a country that fully deserves the admiration and moral support of all Americans.” This type of vicious anti-Israel rhetoric can’t be allowed to pass by unchallenged. And if Ross fails to address it, there’s certainly nobody else speaking at the conference who will.