Resolved: Current U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East undermines our national security

Current U.S. Foreign policy in the Middle East threatens our national security. The current Israeli-Palestine conflict threatens national security. Obama is the key negotiator in teh provess and he has been successful at opening lines of communication to help promote peace. 1: Failing to secure the Israel-Palestine conflict wil thereaten US national security.(Frank Anderson, Philip Wilcox, Brian Katulis, argue in an article entitled Isreali-Palestinian peace: What is the US national security interest? How can it be achieved? Middle East Foreign Policy Council, on Janurary 20, 2011 Failure to find a secure, just and fair peace means that extremism and anger iwll fester and spread further, producing more and momre threats to American national security and ultimately to American citizens. To underscorethis point, let me give you one more example: Mumbai 2008, the most significant terroist attack since 9/11 anywhere in the world. Ten Pakistani terriosts, young men form the Punjab leb by Lashkar-e-Taiba, struck key targets in the largest city in INdia. What was at the very top of their target list that day in November 2008? A Jewish Chabad house in Mumbai. Mumbai is a big place; you have to look hard to find a Chabad house. They had looked hard. An American citizen, David Headley,, had helped them look for it for months and months. It was at th etop of their list because for them, it symbolized the Zionist-Hindu-Crusader alliance. I submit to you that when 10 PUnjabi kids have decided that killing American Jews in Chabad houses in Mumbai is a holy cause, we have come to a situation in which the Israeli-Palestinina conflict is a national sercurity thereat to th eUnited Staes of America. 2: Only Obama can solve the current Israel-Palestine conflict.(Riedel, Anderson, Wilcox, and Katulis continue: President Obamba may take seriouldy his own admonition that this issue matter to American strategic interests. That would translate into U.S. leadership in shaping a breakthrough, preferably with EU and Quartet support, creating real choices and deploying new incentives and disincentives with the parties, notably Isael. Ultimately, for all the noise and speculaiton regarding their resumption, Israeli-Palestinian negotionations are likely to prove rather inconsequential. Success or failure in achieving deoccupation in two states will depend primarily on the conversation between Obama and Netanyahu, their political calculations, priorities and persistence. 3: Obama has been successful in engaging Israel and Palestinian authorities to work toward peace.(Riedel, Anderson, Wilcox, and Katulis conclude: The administration's statements have steadily moved toward that sort of engagement and away form the sterile and discredited claim that we have to accept waht the parties are going to work out for themselves. And it's not just this administration. Let's review some history. It was during the Carter administration that we first heard an official mention of the Palestinian nation. During the Clinton administration, it was the president's wife, not the president, who first spoke of a Palestinian state. The George W. Bush administration's road map, however little he did to follow it, was the first official mention of two states as a solution. The current administration, in a remearkable advance in rhetoric, has declared that it will end the occupaiton. President Obama said that it will end what began in 1967. The secretary of state recently declared, "We will not be passive." She has demanded that both sides present their specific visions for settlements, detailing positoins on borders, security arangements, Jerusalem and refugees. I think we'll wait a long time for these two sides to present those visions. They'll only be presented when we accept that the only way forward is the United States to present its oulines and ot declare its determinaiton to reach them. Therefore, Obama and his current US foreign policy in the Middle East has promoted, not undermined our national security. Therefore, the resolution is false. Thank you for your time.