Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to cajole or shame the United States into adopting a more realistic strategy on Iran have earned him some poor reviews in the American press. The very idea that an Israeli leader should publicly seek to influence U.S. policy strikes some people as shocking. That he would do so in the midst of an election campaign has opened him up to criticism that he is seeking to influence the choice of the voters. The election tampering charge isn’t very plausible. Netanyahu knows America well enough to understand that any perceived intervention on his part would be a disaster and wouldn’t help Mitt Romney beat Obama. If anything, as Jeffrey Goldberg, a supporter of the president and critic of the prime minister, wrote on Friday in the Atlantic, Netanyahu seems sure Obama will beat Romney so he isn’t trying to change anyone’s vote so much as attempting to pressure the president into a policy shift.
But this argument isn’t so much about what will happen in November, as it is a not-so-subtle effort to silence a reasonable critique of American foreign policy by both Israelis and their American supporters. In doing so, some on the left are seeking not so much to bolster President Obama as they are to delegitimize the notion that the United States ought to be listening to Israel’s warnings about Iran in a manner highly reminiscent of the “Israel Lobby” conspiracy theories.
That was the point of Eric Lewis’ opinion piece published in the New York Times this past week that accused Romney of “outsourcing” decision making about making war to the Israelis. Lewis did not merely assert an absolute right of veto on the part of the United States over Israeli measures of self-defense against the Iranian nuclear threat. He also disparaged Romney’s criticism of Obama’s disdain for Israeli views as marking him as being somehow in thrall to Netanyahu or pro-Israel Americans. From this point of view, it isn’t just that Israel should shut up about a U.S. policy that seems guaranteed to result in a nuclear Iran. It’s that Americans who share Netanyahu’s belief that Obama’s continued reliance on failed diplomacy and ineffective sanctions are, in effect, manipulating U.S. policy to suit Israeli rather than American interests.
The conceit of The Israel Lobby by academics Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer was an attempt to label the vast bipartisan pro-Israel coalition in this country as a conspiracy. It traded on traditional anti-Semitic stereotypes about Jews manipulating the great powers from behind the scenes and ignored the basic fact that Americans back the Jewish state not because of any lobby but because they are deeply sympathetic to the country and believe its battle against deadly enemies is one in which the United States must take a side.
By pointing out Obama’s mistakes, such as the years wasted on engagement with Tehran, the delay in enforcing sanctions as well as the president’s seeming to have a greater interest in restraining Israel than in pressuring Iran, Romney isn’t undermining U.S. sovereignty. Nor is his willingness to allow Israel the right to defend itself a case of the tail wagging the dog.
In doing so, Romney is merely reasserting a traditional American position. Israel has, after all, often ignored American requests to adopt a passive stance toward its enemies. Rather than waiting for Arab armies to attack in June 1967, Israel struck first and prevented a catastrophe. The Israelis didn’t get American permission to destroy Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981 nor did it do so in 2007 when it took out Bashar Assad’s nuclear project. Though some American leaders didn’t understand it at the time, those decisions enhanced rather than diminished America’s security. While Iran is a much bigger and more dangerous target, does any serious person really expect Israel to stand by and merely wait passively for the ayatollahs to reach their nuclear goal while President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton continue to pretend that diplomacy has a chance?
The U.S.-Israel alliance is strong enough to withstand such disagreements. But that is because most Americans understand that contrary to Lewis’s formulation or the assumptions of Walt and Mearsheimer, Israel is itself a sovereign power and not an American protectorate solely dependent for its life on the whims of an indifferent president.
Iran is just as much of a threat to the U.S. as it is to Israel. Americans who respect Israel’s right of self-defense, as well who think that our president ought not to be snubbing our sole democratic Middle East ally the way Obama has done, are not doing Netanyahu’s bidding so much as they are standing up for a more rational U.S. foreign policy.
President Obama came into office proclaiming that the closeness with Israel that hallmarked the Bush administration’s attitudes in the Middle East was a mistake. He has carried out his promise to create more distance between the two countries on a host of issues and the result has been the utter collapse of the peace process and no progress toward stopping Iran. The current breach with Israel is a result of the breakdown in trust that Obama has caused. Romney is right to assert that we need to return to greater cooperation with Israel and restore that trust. Pointing this out doesn’t show his weakness but common sense that the president clearly lacks.
Becaue distancing itself from Israel has worked out so very well for Obama in the middle east. n nThe trouble with Obama is that come a second term, he will view the failure as 'not enough of his brilliant plan' and double down (as people like to say these says) on the distancing from Israel, just as he has doubled down on every failing policy that has come into his head. n nIt almost seems as if Obama has come to believe the affirmative action categorization of himself as uniquely brilliant and insightful.
