Crisis? What crisis?

The Nation reports on deafening silence from either Obama or Clinton on the ongoing carnage in Gaza or the wider issues of the conflict presently underway between the Israelis and Palestinians:

"None of us should be unrealistic. It would be ridiculous at this point to expect Obama or Clinton to display the concern for the plight of innocent Palestinians evidenced by Jimmy Carter... or even by the recently-engaged George Bush.

But failing to even discuss the burgeoning crisis in the Middle East sends a signal that should trouble people on all sides of the debate.

Carter told me a few months ago that the only way for a president to make progress toward peace in the region is to begin working on Middle East issues even before taking the oath of office.

If knowledge, concern and evidence of determination are not on display from the start, said the president who forged functional relations between Israel and Egypt, it will be impossible to advance the arduous process of peacemaking.

That Obama and Clinton are not inclined to look up from their campaigning for long enough to address an international crisis is probably to be expected. But that doesn't make it any less unsettling. And if their current disengagement foreshadows things to come, then the talk of "change" that has so energized the 2008 presidential race will almost certainly turn out to have been just that: talk."

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Mahler's Prodigal Son

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