[Editor’s Note: See Caroline Glick essay below.]
Why would you ever have faith in a crude, amateur, ill-bred politician — Swishy — who introduced one of the most laughable concepts of the generation in a magazine piece last month, “leading from behind.”
As a man of questionable honor, President Obama coined the ludicrous phgrase so that he would not be branded a wartime President for invading Libya.
As the ugliest friend Israel has ever had in the White House, Swish once again exposed his true anti-Israel nature last Thursday when he insisted that Jerusalem make peace with Palestinian terrorists by unilaterally giving back their own land to the terrorists which Israel won back in the 1967 Six-Day War.
Last month’s “leading from behind” magazine chat was one of the 50 “exclusive” interviews President Mirror gives daily in whatever non-Washington, often non-American, town he is visiting, begging shamelessly for attention and money, all while reading a teleprompter that says “Thank the rubes,” and he mumbles, “Thank you, rubes.”
His ignorance, especially about history, makes the loudest noise in the room — if only my fellow journalists would vacate their stooge stools and investigate, he would be laughed back to oblivion.
Swish’s ill-considered, sycophantic, harsher-than-even-realists-expected criticism of Israel and Bibi Netanyahu last Thursday was praised by some of our favorite Jew-haters, Germany, Turkey, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Titanic.
I Am Afraid. I Am Afraid.
Effete and unaccountable as he has been for 2½ years, Swish couldn’t even bring himself to call Hamas a terrorist organization, which even the Arab-centric State Dept. does. That would offend his Muslim brothers. But then the Titanic has the identical policy. They tell hyperbolic stories about Republicans daily and call them filthy names. But they fear what reprisals Muslims will take against them, and so they daintily, like little girls putting their broken dolls back together, call terrorists “militants.” It is company policy. Curtsy, girls of the press, and then give them a big kiss.
Like other Muslims and semi-Muslims, Swish makes goo-goo eyes at the Arab world and at what the hard left labels the “international community.” No monkey business. The “international community” is a federation of Israel haters. Hamas is openly sworn to destroy Israel, and Swish, in his messianic wisdom, “orders” Mr. Netanyahu to make peace with them and give them want because “the international community” is running low on patience.
Swish fits in perfectly with this crowd. He detests Jews as much as his brother Arabs and the majority of Europe. Show me one European nation that treats Israel as a peer and I will show you an oddity as rare as a thinking liberal.
Think This Bothers Swishy?
But for all the kissing of Arab feet and slant-mouthed slamming of Jews and Israel that Swish has done, America’s ratings are lower in the Arab world than back in the days when a normal person, President Bush, was in the White House.
Call a logician. Ask him what “leading from behind” could mean. Swishy used it in the context of the U. S. joining the NATO team to help bring down Ghadafy. How is that working out? With his spit-shined anti-war credentials, Swishy could not be seen leading the greatest country in the history of the world into war — mainly because His Swishiness does not believe ours is the greatest country in the history of the world or anywhere close to it.
Never mind that the Libyan War has turned into the same spilled-milk mess as everything else His Swishhood has touched. Our Swish-ballyhooed commitment date to Libya expired at the end of last week. Swishy, so insanely busy scampering from city to city campaigning, has not noticed.
In his speech last Thursday, Swish praised the “democratic outcomes” of the spring’s uprisings in the Middle East. Another Swish mistake or lie. Show me one Middle East democracy resulting from the Arab Spring. He fiddled away the whole uprising season, and now President Mirror wants credit for the perceived successes. Again.
He is out of the country — again — this week. As a stunned man elected to an office with a tradition of dignity, Swishy has conducted himself like a rat with his tail on fire, running away from the White House on nearly a daily basis all year long. He has taken the blame for nothing but inopportune successes.
His chief Presidential talent has been boarding and deplaning. While pointedly snubbing Israel, Swish, family and their Dodger Stadium-sized entourage have visited virtually all of the known world, on, not accidentally, the people’s money. He finds travel a more desirable alternative than governing. By some critics’ measure, he has governed less than any President including Bill Henry Harrison who died less than a month after taking office. The traveling travesty leaves him with a shameful legacy.
Here is the most penetrating analysis that has emerged from the President’s deceptive speech last Thursday, by Caroline Glick, essayist for the Jerusalem Post:
Before we get into what the speech means for Israel, it is important to consider what it means for America.
Quite simply, Obama's speech represents the effective renunciation of the US's right to have and to pursue national interests. Consequently, his speech imperils the real interests that the US has in the region – first and foremost, the US's interest in securing its national security. Obama's renunciation of the US national interests unfolded as follows:
First, Obama mentioned a number of core US interests in the region. In his view these are: “Countering terrorism and stopping the spread of nuclear weapons; securing the free flow of commerce, and safe-guarding the security of the region; standing up for Israel's security and pursuing Arab-Israeli peace.”
Then he said, “Yet we must acknowledge that a strategy based solely upon the narrow pursuit of these interests will not fill an empty stomach or allow someone to speak their mind.”
While this is true enough, Obama went on to say that the Arabs have good reason to hate the US and that it is up to the US to put its national interests aside in the interest of making them like America. As he put it, “a failure to change our approach threatens a deepening spiral of division between the United States and Muslim communities.”
And you know what that means. If the US doesn't end the “spiral of division,” (sounds sort of like “spiral of violence” doesn't it?), then the Muslims will come after America. So the US better straighten up and fly right.
And how does it do that? Well, by courting the Muslim Brotherhood which spawned Al Qaeda, Hamas, Jamma Islamiya and a number of other terror groups and is allies with Hezbollah.
