When one is an acolyte of the Marxist/socialist, command-and-control approach to governance, nothing aggravates more than that which is beyond one's command and control. Couple that tendency with an all-encompassing narcissism and a facility for prevarication and what do you get? A United States president more than willing to put Israel's very existence on the line so as not to weaken his chances for re-election in 2012.
Last Thursday, Israeli newspaper Maariv, citing unnamed Western diplomatic and intelligence sources, claimed that the United States offered Israel advanced weaponry, such as bunker-busting bombs and refueling planes, in exchange for Israel's agreement not to attack Iranian nuclear sites prior to the 2012 election.
True or false? Try this Obama-esque equivocation from White House spokesman Jay Carney. "In the meetings the president had, there was no such agreement proposed or reached,'' Carney said. "We have obviously, as we've discussed, high-level cooperation between the Israeli military and the US military and at other levels, with other agencies within their government and our government."
Translation: of course such an agreement has been proposed, but we're keeping the president isolated from the blowback.
Can DNC attack-harridan Debbie Wasserman-Schultz be far behind? Back in May, when the president suggested that Israel retreat to its pre-1967 borders, Wasserman-Schultz complained the contention that such a naive calculation damaged Mr. Obama's support in the Jewish community was "a gross overstatement," further noting that "[E]veryone who is involved in advancing the cause of peace and everyone that calls themselves legitimately pro-Israel believes that we should not make Israel a partisan issue."
But Israel is a partisan issue. There are those Americans who believe support for the only real democracy and genuine ally we have in the Middle East should be unequivocal. And then there is the American left, more than willing to put Israel on the chopping block should anything they do impede Mr. Obama's chances in 2012. This "legitimately pro-Israel" administration and it fellow travelers kicked Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, and Moammar Gadaffi in Libya to the curb in pursuit of an Arab Spring that has done little more than empower Islamists throughout the region. The are pondering more of the same in Syria, despite the fact that none other than al Qaeda chieftain Ayman al-Zawahiri has thrown the terrorist organization's support behind the rebel elements fighting Bashar Assad's government. They have virtually ignored the odious coalition between Fatah and Hamas in the blind pursuit of a "two-state" solution they themselves undercut by making an Israeli settlement freeze in the West Bank a precondition of such talks.
Furthermore, in what ought to be considered the blackest of black eyes for this administration, Mr. Obama blew his chance to initiate the one legitimate alternative to military force, aka regime change, back in 2009 when he decided not to "meddle" in the Iranian election. Whether such a change would have come to pass in uncertain. But as Iranians fed up with the cabal of megalomaniacal mullahs and their apocalyptic, second coming of the Hidden Imam ambitions were dying in the streets, the president took a pass on the most propitious sequence of events since the Shah was overthrown in 1979.
Why? For the same reason that he insists on yet another merry-go-round of "negotiations" that do little more that give Iran the time it needs to acquire a bomb: a monumental hubris by which he continues to convince himself that peace is only a clever phrase away. Yet reality intrudes. A bastion of "conservatism," aka the New York Times, characterized Iran's latest election as a "farce." Why?
"Once again, the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij militia are busy preparing, as they have in the past, to drag men in uniform and their families to the ballot box with prepared lists of the votes they should cast. The apathy of Iranians today is rooted in the contested nature and violent aftershocks of the 2009 election. With most of the democratic opposition's prominent figures, including Mr. Moussavi and Mr. Karroubi, languishing in prison or under house arrest on trumped-up charges, reformist parties have announced that they do not recognize the legitimacy of a sham election."
It is in this context one must take the president's contentions that he "has Israel's back" and that he "doesn't bluff." Such pronouncements no doubt mollify leftists, including comatose Jewish Americans, for whom nothing short of a nuclear cloud over Tel Aviv would engender a reconsideration of their blind allegiance to this president and his party. It is a mollification quite suitable for those wearing rose-colored glasses, far removed from the combat zones that Israelis live with everyday.
Yet what satisfies American leftists comes up woefully short for a Jewish State that must measure it survival against the unbridled ambition of a president for whom nothing is as important as getting re-elected. Charles Krauthammer referred to such a moral imbalance as "asymmetrical."
"Monstrous" is far more appropriate.
