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Jewish World Review Sept. 25, 2009 / 7 Tishrei 5770 An enfeebled Obama By Caroline B. Glick
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
If Zbigniew Brzezinski had his way, the US would go to war against Israel to
defend Iran's nuclear installations. In an interview with the Daily Beast
website last weekend, the man who served as former President Jimmy Carter's
national security advisor said, "They [IAF fighter jets] have to fly over
our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch? We have to
be serious about denying them that right. If they fly over, you go up and
confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not."
Brzezinski has long distinguished himself as one of the most outspoken
Israel haters in polite circles in Washington. Under normal circumstances,
his remarks could be laughed off as the ravings of a garden variety
anti-Semite. But these are not normal circumstances. Brzezinski served as a
senior foreign policy advisor to President Barack Obama during his 2008
presidential campaign, and his views are not terribly out of place among
Obama's senior advisors in the White House. In an interview in 2002,
Samantha Powers, who serves as a senior member of Obama's national security
council, effectively called for the US to invade Israel in support of the
Palestinians.
The fact of the matter is that Brzezinski's view is in line with the general
disposition of Obama's foreign policy. Since entering office, Obama has
struck a hard line position against Israel while adopting a soft, even
apologetic line toward Iran and its allies.
For eight months, Obama has sought to force Israel to the wall. He has
loudly and repeatedly ordered the Netanyahu government to prevent all
private and public construction for Jews in Israel's capital city and its
heartland in order to facilitate the eventual mass expulsion of Jews from
both areas which he believes ought to become part of a Jew-free Palestinian
state.
Until this week, Obama conditioned the resumption of negotiations towards
peace between Israel and the Palestinians on such a prohibition of Jewish
building and so encouraged Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas to further radicalize
his positions towards Israel. Until Obama came around Abbas had no problem
negotiating with Israeli leaders while Jews were building homes and schools
and other structures in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. But with Obama
requiring a freeze of all such construction, Abbas made clear in an
interview with the Washington Post in May that he couldn't talk to Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu without looking like a sellout.
At the same time, Obama made no equivalent demands of the Palestinians. He
did not precondition talks on freezing illegal Arab construction in
Jerusalem, or dismantling the Aksa Martyrs terrorist group, or even simply
on setting aside the Palestinian demand that Israel release convicted
terrorists from its prisons. To the contrary, he has energetically supported
the establishment of a Palestinian unity government between Fatah and Hamas
- which the US State Department has since 1995 designated as a foreign
terrorist organization to which US citizens, including the US President are
required by law to give no quarter.
As for Iran, during his meeting with Netanyahu in May, Obama gave the clear
impression that the Iranian regime had until September to accept his offer
to negotiate the disposition of its nuclear installations. But it is now
September, and in its belated response to Obama's generous offer of
engagement, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime rejected the
terms of Obama's engagement out of hand. Obama did not retaliate by taking
his offer to negotiate off the table or - perish at the thought - working to
implement the sanctions he pledged would follow an Iranian rejection of his
open hand. Instead, Obama announced that he is sending a senior US official
to meet with the Iranians on October 1. And with that announcement, any
residual doubt that Obama is willing to live in a world in which Iran is
armed with nuclear weaponry dissipated completely.
In the meantime, in his address to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday and
in his remarks at his meeting with Netanyahu and Abbas on Tuesday, Obama
made clear that, in the words of former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton,
he has "put Israel on the chopping block." He referred to Israeli
communities located beyond the 1949 armistice lines as "illegitimate."
Moreover, Obama explained that Israel can no longer expect US support for
its security if it doesn't bow to his demand that it surrender all of the
land it has controlled since 1967.
Apparently it is immaterial to the US leader that if Israel fulfilled his
demand, the Jewish state would render itself defenseless against enemy
attack and so embolden its neighbors to invade. That is, it matters not to
Obama that were Israel to fulfill his demand, the prospect of an Arab war
against Israel would rise steeply. The fact that Obama made these deeply
antagonistic statements about Israel at the UN in itself exposes his
hostility towards the country. The UN's institutional hostility towards
Israel is surpassed only by that of the Arab League and the Organization of
the Islamic Conference.
So given Obama's positions towards Israel on the one hand and Iran and its
allies on the other, it seems clear enough that the logical endpoint of
Obama's policies would look something like Brzezinski's recommended course
of action. Moreover, Obama's foreign policy as a whole makes it fairly easy
to imagine him ordering the US military to open hostilities against a US
ally to defend a US adversary - even as that adversary goes out of its way
to humiliate Obama personally and the US in general.
