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Star Parker will be the SIRC President's Dinner Speaker, Feb 17, 2014. (See 1 below.)
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Divided government is often messy but it is also protective against runaway and omnipotent government, Obama style!
Government is often best which governs least ( See 2 below.)
This is a recent LTE I submitted on this subject:
Government that governs least is often best. Therefore, a partial shutdown may not be all bad and it can allow citizens the opportunity to assess and possibly realize how oppressive, how costly, how intrusive and how inefficient big government has become.
Essential services will remain, checks for essentials will continue and some pain will be felt but often with abnegation comes a new reality.
When dealing with a monarch instead of a president, divided government is healthy.
When dealing with a monarch instead of a president, divided government is healthy.
Meanwhile, I find it quite perverse that Obama will negotiate with Iran but not some duly elected members of Congress. Perhaps Obama believes it is good politics to shut government down because, as is his usual want, he will have someone,other than GW, to blame.
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- When it comes to Iran going nuclear the ever hawkish Bolton has concerns Obama is being played! (See 3 and 3a and 3b below.)
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Dick
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1)Compromise In Politics? No, ConfrontBy Star Parker
Among the pearls of wisdom conveyed in Ecclesiastes is that everything has its time.
"A time to be born ... a time to die, a time to plant ... a time to uproot, a time for war ... a time for peace."
The founders of the United States drew up a Constitution to serve as an operating manual, in its checks and balances, for peaceful, deliberative government. They understood human nature and set up a system in which competing interests would have to give in. Compromise, they understood, is a necessary lubricant for the wheels of government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" to turn and allow us to move forward.
But compromise is meant for those competing interests -- not for the core principles of the country that the Constitution exists to protect and secure. When the principles of our free nation under God are under siege, it is a time for confrontation, not compromise.
The other day, I watched a short video of Rafael Cruz's presentation at a July event by FreedomWorks, a Washington, D.C.-based political action committee that usually supports tea party causes. Cruz is the father of the junior Republican senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, who is now in the spotlight.
Rafael Cruz is a self-made businessman, an immigrant from Casto's Cuba, and a born-again evangelical Christian pastor.
Most of the time when someone cites the Declaration of Independence, they mention its famous opening sentences. But Rafael Cruz, in this brilliant summation of what America is about, quoted the signers' closing words: "... with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."
Take a walk around Washington any evening. The fancy restaurants are filled with lobbyists and legislators.
Try to find anyone who would pledge his or her life and fortune for anything.
The American government is no longer about doing the business of the people while preserving and protecting the principles of a free nation. The principles of freedom have been drowned out by the power elite -- whether politicians, big business lobbyists or big media -- who use their influence to feather their own beds.
A Jeremiah-like Ted Cruz, ringing the alarm that things are not OK, is an annoyance to the comfortable establishment. As the class of "haves" protects its interests, it assures a dismal future for our young and for our poor. Its members play while the ship sinks.
There is no more powerful predictor of economic growth and prosperity than a nation's economic freedom.
The just-published "2013 Economic Freedom of the World Report" shows that the United States has dropped from being the world's second-most economically free in 2000 to number 17 in this year's report. The report comes from the Fraser Institute, a Canadian public-policy think tank.
Our economic arteries are clogged because of excessive government, which is dragging us down and ruining everything that made America great.
The Affordable Care Act is just the latest huge incursion into the freedom of American citizens in a long process of deterioration.
Every year, the trustees of Social Security and Medicare provide a report showing the dismal financial state of these huge entitlement programs. And every year, the political class in Washington ignores it, not having the courage to fight for real change, while things continue to worsen.
Now big business, unions and Congress are getting themselves exempted out of Obamacare, ready to leave the rest of country to be shepherded into socialized medicine.
But Sen. Cruz, like his brave father Rafael, is putting his life, his fortune and his sacred honor on the line to save our beleaguered country.
When Abraham Lincoln took office, he still believed that slavery could be purged from America through deliberation. But soon it became clear that only war would do it.
America must stand by Cruz and other brave tea party Republicans who understand the message of Ecclesiastes: that there is a time for everything, and that today is the time for confrontation.
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2)An Obama-Cruz Shutdown
The President is refusing to compromise on anything.
Washington is careening toward a partial government shutdown on Tuesday amid its usual synthetic outrage. As the partisan cries grow in volume, it's worth a few minutes to sort the truth from the nonsense.
The first thing to keep in mind is that this does not mean "anarchy," in Harry Reid's typically subtle formulation, or even a complete government shutdown. Functions deemed "essential" will continue, and it's debatable how many of those really are crucial to daily American life. The military will be paid, Social Security checks will still go out. Many Americans will be inconvenienced, but tens of millions may come to realize how easily they can do without most of the vast federal Leviathan.
A second reality is that both parties are responsible for getting to this point. Americans chose a divided government in 2010 and again in 2012, electing House Republicans as a check on Democrats whose undiluted liberalism alarmed millions of voters when they ran the entire government in 2009-2010. The inability to compromise now is rooted in the wide disagreement about the role of government that now separates the two parties.
We've criticized GOP Senator Ted Cruz for his strategy to make defunding ObamaCare a requirement of funding the rest of government. He and his allies know that Mr. Obama can never agree to that, and even millions of Americans who oppose ObamaCare don't agree with his shutdown ultimatum. It risks political damage for the House and Senate GOP in 2014 even as Mr. Cruz builds his email list for 2016.
Yet it takes two to tangle, and Mr. Obama is as much to blame for the partisan pileup as Mr. Cruz. This is a President who is eager to negotiate with dubiously elected Iranian mullahs but can't abide compromise with duly elected leaders of Congress. He refuses to negotiate at all over an increase in the federal debt limit, claiming this has never happened. Like so much that Mr. Obama says, he knows this is false. His own staff suggested the spending sequester during the 2011 debt debate, and Democratic Congresses have used the debt limit to extract concessions from Republican Presidents.
