Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty doesn’t want you to think he’s a neoconservative. But neoconservatives themselves — not exactly known for diverse views — roundly approved of his foreign policy speech this week. One line of Pawlenty’s talk dovetailed quite nicely with neoconservative platitudes about regime change pretty much anywhere there is a regime that neoconservatives find unpalatable (in line with Pawlenty’s loose definitions of vital national security interests).

During the question and answer period after his speech, Pawlenty said the U.S. should “try to effectuate change within Syria.” Asked about what would happen after Syrian dictator Basher al Assad fell, Pawlenty responded: “People didn’t ask, ‘What comes after Hitler?’ Hitler was awful and needed to go.”

The statement is utterly and completely wrong — of course people were concerned about what came after Hitler — but it does comport with how noecons tend to think of things (consider how much thought was given to Iraq and Afghanistan post-U.S. invasion). Writing about Syria in the neocon flagship Commentary magazine, Jonathan Tobin zoomed out a little and hysterically declared:

Obama is still too obsessed with engaging with Islamists rather than confronting them to act decisively as did his predecessor.

But regarding Syria, there isn’t actually that much the United States can do. At a conference yesterday hosted by the New America Foundation and the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, Syrian-American human rights activists and U.S. experts agreed that the military option is not an option at all — so scrap euphemistic ‘decisive action’ — and that pushing regional allies international institutions is the best path forward.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, bluntly stated as much:

For a number of reasons, not least of which that we would probably muck it up, the best thing the U.S. can do right now is be hands off. We should give as much diplomatic support, perhaps some financial support, realizing that it’s probably not going to do that much. To ask for any more adamant position by the U.S. is probably not helpful.

Military historian and analyst Mark Perry made a similar point in his remarks:

For those criticizing the Obama administration for not doing enough: We’ve got the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan, we’ve got the 101st Airborne on its fourth deployment. There’s nothing we can do.

Indeed, their assessments track closely with those of CAP analysts Matt Duss and Michael Werz, who wrote recently that the Obama administration should push Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan to lean harder on Assad. “It can only do so,” they write, “by joining the multilateral efforts to end the violence in Syria and by continuing to rebuild the U.S.-Turkish relationship that has been neglected for almost a decade.”

Yesterday at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser John Brennan formally laid out the Obama administration’s broad approach to combatting terrorism. In his speech, Brennen acknowledged that the administration’s goals “track closely with the goals of the previous administration” and that the new strategy “neither represents a wholesale overhaul — nor a wholesale retention — of previous policies.”

However, Brennan stressed one key difference in approach from the Bush administration, saying that “our best offense won’t always be deploying large armies abroad but delivering targeted, surgical pressure to the groups that threaten us.” But what reporting on the new strategy has widely overlooked, is that the the United States will no longer treat al Qaeda as an existential threat or as a force that is capable of taking over countries or regions of the world and instituting totalitarian rule:

Our strategy is also shaped by a deeper understanding of al-Qa’ida’s goals, strategy, and tactics. I’m not talking about al-Qa’ida’s grandiose vision of global domination through a violent Islamic caliphate. That vision is absurd, and we are not going to organize our counterterrorism policies against a feckless delusion that is never going to happen. We are not going to elevate these thugs and their murderous aspirations into something larger than they are.

This point of view, as basis for dealing with al Qaeda, is a significant departure from the Bush administration’s counterterrorism strategy. In its 2006 “National Strategy for Combating Terrorism,” the Bush White House described the terror threat as such:

What unites the movement is a common vision, a common set of ideas about the nature and destiny of the world, and a common goal of ushering in totalitarian rule. What unites the movement is the ideology of oppression, violence, and hate.

Indeed, in his speech announcing the strategy, President Bush justified this policy, saying that Osama bin Laden wanted to make Baghdad the “capital of the Caliphate“:

They hope to establish a violent political utopia across the Middle East, which they call a “Caliphate” — where all would be ruled according to their hateful ideology. Osama bin Laden has called the 9/11 attacks — in his words — “a great step towards the unity of Muslims and establishing the Righteous… [Caliphate].” This caliphate would be a totalitarian Islamic empire encompassing all current and former Muslim lands, stretching from Europe to North Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.

This is obviously, as Brennen said, “absurd.” Al Qaeda isn’t taking over anything and it’s refreshing for United States counterterror policy to officially recognize that.

Republican presidential hopeful and Texas governor Rick Perry sent a letter Tuesday to the Justice Department urging the investigation and prosecution of U.S. citizens and organizations who are participating in the second flotilla to break the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.

In the letter, Perry repeats unfounded allegations by Israeli government officials — debunked yesterday by the Israeli press — that the Gaza flotilla has violent intentions against Israel:

According to numerous recent media reports, American citizens and organizations, together with a coalition of violent anti-Israel organizations from other countries, have organized efforts to breach Israel’s maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip as early as this week. …

The acts of funding, support, organizing and engaging in these efforts appears to constitute participation in a naval expedition against against a people with whom the United States is at peace…; the furnishing of a vessel with the intent that it be employed to commit hostilities against a people with whom the United States is at peace…; and the provision of material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization.

There is no evidence that any participants in the flotilla plan “to commit hostilities” against anyone. In fact, an IDF spokesperson and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed this canard before it was debunked by the Israeli and American press. Cabinet ministers insisted  the evidence given to the press was “the exact opposite of what we were given,” even calling the talking point “public relations hysteria” and “spin.” One of the boats of Americans bound for Gaza responded to the baseless accusation by opening up everything — crew, passengers, the boat and the cargo — for inspection by the media. And Mondoweiss posted a video of flotilla participants receiving training in non-violence.