Since Obama took office, he has been abandoning one US ally after another
while seeking to curry favor with one US adversary after another. At every
turn, America's allies - from Israel to Honduras, to Columbia, South Korea,
and Japan to Poland and the Czech Republic - have reacted with disbelief and
horror to his treachery. And at every turn, America's adversaries - from
Iran to Venezuela to North Korea and Russia - have responded with derision
and contempt to his seemingly obsessive attempts to appease them.
The horror Obama has instilled in America's friends and the contempt he has
evoked from its enemies have not caused him to change course. The fact that
his policies throughout the world have already failed to bring a change in
the so-called international community's treatment of the US has not led him
to reconsider those policies. As many Western Europeans have begun to openly
acknowledge, the man they once likened to the messiah is nothing but a
politician — and a weak, bungling one at that. Even Britain's Economist is
laughing at him. But Obama is unmoved by any of this, and as his speech at
the UN General Assembly made clear, he is moving full speed ahead in his
plans to subordinate US foreign policy to the UN.
Obama's stubborn insistence on advancing his feckless foreign policy in the
face of its already apparent colossal failure is of a piece with his
unswerving commitment to his domestic agenda in spite of its apparent
colossal failure. Obama's economic stimulus package failed to stimulate the
US economy and increased the US's economic deficit to heights undreamed of
by his predecessors. His nationalization of major US corporations like
General Motors, his cash-for-clunkers program to stimulate the US auto
industry and his massive encroachments on the banking and financial
industries have done nothing to increase economic growth in the US and
indeed, unemployment has reached generational highs. And yet, rather than
reconsider his belief in vastly expanding the size of the federal
government's control over the private sector, Obama has insistently pushed
for further governmental control over the US economy - most notably in his
drive to transform the US health care industry.
Both Obama's supporters and his opponents have claimed that his presidency
may well stand or fall on his ability to pass a health care reform law in
the coming months. But the fact of the matter is that if he succeeds in
passing such a law, his success will be a Pyrrhic victory because Obama has
promised that his plan will do the impossible, and therefore it will
unquestionably fail. Obama has promised that the health care plan he
supports will increase access to health services and improve their quality,
but simultaneously will not increase the size of the federal deficit or be
funded with tax hikes - and this is impossible. Obama's health care plan
will fail either to pass into law, or if it becomes law, it will fail to
live up to his promises.
Obama's failures in both foreign and domestic policy have weakened him
politically. His response to this newfound weakness has been to put himself
into the public eye seemingly around the clock. Apparently the thinking
behind the move is that while Obama's policies are unpopular, Obama's
personal popularity remains high, so if he personalizes his policies, it
will become more difficult for his opponents to argue against them.
But alasm this policy too has failed. The more Obama exposes himself, the
less he is able to leverage his personal celebrity into political power.
The question for the US's spurned allies in general -- and for Israel in
particular — is whether we are better off with a politically strong Obama or
a politically weak Obama. Given that the general thrust of his foreign
policy is detrimental to our interests, America's allies are best served by
a weak Obama. Already this week Israel benefitted from his weakness. It was
Obama's weakness that dictated his need to stage a photo-op with Netanyahu
and Abbas at the UN. And it was this need — to be seen as doing something
productive — that outweighed Obama's desire to put the screws on Israel by
preconditioning talks with a freeze on Jewish construction. So Obama was
forced to relent at least temporarily and Netanyahu won his first round
against Obama.
During a television interview this week Senator John McCain was asked for
his opinion of Brzezinski's recommendation that the US shoot down IAF jets
en route to Iran in a hypothetical Israeli airstrike against Iran's nuclear
installations. He responded with derisive laughter. And indeed, the notion
that the US would go to war against Israel to protect Iran's nuclear
installations is laughably absurd.
The weaker Obama becomes politically, the more readily Democrats and liberal
reporters alike will acknowledge that attacking US allies while scraping and
bowing before US foes is a ridiculous strategy for foreign affairs.
Certainly no self-proclaimed realist can defend a policy based on denuding
the US of its power and forsaking a US-based international system for one
dictated by its foes.
It is true that a weakened Obama will seek to win cheap points by putting
the squeeze on Israel. But it is also true that the weaker Obama becomes,
the less capable he will be of carrying through on his bullying threats
against Israel and against fellow democracies around the world.
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JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Comment by clicking here.
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