What is it about Obama that makes people veer off into psychoanalysis to explain his failings? I am as guilty as the next. It is a curious [phenomenon, and in and of itself speaks to the existence of a pathology. n n
"What is it about Obama that makes people veer off into psychoanalysis to explain his failings?" nThis has been an American "sport" since the days of Nixon as far as I am aware. We've psychologized several presidents to find the reasons for they're real and imagined failings, including Reagan, Clinton, and Bush, Jr.
Because Obama is delusional about his abilities, and the force of his delusions is so great that he can make those around him share in them. But eventually reality asserts itself.
Because he wrote two autobiographies about himself.
You can be sure that the NY Times has bought into the Walt/Meersheimer argument. See Ms. Dowd's ugly article in today's Times. I've always regarded Dowd as snarky, but her screed in today's Times drips with the worst, most divisive vitriol about the "neo-cons" (code words for you know who) ever published outside of Der Sturmer and begs the question as to when Obama and Clinton will take any responsibility for their failed foreign policy. When will Dowd stop blaming Bush? After four years of Obama, her defense of Obama/Clinton is made by attacking Netanyahu, Romney, Ryan, Cheney, Bush, and a host of others on the right. This hostility is not merely intellectually dishonest, it's contemptible on every level. It's the typical dog-whistle accusations leveled by the left when they fail. Not putting U.S. Marines in Libya to protect our embassy, consulates and missions was not a George Bush policy nor can the open accusation that the attack on Ambassador Stevens was the result of a high level intelligence leak be attributed to the "neo-cons". Weakness on Iran won't stop them from getting the bomb. Every tyrant in history smells weakness just as sharks smell blood. How's all that working out in your head Maureen?
The left, MSNBC, the academy, bff's of the White House, and Team O itself will no doubt stoop to Walt & Moonshiener moonbat anti-Semitism when it suits them, ignoring that their constant bowing and scraping to the wounded sensitivities of the Arab street seems to already have closed the deal on outsourcing American foreign policy to the Arab Lobby. Their shrieks and moans of distress are not from moral dudgeon about the Jews or fear of the Jews or even hatred of the Jews but the accompanying back ground noise of their calculated decision to bend over to the sheiks of Araby and the mullahs of Tehran. n nThat said, Bibi has been running his act for one year and he's reached the outer limits to get through the thick noggin of our likely two-term winner, Obama, even with his latest round of appearances on American TV. n nRomney's master strategy, such as it is, permits a willful inconsistency on his personal messaging and stamina of attack, counting on the power of ad blitzes to cut through the environmental clutter. This is working? Is he even a factor moving forward? Can the debate rescue his campaign from its latest drift southward? n nAnd he hasn't pledged any action to intervene in Iran until it begins to build a bomb either. n n
The question is no longer what Obama will do to prevent a fully deployed Iranian nuclear missile system, it's what do we do when they have one. Obama cut a deal with Iran that bargained he would do nothing about Iran if Iran didn't test a nuclear weapon before November. Not that Obama had any intention of intervening anyway. But the bargain was made and accepted. And come November or early 2009 when Iran announces it has a nuke. Obama will announce he's ready to talk to them, not with any preconditions, but with any preconditions the Iranians insist on…because now they have the stature of a nuclear state. n nMake no mistake. Iran's Shahab-3 can reach the Balkans and eastern Europe and southern Russia today let alone all of Saudi Arabia, Israel and Cairo. Getting a nuclear weapon that weighs less than 1000kg stuck on one and getting it to work sufficiently well for an airburst of roughly the power of the Hiroshima bomb is simply a problem of acquiring the right electronics and applying known principles of nuclear engineering and chemistry and making everything work together. China, India and Pakistan all did it. North Korea has probably done it or done most of it. South Africa did it (build an aircraft deliverable bomb). n nIt's a foregone conclusion that Iran can and will do this. So the question is, what then? What non action wishy washy word smithing blithering useless nonsense will Obama whip up in response?
Well, imo with a test the Israeli red line is societally breached, and if Iran just has one nuke, or two, or five at that time all bets are off. Use it or lose it logic has its own imperative. That would be a very foolish bargain for young master Obama to make and I am not personally convinced he is that immature.
Funny – when the Israel Lobby was in favor, muslim violence was at a minimum. n nWhen Muslim Brotherhood is in favor, muslim violence is at a high – but not nearly as high as they intend to ratchet up, all the more.