All the scrambling over this is just a sideshow.
‘Chickensh*t-gate’: Obama administration proves it’s
got nothing
Many are misreading the import of the Obama
administration’s latest essay in narrative placement: the “chickensh*tting of Bibi.”
There is no doubt that the administration wanted to defame Benjamin Netanyahu: to
undermine his reputation as a national leader, impugn him and his policies. The administration has been in high
dudgeon over Netanyahu and Israel for some time now, flouncing around in
impotent fury like Scarlett O’Hara looking for a vase to throw.
Team Obama is caught, after all, between the stark
realities that keep Israel’s security policy constant, and the constancy of
American public support for Israel.
Making substantial moves against Israel is a non-starter for an American
president; Congress may not agree on much, but on that, it would act with unity and swift purpose – and the urgent
support of the people
No form of diplomatic pressure, moreover – no matter
how publicly uncomfortable – is going to make Netanyahu give in on Israel’s
security and her hope of a future.
Nothing short of giving Israel over to destruction is acceptable to the
Palestinian Arab leadership as the price of a “peace deal,” and Netanyahu will
never agree to that just to make John Kerry or Barack Obama happy.
So the Obama administration snipes from the shadows
(and puts on passive-aggressive spectacles like the ridiculous shunning of Israeli Defense Minister Moshe
Yaalon during his recent visit).
John Podhoretz aptly characterized an earlier incident in the
administration’s series of pokes and jabs as a “hissy fit.”
What we’ve been seeing is a very prolonged hissy fit; I almost feel a
certain solicitude for the psychological effort it must take to keep it
going.
Earnest observers in the U.S. and Israel are taking it
seriously. A policy rift between the U.S. and Israel makes it hard,
probably impossible, to confront Iran effectively – that’s the grown-up sense
they are trying to make of it all.
And they’re not wrong about that.
But they’re behind the train, standing on the tracks as it pulls away in
the distance.
Reality has moved beyond the old touchstones: U.S.
power, a “concert of nations” addressing common security threats, maneuvers to
line up “global” principles that every nation will feel itself bound to live
by. The status quo defined by those
characteristics is collapsing. In
important ways, it has already collapsed, as evidenced by the utter, unaddressed
chaos in Syria and Iraq, and the unaddressed Russian invasion of
Ukraine.
Hoist on
its own petard
Now, this has all come to a head at this particular
time largely because the Obama administration thinks it’s a foreign policy to
place a narrative in the media about Bibi being a chickensh*t. The posture represented by that form of
sophomoric intrigue is deeply irresponsible, morally vicious, and
anti-Westphalian, and it has come out in Obama’s policies over and over and over
again. The entire world, outside of
Western academia and the editorial boards of the left-wing media, already knows that Obama is not an
honestly-intentioned Westphalian statesman.
That knowledge has material consequences. Chief among them is the collapse of the
global order – and that collapse has follow-on consequences in turn. Looking just at factors relating to the
Iran problem, two of the most important consequences are a loss of prestige for
the UN, and a loss of cohesion and purpose in NATO.
The UN today is as toothless as the League of Nations.
The tooth in the UN was all America, and now “America” has stepped out of her
role. The UN has been unable to
have any effect on problems like the civil wars in Libya and Syria, or the
Russian invasion of Crimea. It
recently had to simply abandon one of its oldest peacekeeping missions, in the
Golan Heights – literally flee the 40-year-old mission under attack – because
the U.S. made no effort to protect the mission and keep it going.
We’re not waiting for the UN to become toothless; it
already has. This means that
nothing the UN does will be binding.
And that has implications for all kinds of things, from the deterring of
Iran to the meaning of a UN resolution declaring a Palestinian state, and the
force of UN-sponsored treaties on climate change, small arms, and land
mines. Not respecting UN policies
is shortly to become a land-office business.
Observers in status quo nations don’t see that clearly
because we aren’t motivated to. But others are (e.g., Iran, Russia,
ISIS), and still others soon will be.
They see the same things about NATO too: the same absence of policy
consensus and meaningful enforcement; the same ultimate
toothlessness.
I can’t overstress the extent to which Obama himself
signed the death warrant for diplomatic shibboleths like the “two-state
solution” – ironically, Kerry’s consuming passion – by withdrawing American
power from the global order. There
are no levers to press now. Team
Obama, by its own hand, has now got nothing to hold over Bibi.
It has nothing to hold over anyone else either, and it
has signaled that clearly with its little “chickensh*t” snit-fit, faithfully
relayed through Jeffrey Goldberg’s article. That’s not what the administration meant
to do, but that’s the effect it has actually had.
The hour is
late
Where we should be taking this seriously is less
in conventional, backward-looking policy advocacy, and more in attention to our
most fundamental interests – each nation’s, and each family’s and
individual’s. That, I note, is what Bibi has actually been doing throughout his current
tenure. As geopolitical
earthquakes keep erupting, he’s been focusing on what Israel absolutely requires
to defend herself, survive, and have a viable future.
Friends, I urge you most strongly to do the same. Everyone may not be ready to hear this yet. But the hour is late. Nothing is propping up the international order now. The Pax Americana-era mechanisms of multilateral diplomacy and consultation have become nothing more than a convenience for the bad guys – like radical Iran, which uses “nuclear talks” to string the West along and play for time. (Inside our nations, the same can be said of too many of our tools of “soft socialist” government: that they are used by an embedded political class to string along the people.)
Bibi isn’t the only foreign political leader who doesn’t plan to let misguided fealty to a broken order become a suicide pact that takes down his nation. He’s just the one the Obama administration tries to insult by hurling obscenities at him.
It’s important to say this in closing. Neither Israel nor the United States has a future as an inward-looking “fortress.” The nature of freedom, opportunity, prosperity – hope – is to affect others, and take strength from that as well as giving it. America will never stop needing like-minded allies, the free exchange of ideas, and peaceful trade. Neither will Israel.
Cleaning up our own house in America doesn’t mean turning our back on the world. It’s necessary first because we cannot live without integrity and character. But it’s necessary equally because America must either infect the world with hope, or be infected by the world with despair. And we cannot avoid the latter as long as our president is someone who tries to get his way by calling the most stalwart of allies and defenders of Western freedom a chickensh*t.
J.E.
DyerFriends, I urge you most strongly to do the same. Everyone may not be ready to hear this yet. But the hour is late. Nothing is propping up the international order now. The Pax Americana-era mechanisms of multilateral diplomacy and consultation have become nothing more than a convenience for the bad guys – like radical Iran, which uses “nuclear talks” to string the West along and play for time. (Inside our nations, the same can be said of too many of our tools of “soft socialist” government: that they are used by an embedded political class to string along the people.)
Bibi isn’t the only foreign political leader who doesn’t plan to let misguided fealty to a broken order become a suicide pact that takes down his nation. He’s just the one the Obama administration tries to insult by hurling obscenities at him.
It’s important to say this in closing. Neither Israel nor the United States has a future as an inward-looking “fortress.” The nature of freedom, opportunity, prosperity – hope – is to affect others, and take strength from that as well as giving it. America will never stop needing like-minded allies, the free exchange of ideas, and peaceful trade. Neither will Israel.
Cleaning up our own house in America doesn’t mean turning our back on the world. It’s necessary first because we cannot live without integrity and character. But it’s necessary equally because America must either infect the world with hope, or be infected by the world with despair. And we cannot avoid the latter as long as our president is someone who tries to get his way by calling the most stalwart of allies and defenders of Western freedom a chickensh*t.
CDR, USN (Ret.)
Hemet, CA
dyerbag@msn.com
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