Poor Obama, he had it coming

Walter Russell Mead let’s him have it in The Dreamer Goes Down For The Count

    [..]
    But the last few weeks have cast him as the least competent manager of America’s Middle East diplomatic portfolio in a very long time. He has infuriated and frustrated long term friends, but made no headway in reconciling enemies. He has strained our ties with the established regimes without winning new friends on the Arab Street. He has committed our forces in the strategically irrelevant backwater of Libya not, as he originally told us, for “days, not weeks” but for months not days.

    Where he has failed so dramatically is in the arena he himself has so frequently identified as vital: the search for peace between Palestinians and Israelis. His record of grotesque, humiliating and total diplomatic failure in his dealings with Prime Minister Netanyahu has few parallels in American history. Three times he has gone up against Netanyahu; three times he has ingloriously failed. This last defeat — Netanyahu’s deadly, devastating speech to Congress in which he eviscerated President Obama’s foreign policy to prolonged and repeated standing ovations by members of both parties — may have been the single most stunning and effective public rebuke to an American President a foreign leader has ever delivered.

    Netanyahu beat Obama like a red-headed stepchild; he played him like a fiddle; he pounded him like a big brass drum. The Prime Minister of Israel danced rings around his arrogant, professorial opponent. It was like watching the Harlem Globetrotters go up against the junior squad from Miss Porter’s School; like watching Harvard play Texas A&M, like watching Bambi meet Godzilla — or Bill Clinton run against Bob Dole.

    The Prime Minister mopped the floor with our guy. Obama made his ’67 speech; Bibi ripped him to shreds. Obama goes to AIPAC, nervous, off-balance, backing and filling. Then Bibi drops the C-Bomb, demonstrating to the whole world that the Prime Minister of Israel has substantially more support in both the House and the Senate than the President of the United States.

    President Obama’s new Middle East policy, intended to liquidate the wreckage resulting from his old policy and get the President somehow onto firmer ground, lies in ruins even before it could be launched. He had dropped the George Mitchell approach, refused to lay out his own set of parameters for settling the conflict, and accepted some important Israeli red lines — but for some reason he chose not to follow through with the logic of these decisions and offer Netanyahu a reset button.

    As so often in the past, but catastrophically this time, he found the “sour spot”: the position that angers everyone and pleases none. He moved close enough to the Israelis to infuriate the Palestinians while keeping the Israelis at too great a distance to earn their trust. One can argue (correctly in my view) that US policy must at some level distance itself from the agendas of both parties to help bring peace. But that has to be done carefully, and to make it work one first needs to win their trust. Obama lost the trust of the Israelis early in the administration and never earned it back; he lost the Palestinians when he was unable to deliver Israeli concessions he led them to expect.

    The President is now wandering across Europe seeking to mend fences with allies (Britain, France, Poland) he had earlier neglected and/or offended; at home, his authority and credibility have been holed below the waterline. Everyone who followed the events of the last week knows that the President has lost control of the American-Israeli relationship and that he has no near-term prospects of rescuing the peace process. The Israelis, the Palestinians and the US Congress have all rejected his leadership. Peace processes are generally good things even if they seldom bring peace; one hopes the President can find a way to relaunch American diplomacy on this issue but for now he seems to have reached a dead end — and to have allowd himself to be fatally tagged as too pro-Israel to win the affection of the Europeans and Arabs, and too pro-Palestinian to be trusted either by Israel or by many of the Americans who support it.

    Internationally, this matters a great deal; domestically it matters even more. The President has significantly less capacity to act than he did a week ago. The Bin Laden dividend, already cruelly diminished by what The Daily Caller said was the administration’s “victory lap in a clown car”, is now history. The GOP, in trouble recently as voters recoil from what many see as Republican extremism on issues like Medicare and public unions, will be able to use the national security card in new and potent ways.

