While Insulting Netanyahu, the Administration Admits That Iran Will Go Nuclear: Danielle Pletka
http://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2014/10/while-insulting-netanyahu-the-administration-admits-that-iran-will-go-nuclear/?utm_source=Mosaic+Newsletter&utm_campaign=6a7c7e11d1-Mosaic_2014_10_30&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b0517b2ab-6a7c7e11d1-41165129
“But let’s forget about Obama’s own ideological dislike of the State of Israel and its leaders, whoever they may be. Set aside the fact that it is not Bibi who is acting like a selfish political actor, but Barack Obama and the personal sycophants around him who are more interested in the whims and fortunes of the American Narcissus. Let us instead focus on the fact that an unnamed “senior American official” is waxing triumphant over the fact that it is now “too late” for Israel to strike Iran’s nuclear weapons complex. This is good news? The fact that American officials believe it is more advantageous to have a nuclear Iran than to have someone in power in Israel who will not kowtow to the US president says something about the fundamental rot at the core of the Obama administration, its contempt for the national security of the American people – who are at terrible risk from an Iranian nuclear bomb – and the vileness of the cowards and chickenshit officials who people the fiefdom of Barack Obama.”
Lots of twitter today over an important piece by Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic about the crisis in US-Israel relations. Most have focused on the Obama administration “senior official” sourced comment that Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is “chickenshit.” The full quote is worth reading:
“The good thing about Netanyahu is that he’s scared to launch wars,” the official said, expanding the definition of what a chickenshit Israeli prime minister looks like. “The bad thing about him is that he won’t do anything to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians or with the Sunni Arab states. The only thing he’s interested in is protecting himself from political defeat. He’s not [Yitzhak] Rabin, he’s not [Ariel] Sharon, he’s certainly no [Menachem] Begin. He’s got no guts.”
Goldberg has his own take on the accusation, and plants blame for the mutual antipathy squarely on the Israeli side. He’s a thoughtful analyst, and he’s not wrong that the Israelis have been, to put it diplomatically, incautious, in their approach to the Obama team. Nor are critics entirely wrong when they suggest that internal politicking – and not peace process politique – have been behind recent Israeli settlement decisions. But that analysis fails to adequately appreciate the fons et origo of the slow-mo disaster that has been US-Israel relations under Barack Obama, and does readers a disservice by laying out the rather shocking notion that team Obama thinks he has somehow played the Israelis into… allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon. Here’s “another senior official” with whom Goldberg spoke (speaking of chickenshit; um, what about going on the record?):
“It’s too late for him to do anything. Two, three years ago, this was a possibility. But ultimately he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. It was a combination of our pressure and his own unwillingness to do anything dramatic. Now it’s too late.”
Let’s get this straight: Bibi et al, who have what most would agree is a legitimate and existential fear of an Iranian nuclear weapon, are “good” because they’re, er “chickenshit” about launching a strike on Iran; oh, and Bibi is also labeled a “coward” for having been “chickenshit” in that regard. But he’s “bad” because he won’t cave to a Palestinian Authority and Hamas so riven by terrorism, corruption and incompetence that they won’t “accommodate” with each other.
How can we read this as anything other than an appalling display of hypocrisy, hostility to Israel and warmth toward the very powers that have killed almost as many Americans (Iran, Hamas, et al) as al Qaeda? Did team Obama label Ahmadinejad as “chickenshit”? Have they labeled the Qataris, who arm and fund ISIS at the same time that they buy US weapons as “chickenshit”?
I’m sure that in defense of Obama, many will say that they expect more of the Israelis than they do of the Gulf or Turkey or NATO or … anyone. The question is, why? Coming back to the fons et origo of this whole relationship disaster, let us recall that it was Obama who ashcanned the George W. Bush commitment to Israel to oppose the return to 1967 lines; Obama who prayed at the altar of Jew-hating Reverend Jeremiah Wright; Obama who absorbed the scholarship of Israel-hating Rashid Khalidi; Obama, whose own settlement policy has been more extreme than that of the Palestinian Authority.
But let’s forget about Obama’s own ideological dislike of the State of Israel and its leaders, whoever they may be. Set aside the fact that it is not Bibi who is acting like a selfish political actor, but Barack Obama and the personal sycophants around him who are more interested in the whims and fortunes of the American Narcissus. Let us instead focus on the fact that an unnamed “senior American official” is waxing triumphant over the fact that it is now “too late” for Israel to strike Iran’s nuclear weapons complex. This is good news? The fact that American officials believe it is more advantageous to have a nuclear Iran than to have someone in power in Israel who will not kowtow to the US president says something about the fundamental rot at the core of the Obama administration, its contempt for the national security of the American people – who are at terrible risk from an Iranian nuclear bomb – and the vileness of the cowards and chickenshit officials who people the fiefdom of Barack Obama.
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