How do we know this is Obama's plan? Because right after he said that the US needs to end the “spiral of division,” he recalled his speech in Egypt in June 2009 when he spoke at the Brotherhood controlled Al Azhar University and made sure that Brotherhood members were in the audience in a direct diplomatic assault on US ally Hosni Mubarak.
And of course, intimations of Obama's plan to woo and appease the jihadists appear throughout the speech. For instance:
“There will be times when our short term interests do not align perfectly with our long term vision of the region.”
So US short term interests, like for instance preventing terrorist attacks against itself or its interests, will have to be sacrificed for the greater good of bringing the Muslim Brotherhood to power in democratic elections.
And he also said that the US will “support the governments that will be elected later this year” in Egypt and Tunisia. But why would the US support governments controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood? They are poised to control the elected government in Egypt and are the ticket to beat in Tunisia as well.
Then there is the way Obama abandoned US allies Yemen and Bahrain in order to show the US's lack of hypocrisy. As he presented it, the US will not demand from its enemies Syria and Iran that which it doesn't demand from its friends.
While this sounds fair, it is anything but fair. The fact is that if you don't distinguish between your allies and your enemies then you betray your allies and side with your enemies. Bahrain and Yemen need US support to survive. Iran and Syria do not. So when he removes US support from the former, his action redounds to the direct benefit of the latter.
I hope the US Navy's 5th Fleet has found alternate digs because Obama just opened the door for Iran to take over Bahrain. He also invited al Qaeda – which he falsely claimed is a spent force – to take over Yemen.
Beyond his abandonment of Bahrain and Yemen, in claiming that the US mustn't distinguish between its allies and its foes, Obama made clear that he has renounced the US's right to have and pursue national interests. If you can't favor your allies against your enemies then you cannot defend your national interests. And if you cannot defend your national interests then you renounce your right to have them.
As for Iran, in his speech, Obama effectively abandoned the pursuit of the US's core interest of preventing nuclear proliferation. All he had to say about Iran's openly genocidal nuclear program is, “Our opposition to Iran's intolerance – as well as its illicit nuclear program, and its sponsorship of terror – is well known.”
Well so is my opposition to all of that, and so is yours. But unlike us, Obama is supposed to do something about it. And by putting the gravest threat the US presently faces from the Middle East in the passive voice, he made clear that actually, the US isn't going to do anything about it.
In short, every American who is concerned about the security of the United States should be livid. The US President just abandoned his responsibility to defend the country and its interests in the interest of coddling the US's worst enemies.
AS FOR ISRAEL, in a way, Obama did Israel a favor by giving this speech. By abandoning even a semblance of friendliness, he has told us that we have nothing whatsoever to gain by trying to make him like us. Obama didn't even say that he would oppose the Palestinians' plan to get the UN Security Council to pass a resolution in support for Palestinian independence. All he said was that it is a dumb idea.
Obama sided with Hamas against Israel by acting as though its partnership with Fatah is just a little problem that has to be sorted out to reassure the paranoid Jews. Or as he put it, “the recent announcement of an agreement between Fatah and Hamas raises profound and legitimate questions for Israel.”
Hamas is a jihadist movement dedicated to the annihilation of the Jewish people, and the establishment of a global caliphate. It's in their charter. And all Obama said of the movement that has now taken over the Palestinian Authority was, “Palestinian leaders will not achieve peace or prosperity if Hamas insists on a path of terror and rejection.”
Irrelevant and untrue.
It is irrelevant because obviously the Palestinians don't want peace. That's why they just formed a government dedicated to Israel's destruction.
As for being untrue, Obama's speech makes clear that they have no reason to fear a loss of prosperity. After all, by failing to mention that US law bars the US government from funding an entity which includes Hamas, he made clear that the US will continue to bankroll the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Authority. So too, the EU will continue to join the US in giving them billions for bombs and patronage jobs. The Palestinians have nothing to worry about. They will continue to be rewarded regardless of what they do.
Then of course there are all the hostile, hateful details of the speech: He said Israel has to concede its right to defensible borders as a precondition for negotiations; He didn't say he opposes the Palestinian demand for open immigration of millions of foreign Arabs into Israel; He again ignored Bush's 2004 letter to Sharon opposing a return to the 1949 armistice lines, supporting the large settlements, defensible borders and opposing mass Arab immigration into Israel; He said he was leaving Jerusalem out but actually brought it in by calling for an Israeli retreat to the 1949 lines;
He called for Israel to be cut in two when he called for the Palestinians state to be contiguous;
He called for Israel to withdraw from the Jordan Valley – without which it is powerless against invasion – by saying that the Palestinian State will have an international border with Jordan.
Conceptually and substantively, Obama abandoned the US alliance with Israel. The rest of his words — security arrangements, demilitarized Palestinian state and the rest of it — were nothing more than filler to please empty-headed liberal Jews in America so they can feel comfortable signing checks for him again.
Indeed, even his seemingly pro-Israel call for security arrangements in a final peace deal involved sticking it to Israel. Obama said, “The full and phased withdrawal of Israeli military forces should be coordinated with the assumption of Palestinian security responsibility in a sovereign, non-militarized state.”
What does that mean “with the assumption of Palestinian security responsibility?”
It means we have to assume everything will be terrific.
All of this means is that if Prime Minister Netanyahu was planning to be nice to Obama, and pretend that everything is terrific with the administration, he should just forget about it. He needn't attack Obama. Let the Republicans do that.
But both in his speech to AIPAC and his address to Congress, he should very forthrightly tell the truth about the nature of the populist movements in the Middle East, the danger of a nuclear Iran, the Palestinians' commitment to Israel's destruction; the lie of the so-called peace process; the importance of standing by allies; and the critical importance of a strong Israel to US national security.
He has nothing to gain and everything to lose by playing by the rules that Obama is trying to set for him.