    As the stunning and overwhelming response to Prime Minister Netanyahu in Congress showed, Israel matters in American politics like almost no other country on earth. Well beyond the American Jewish and the Protestant fundamentalist communities, the people and the story of Israel stir some of the deepest and most mysterious reaches of the American soul. The idea of Jewish and Israeli exceptionalism is profoundly tied to the idea of American exceptionalism. The belief that God favors and protects Israel is connected to the idea that God favors and protects America.

    It means more. The existence of Israel means that the God of the Bible is still watching out for the well-being of the human race. For many American Christians who are nothing like fundamentalists, the restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land and their creation of a successful, democratic state after two thousand years of oppression and exile is a clear sign that the religion of the Bible can be trusted.

    Being pro-Israel matters in American mass politics because the public mind believes at a deep level that to be pro-Israel is to be pro-America and pro-faith. Substantial numbers of voters believe that politicians who don’t ‘get’ Israel also don’t ‘get’ America and don’t ‘get’ God. Obama’s political isolation on this issue, and the haste with which liberal Democrats like Nancy Pelosi left the embattled President to take the heat alone, testify to the pervasive sense in American politics that Israel is an American value. Said the Minority Leader to the Prime Minister: “I think it’s clear that both sides of the Capitol believe you advance the cause of peace.”

    President Obama probably understands this intellectually; he understands many things intellectually. But what he can’t seem to do is to incorporate that knowledge into a politically sustainable line of policy. The deep American sense of connection to and, yes, love of Israel limits the flexibility of any administration. Again, the President seems to know that with his head. But he clearly had no idea what he was up against when Bibi Netanyahu came to town.

    As a result, he’s taking another ride in the clown car, and this time it isn’t a victory lap. I hope I’m wrong, but I think the next intifada got a lot closer this week.

May 27, 2011 | 11 Comments »

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11 Comments / 11 Comments

  1. Crypticman writes:
    The worst president for Israel since Carter the Jew hater. His supposed intelligence reminds me of the Texan expression, “All hat, No cattle”

    Viit writes:
    Ted, Obama is a moron. He does not understand anything intellectually. He does not even have an intellect. He only has his narcissism.

    So true. And yet, 78% of American Jews voted for this nebbish, and over 50% still support him. The new Chairman of the DNC which will spearhead the most vicious campaign of falsehoods, racism and scaremongering between now and November 2012 is Debbie Wasserman-Shultz. Obama’s biggest fund-raisers are Michael Adler and Penny Pritzker who are working overtime even as we speak to convince American Jews and others that Obama is a strong supporter of Israel. Alan Dershowitz is still making excuses for Obama after making a fool of himself in 2008. No one knows what Ed Koch or Mort Zuckerman will do. Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod will help him in any way they can.

    So, don’t give me this “Poor Obama” bullshit. Get organized, speak out in your synagogues and temples, write letters to Jewish editors as well as other newspapers where the liberals express themselves. Let’s bury his political career once and for all because the US and the world cannot afford 4 more years of this dufus.

  2. “Also, future prophecy is in Ezekiel 37, 38 and 39. Some of which may already be taking place now.” Yes, it already took place. According to the Torah (Jewish tradition), a prophecy predicting good must take place or else the prophet is a false prophet. A prophecy predicting bad does not have to take place. Since Ez. 36 took place already, the prophecy of good, no more wars in Israel, will take place. See Biblical Prophecies in http://www.analysis-knowledge.com/msgTeaching.htm. The war of Gog and Magog was the 1973 war, if you read the details of the prophecy. E.g., 7 months of cleanup.

  3. Paul, and as of this week…………..Polish? Why does not any news media mention the deal between Bammy and Medevev/Putin (sp) where Bammy took down Poland’s nuclear defense system in favor of Russia? Why should Poland graciously invite the traitor to their country?

  4. Ted, Obama is a moron. He does not understand anything intellectually. He does not even have an intellect. He only has his narcissism.

