I wonder how that appeasement tastes to Obama right about now.

First he boldly proclaims the US demands a freeze of Israeli settlements. Netanyahu and the Israeli right-wing tell the U.S. president to go f**k himself.

In only a matter of weeks, Obama bends over on the Israeli settlement issue and lets Netanyahu have his way with him. The U.S. Secretary of State praises Israel and their continued settlement growth as “unprecedented steps” toward peace.

And then last week Israel announced they were accelerating settlements in a Palestinian quarter of Jerusalem.

Kind of like telling Hitler in the 1930s “okay, you can have the Rhineland…and Austria…but that’s all.” That worked out swell.

Israel’s punishment for unilateral aggression, public renunciation of peace, and making the U.S. president look like an impotent idiot?

We sell them 25 state-of-the-art stealth F-35 fighter jets. (Oh, and make sure to give them enough military aid so they can afford to buy them…)

If you need an example of a weak, ineffectual and failing president, just look at Obama’s handling of foreign policy, from the Israeli-Palestinian issue to his solution in Afghanistan. If Obama isn’t appeasing the Israeli right abroad, he’s trying to appease the militant Republicans at home.

His proposal, to be made public next week, on a “change of strategy” in Afghanistan is pathetically unoriginal, relying on antiquated ideas about military might:

More troops. Protect the population centers. Train Afghan troops and police in 2-3 years (oh my God, where have we heard that one before?). “Finish the job.” Defeat the insurgency.

How? With more guns, ammo, bombs, and soldiers, of course.

Doing their part in the military-industrial complex, the media and the right-wing nutjobs have framed the issue as a false dilemma, claiming that there are only two choices:

1. Put more troops, guns, and weapons in to win the war, or
2. Pull out and run home to Mama.

But there are never only two choices, and a genuine change of strategy would require out-of-the-box thinking: new ways to reach ordinary Afghans so that there is no reason for them to join the insurgency.

Reduce our military “footprint.” Massively increase reconstruction projects. Employ Afghans instead of hiring Western private contractors to drive trucks and construct new buildings. Remove visible and tangible signs of a foreign military occupation. Stop all airstrikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Buy all the opium ourselves and sell it to pharmaceutical companies. Show Afghans a face other than that of heavily-armed soldiers.

A similar strategic shift needs to be undertaken on the homefront. Americans need to see Afghans as people, instead of either:

1. Victimized women under burqas that need us white men to save them from their misogynistic, Muslim men, or
2. Knife-wielding, decapitating, Quran-thumping, Sharia-imposing, American-hating, female-abusing Taliban men.

Such a simplistic dichotomy of Afghan society skews America’s opinions and, thereby, the policies they are willing to support.

We’re losing the war in Afghanistan because we’ve decided to divide people into categories that fit our stereotypes and fears. We’ve stopped trying to help people (if that was ever the plan to begin with) and are now solely focused on killing those who oppose us.

Because we’ve divided people in our minds, we’ve physically divided them in Afghanistan. All too frequently, international aid workers sit in the back of their white SUVs (when there is a front seat open) while their Afghan drivers escort them through the country. White people have the supervisor and director jobs at the UN and NGOs, earning great salaries from inside fortified buildings behind blast walls while Afghans earn pennies on the dollar doing the real work and exposing themselves to the suicide bombers on the streets.

LA Times foreign correspondent Laura King is probably among the last respectable western journalists in Kabul (along with Carlotta Gall of the NY Times). King’s brief story about this week’s attack on the Serena Hotel in Kabul accurately noted that the hotel charges more per night than most Afghans make in a month (most other stories ignored the economic disparity that the Serena Hotel symbolizes, and, thus, a major reason why it draws the ire of insurgents). King wrote to me this week in an e-mail about the divide among Afghans and Westerners:

“Actually I’ve been struck in the last few weeks by how many Afghans have remarked, unsolicited, that it wouldn’t be such a big loss if expat NGO and UN staffs stayed away indefinitely, since locals do so much of the hard/dangerous/dirty work anyway…it’s definitely interesting that that’s the public perception, since the West does like to pat itself on the back for do-gooding here…”

If we ever want to be seen as anything other than a foreign military occupier, we need Afghans to see a different face of America. We need them to see our compassion, our organization and our desire for peace. We need them to see that we are partners in their reconstruction, not overlords in their war.

But Obama seems more interested in appeasing the militants – and by that I mean the right-wing conservatives who insist the only option in Afghanistan is a military one.

Obama has plenty of grandiose words about bringing people together, bridging divides between parties and a new era of America involvement in the world.

So far, those have been just empty words. Just ask the Palestinians in Jerusalem. But don’t tell the Afghans yet. They’ll find out for themselves.