That “chickensh*t” comment about Bibi? Pure projection.
Last week, the Obama White House finally clarified its Middle East policy. It’s détente with Iran and a cold war with Israel.
To the administration, Israel isn’t worth the trouble its prime minister causes. As one anonymous Obama official put it to journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, what good is Benjamin Netanyahu if he won’t make peace with the Palestinians? Bibi doesn’t have the nerve of Begin, Rabin, or Sharon, said the unnamed source. The current leader of this longstanding U.S. ally, he added, is “a chickens—t.”
It’s hardly surprising that the Obama White House is crudely badmouthing Netanyahu; it has tried to undercut him from the beginning. But this isn’t just about the administration’s petulance and pettiness. There seems to be a strategic purpose to heckling Israel’s prime minister. With a possible deal over Iran’s nuclear weapons program in sight, the White House wants to weaken Netanyahu’s ability to challenge an Iran agreement. […]
The negotiations with Iran were only the most obvious part of the administration’s policy of pressuring Israel. The White House knew the Israelis would have difficulty striking Iranian nuclear facilities so long as there was a chance of a deal. Jerusalem couldn’t risk making itself the enemy of peace and an international pariah. All Netanyahu could do was warn against the bad deal Obama was intent on making.
The White House used plenty of other tools to pressure Jerusalem. For instance, leaks. Virtually every time Israel struck an Iranian arms depot in Syria or a convoy destined for Hezbollah, an administration official leaked it to the press. The White House understood that publicizing these strikes would embarrass Bashar al-Assad or Hassan Nasrallah and thereby push them to retaliate against Israel. That was the point of the leaks: to keep Israel tentative and afraid of taking matters into its own hands.
Another instrument of pressure was military and security cooperation between Israel and the White House—the strongest and closest the two countries have ever enjoyed, say Obama advocates. It allowed administration officials to keep even closer watch on what the Israelis were up to, while trying to make Jerusalem ever more dependent on the administration for its own security. […]
From the White House’s perspective, then, Israel is the source of regional instability. Iran, on the other hand, is a force for stability. It is a rational actor, Obama has explained, pursuing its own interests. The White House, moreover, shares some of those interests—like rolling back the Islamic State.
The fact that Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani now calls the shots in four Arab capitals—Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad, and Sanaa—makes him the Middle East’s indispensable man. Compared with the one-stop shopping Obama can do in Tehran to solve his Middle East problems, what can Israel offer?
The Obama administration’s Middle East policy, finally clarified last week, is premised on a fundamental misunderstanding of the Islamic Republic. The question is whether the White House has also misunderstood the character of a man, the prime minister of Israel, whose courage they mock.
This last is my only disagreement with the author of this analysis. I do not believe Obama and the apparatchiks in his administration misunderstand Iran and Israel at all. The Left has always had an issue with Israel as a Jewish state. That they embrace, or at least make excuses, for the ideology of Islamism would seem to belie my assertion. However, the Left’s hostility to Judaism and Christianity is one borne of the traditions of those religions in fostering principles necessary for successful liberty-based, democratic Republics. Islamism is an authoritarian and totalitarian ideology where individual rights are close to non-existent. Leftism’s insistence on a large, centralized, and controlling State is congruent with Islamism’s basic structure even if its patina of religiousity appears at odds with the Left’s radical secularism.
Iran has always identified Israel as the “Little Satan” and America as the “Big Satan.”
In other words, Israel must be brought to heel or destroyed before American can.
The Left knows this and agrees.
This subject is very difficult. In order to make sense of the problem (or many problems, I should say), I think we would do well to seek a clarifying question: the sort of question which would harmonize the vast range of issues dropped on us here, a range of issues jumbled into a sort of incomprehensibility in their scope and world historical reach. That is, if a clarifying organization of the many problems is worth our while.
sdferr
Can you narrow it down a bit, as I’m not seeing the difficulty in this subject. Israel is a Western democracy and Iran is a 7th century barbarian dictatorship >>>this<<< close to getting the Bomb.