  5. It is interesting to see the Democrats backpedal furiously to try and salvage something positive out of Obama’s catastrophic attempt to pressure Israel to give in to his naive foray into destroying the Jewish state. They are now painting his obvious defeat into something resembling the triumph of the ages. God forbid that the Democrats should see that they are supporting a man who has feet of clay. Even Obama’s mistakes are explained as actually planned strategy played with subtlety and cleverness. They will not succeed because it is obvious to everyone with any intelligence that Obama is in his heart not only anti-Israel but anti-america as well.

  6. I know things look depressing on the world stage at this point. But things also were very depressing when we look back at many events that took place in the past. However, there is one constant that took place over 3500 years ago and will never repeat itself, and that is when HaShem, translates literally as THE NAME, (G-d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob/Israel) made Himself heard to over 3 million people at one time at Sinai. The Law was given then and the prophets of Israel followed. The Jews became the control group of witnesses to HaShem in the laboratory of historical events. Every prophecy in the Hebrew Scriptures has so far been fulfilled and if any which still need to be fulfilled in the future are not so fulfilled then these Scriptures become false. Contained in future prophecy are Zechariah 8:23 and 14:9 which, respectfully, are as follows:

    Thus saith the LORD of hosts: In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold, out of all the languages of the nations, shall even take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying: We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.’

    And the LORD shall be King over all the earth; in that day shall the LORD be One, and His name one.

    Also, future prophecy is in Ezekiel 37, 38 and 39. Some of which may already be taking place now.

    Until then, I will trust in HaShem and not in what political leaders have planned to do, for these are under the influence of HaShem as is history. For example, how so is it apparently similar in history that there was a pharoah whose heart was hardened by HaShem and plagues followed in his land, and currently a leader of the USA and plagues being suffered in his land?

  7. The worst president for Israel since Carter the Jew hater. His supposed intelligence reminds me of the Texan expression, “All hat, No cattle”

  8. Obama is paving the way for world chaos; he isn’t the anti-christ. Watch for the rebuilding of the roman empire, the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem-these are signs to know where we are headed.

  9. “Where he has failed so dramatically is in the arena he himself has so frequently identified as vital: the search for peace between Palestinians and Israelis. His record of grotesque, humiliating and total diplomatic failure in his dealings with Prime Minister Netanyahu has few parallels in American history.”

    Keep your eye on this item. This is precisely where Obama plans to pull a rabbit out of the hat, and at Israel’s expense. Read:

    “White House is set for Obama-Netanyahu-Abbas summit. Israel is downbeat”

    Readers here have seen my eschatology. I expect the imminent coming of Messiah, preceded by the appearance of an anti-Messiah, whom I believe will probably be a U. S. President. It’s tempting, to think that Obama, hailed by many as a messiah, is that person. I am skeptical of this, and don’t think he is. He is part of a very disturbing trend, though, of increasingly anti-Israeli American Presidents, both Republican and Democrat. One “messianic” task that nearly all US leaders since the end of WWII have taken upon themselves, has been to try to broker a Middle East “Peace” — the kind of peace that ultimately involves the sound of bubbles coming to the surface from six million Israeli Jews drowning in the Mediterranean.

    Obama is different from the others, in that he was handed the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts, before even setting up his desk in the White House. That is a very ominous sign, of how eager the world body, especially the Scandanavian elite that hands out these prizes, is to cobble together a phony peace and proclaim its “messiah” — a messiah who will institute a New World Order, a “Millenium” (Tausandjahr Reich) of peace and security. As I said, I doubt that Obama is “THE ONE”; but those Norwegian scumbags who gave the same prize to Yasser Arafat think he is.

    My hope and prayer is that he — and they — will fail miserably and demonstrably, and that the American voters will take notice and dump him.

  10. Very Well Said:

    Being pro-Israel matters in American mass politics because the public mind believes at a deep level that to be pro-Israel is to be pro-America and pro-faith. Substantial numbers of voters believe that politicians who don’t ‘get’ Israel also don’t ‘get’ America and don’t ‘get’ God.