The notion — echoing the call of two staunch Israel supporters in Congress — that flotilla participants can be prosecuted for material terror is flimsy at best and made in bad faith at worst. Richard Levy, a civil rights lawyer from New York who plans to sail for Gaza, told ThinkProgress by phone from Greece that participants from the U.S. boat have not coordinated at all with Hamas. Asked by ThinkProgress about contacts with groups listed by the U.S. as terrorists, he said:

The answer is no. The only contact we’ve had is with an arts group in Gaza and a civil society group there. We’ve been very careful to avoid contact that would create those kinds of problems.

Levy called Perry an “outrageous liar” and said his letter was clearly politically motivated to curry favor with Washington’s powerful right wing pro-Israel lobby as he builds his presidential candidacy. Levy said it was “the worst kind of pandering.”

At least one Republican from Perry’s home state agreed that the letter was political: “Is it political? Probably,” said State Senator Florence Shapiro, adding that she nonetheless thought Perry was sincere in his “commitment and his deep passion for the Israeli people, and for the country itself.”

Former House Speaker and current GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich was on Fox News Tuesday night attacking President Obama over “the magic of the dates” for his Afghanistan troop withdrawal plan. Gingrich argued that Obama should not be withdrawing troops faster than commanders there want:

GINGRICH: I think we are drifting to a very, very dangerous situation. None of the generals recommended the speed of the drawdown the president wants. We are beginning to lose in the region. [...]

And if you watch what is happening there’s a steady drift from the United States at a time when the president is signaling his desire to get out as fast as he can and potentially faster than the generals think is safe. [...]

You should go to the White House and ask the president why did he overrule all his generals? What is his rationale? What secret knowledge does he have that leads him to overrule his generals? He seems determined to have the drawdown finished by sometime next year. Why? What is the magic of the dates the president is picking? I don’t have an answer.

Watch it:

But this wasn’t what Gingrich was saying just a couple weeks ago. During the GOP primary debate on June 13, Gingrich took a different approach on the U.S. military presence in the region. Citing the dearth of intelligence the armed forces have in Libya and other conflicts in the region, he warned that the U.S. should realize “how much trouble we’re in” and pull U.S. troops out “as rapid as possible”:

I think that we need to think fundamentally about reassessing our entire strategy in the region. I think that we should say to the generals we would like to figure out how to get out as rapid as possible with the safety of the troops involved. And we had better find new and very different strategies because this is too big a problem for us to deal with the American ground forces in direct combat.

So what has changed for Gingrich between the debate on June 13 and his interview last night? Maybe the answer to that question isn’t based overseas, but instead related to the announcement Obama made on June 22 from the East Room of the White House. Indeed, the former Speaker made a similar flip-flop on Libya. Gingrich attacked Obama for not intervening in Libya before the U.N. authorization, saying he would “exercise a no-fly zone this evening,” then, after Obama ordered U.S. participation in the conflict, Gingrich said, “I would not have intervened.”

–Sarah Bufkin

Politico’s Ben Smith had a 1,700-word piece yesterday morning continuing along a line of what he himself once derided as “an evidence-free drumbeat that the Jewish community — and particularly Jewish donors — are abandoning [President] Obama” over Israel. The right wing of the pro-Israel community has gone completely bananas over the piece (in typically overstated terms).

But as ThinkProgress has extensively reported, the right-wing meme started with little evidence to back it up. And Smith’s story, which relies heavily on unnamed Jewish donors and Jewish institutional operatives, does little to advance the ball into the realm of hard evidence. In fact, other outlets have used the same modus operandi and come up with exactly the opposite conclusions that Smith did. To wit, the Jewish Daily Forward reported last night:

Based on their own internal polling and on lessons from the 2010 midterm elections, Democrats believe that the issue of Israel will not play out significantly with Jewish voters. And pointing to a glitzy pro-Israel Washington donor event with Obama held on June 20 that raised more than $1.5 million, supporters of the president believe that the important constituency of Jewish donors is safe.

Obama also held a million-dollar fundraiser for Jewish donors in Miami, and another “top-dollar event” is planned for June 30 in Philadelphia. So where’s the kosher beef?

Many observers note that Obama’s pro-Israel policies do not depart in any significant way from his predecessors. This suggests that whatever (apparently surmountable) tensions among some Jewish donors can easily be alleviated, as Smith points out when he quotes top Philadelphia  Jewish donor David Cohen:

“It takes me about five minutes of talking through the president’s position and the president’s speech, and the uniform reaction has been, ‘I guess you’re right, that’s not how I saw it covered.’”

So the rather false right-wing mischaracterizations of Obama’s Israel policies have perhaps taken some hold, but we can’t be sure. As Ron Kampeas of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency points out, the only one to make the wait-and-see point on Politico’s forum about Smith’s article was the head of a Palestinian organization — Yousef Munayyer of the Jerusalem fund — who wrote:

It’s hard to take seriously any article that talks about public opinion without citing polling data that uses a representative sample and not just “several dozen” chats Ben Smith had with Jewish-Americans who may not at all be representative of the rest of that community. This is especially necessary when historically Jews have voted overwhelmingly for Democrats for president and care about things other than Israel as well. In fact polls show American Jews rank six other issues before Israel as important to them.

Kampeas also noted that headline on Smith’s article was “Obama may be losing the faith of Jewish Democrats.” He suggests everyone “wait until the next [major reliable] survey, and then we can write headlines without ‘may.’”