I’m not sure I can do the problem[s] justice Darleen (only partly because I’m a bit distracted by Arizona’s ongoing march down the field — heh! — score 7 while I’m writing) – but in general terms regarding the complex we have before us, I wonder many things:
1) L. Smith presents what I believe is correct, that there has been a fundamental lie at the heart of the ClownDisaster’s unifying policy choice — namely, to say “I will prevent Iran to get nuclear weapons” while actively working to enable Iran to get nuclear weapons, 2) why this is understood by ClownDisaster as the best choice among the possible choices, 3) what is the end that this choice indicates?, 4) what are the necessary consequences of this choice, not only with regard to Israel’s sustenance as a nation, but also with regard to the Muslim opposition to Iran’s hegemony in the Persian Gulf region if not the whole of the Middle East, 5) how are those consequences understood as the end ClownDisaster has in sight?, 6) how are those consequences understood as to the benefit of the United States in particular, and so on (I have very many other questions to go with these, but don’t propose to exhaust their enumeration here — that would be too tedious for everyone, I think).
In more particular terms, we have before us many ongoing wars. War to include 1) the war between the United States, with a handful of allies (ex. Canada, the UK, Germany, France) and Muslim attackers across the world, proxy wars between Islamic states such Iran and the Sauds conducted in crumbling former nations — Syria, Iraq — intra-national civil wars, whether hot or cold — again Syria and Iraq, but also Egypt, Yemen, Lebanon, with an incipient civil war possible in Jordan, a temporarily quiet civil war in Iran, and even what we here refer to as a soft civil war of legitimacy of governance in the United States (again, not an exhaustive list, as there are also questions of legitimacy raised within Israel itself, for instance).
So I wonder, what’s the sort of question which harmonizes the similarities among all these disparate phenomena? What would clarify our approach?
And at this point I’m reasonably convinced Arizona ultimately wins this game.
6) how are those consequences understood as to the benefit of the United States in particular,
Actually, I think how that question is answered is the unifying element that addresses all those other questions.
And it goes back to how Obama and his administration see both the United States and its role upon the World Stage.
There has been a great deal written (and substantiated by Obama’s own words) that the United States as configured by the Constitution and its history, is not the United States Obama wants it to be. The US is not to be a world leader but only 1 nation among many. And the US is to integrate itself among the other nations and let them set the proper leadership in principles, values and appropriate behavior.
From that starting point, the turn of the US against its allies and feting its enemies makes sense.
Well, I, as a Christian, look forward to Israel being isolated.
Why, you might ask?
Because once Israel is freed from any constraints or obligations to the West, Israel bulldozes the Temple Mount and rebuilds their Temple.
As an aside, does anyone else find it interesting that a little tiny nation such as Israel continues to be at the center of world affairs?
Of course, we in the US may hardly notice the Temple being rebuilt, because we’re on the verge of Civil War 2.0.
From a 2010 Bill Whittle post which is now to be found in the Wayback machine.
2) why this is understood by ClownDisaster as the best choice among the possible choices, 3) what is the end that this choice indicates?
– If you analyze all the various incongruous moves by the little king and his gaggle of Marxists the common thread would seem to be supporting ANYTHING which in the short or long term undermines or limits Western power. Adding Iran to the worlds nuclear club would do that. Every weakening of Israel does that. Examined from that standpoint, every move by the Left makes sense. It also explains why even murky, non-obvious Leftist moves always make us uneasy. We intuitively know they’re anti-liberty/individuality, and almost without exception bad for Democracy in general.
The following, which I wrote back in September of 2012, might offer a plausible explanation:
http://thecampofthesaints.org/2012/09/25/barack-hussein-obama-is-not-a-muslim/
Or maybe he’s just The Antichrist.
Well…
Obama is The Antichrist
Everything in this world or in our own character that opposes Christ is the antichrist. You must wrestle with that one until your life is ended.
Bob, Obama has never held a job that he didn’t consider beneath him — including the presidency.
Also, what palaeo said.
– The norks who need to wrestle the most are busy digging their hole deeper and deeper with vigor and enthusiasm. Which is sort of weird since they’re generally too lazy to do much of anything else.
What Palaeo said is dead solid perfect.
The fictional character known as ‘Barack Hussein Obama’ is merely one of The Beasts.
[I am only half-serious.]
Here’s evidence of another ClownDisaster Co. slow-walk to oblivion favoring their favorites, Iran and for the sake of Iran, the Syrian monster Assad.
That’s okay, I was only half-joking about Obama as Antichrist, so it evens out.