Mr. Obama also refuses to bend on any part of ObamaCare—except when he unilaterally announces bending in his own political interest. He decided on his own, and contrary to the plain text of the law, to delay for a year the business mandate to provide insurance for employees. He also unilaterally delayed verifying the income of Americans seeking subsidies. He did this to pile more people into the ObamaCare exchanges, lest they fail, and to limit the harm to job creation before 2014.
Yet now he'd rather see the government shut down than accept the ObamaCare compromises that House Republicans have put in their latest government funding bill. He refuses to delay the law for a year though his own actions reveal it is not ready for prime time. And he won't even accept repeal of the medical-device tax that 79 Senators, including 33 Democrats, are on record as supporting. The tax is already hurting innovation and sending jobs overseas.
Mr. Obama's refusal to negotiate suggests that he wants a shutdown—either over the budget or debt limit. His agenda is dying on Capitol Hill, because of Senate Democrats as well as House Republicans. With his approval rating down and independents leaning toward the GOP, he figures his only chance to salvage a second-term domestic legacy is to restore Nancy Pelosi as Speaker in his final two years. His best opening to make that happen is a shutdown or debt-limit crisis that he will try to blame on Republicans. A shutdown is as much his strategy as it is Mr. Cruz's.
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3)How Rouhani Is Playing Obama
His conciliation strategy is intended to buy time and legitimacy to build a bomb.
By
Monday ends the worst month of the Obama presidency. The Syrian diplomatic and political debacle was bad enough, but last week at the United Nations President Obama embarked on a campaign for "progress" with Iran that will prove much more dangerous for American interests. Just as Vladimir Putin had played him for a fool over Syria, Mr. Obama was initially snubbed by Iranian President Hasan Rouhani despite frantic White House efforts to produce a handshake.
On Friday, after a brief Obama-Rouhani telephone call, Mr. Obama said that a "comprehensive solution" between countries is possible. And this despite Thursday's meeting of foreign ministers, including Secretary of State John Kerry and Iran's Mohammad Javad Zarif, that was little more than a photo-op.
Mr. Obama's yearning fits smoothly into the PR campaign by President Rouhani, Iran's new frontman. The campaign has included showcasing Iran's only Jewish parliamentarian (a staunch opponent of Israel), offering dialogue with the West (catnip for the gullible), and a soothing Washington Post op-ed.
Separating propaganda, hype and disinformation from Iran's real objectives is critical. Unfortunately, too many already believe that Mr. Rouhani's election marked a substantive rather than a cosmetic policy shift. Instead of blustering about Iran's nuclear program and threatening Israel, Mr. Rouhani has sounded conciliatory, carefully using his first weeks in office to cloud Western memories of his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
President Rouhani knows what his Western audience wants to hear. As Iran's chief nuclear negotiator in 2003-05, he followed the same playbook, and it worked. By offering what appeared to be concessions, Iran acquired precious time and legitimacy to overcome scientific and technical glitches in its nuclear-weapons program, particularly at Isfahan's uranium-conversion facility.
In articles and speeches, Mr. Rouhani boasted of his successes. In 2006, he taunted the West, saying "by creating a calm environment, we were able to complete the work on Isfahan." Even such open disdain has not triggered enough U.S. or European embarrassment to protect against being suckered again. Iran's "moderates" are now targeting the Obama soft spot in Western opposition to Iran's nuclear program, and methodically exploiting it.
In marked contrast, Mr. Obama enters negotiations gravely weakened by his Syria failures. Yet soothed by his media choir, he seems unaware how deeply he has been wounded. He confidently believes he is well-placed to treat with the ayatollahs despite a series of foreign-policy failures.
Over the past year, Mr. Obama failed in his stated objective to oust Syria's Assad regime from power; failed to impress Assad that his "red line" against using chemical weapons was serious; failed to exact retribution when that red line was crossed; failed to rally anything but small minorities in either house of Congress to support his position; and failed to grasp that agreements with the likes of Syria and Russia prolong, rather than solve, the chemical-weapons problem.
Mr. Obama is inverting Dean Acheson's maxim that Washington should only negotiate from strength. Even if there were some prospect that Iran could be talked out of its nuclear-weapons program, which there is not, the White House approach is the wrong way to start discussions. Given the president's palpable unwillingness to use the military to enforce his Syria red line—let alone to answer the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi terrorist attack—and his paucity of domestic political support, Iran's ayatollahs know that the president's "all options on the table" incantation regarding their nuclear program carries no weight.
Iran undoubtedly wants relief from international sanctions, which have exacerbated decades of incompetent economic policy. But there is no evidence that the sanctions have impaired Iran's nuclear or ballistic-missile programs. Instead, Tehran has increased its financial and military assistance to Assad and Hezbollah in Syria.
Mr. Rouhani's strategy is clear: Lower the rhetorical temperature about the nuclear issue; make temporary, cosmetic concessions, such as allowing inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency at already-declared nuclear sites; and gain Western acceptance of its "reactor-grade" uranium enrichment. Once that goal is attained, Iran's path to nuclear weapons will be unobstructed and within Tehran's discretion.
Iran will demand in return that international sanctions be eased, focusing first on obtaining small reductions to signal Western "good faith." Mr. Obama and Europe already seem eager to comply. Western diplomats will assert defensively that these concessions are merely a matter of "sequencing," and that they expect substantive Iranian concessions. They will wait a long time. Mr. Rouhani fully understands that once sanctions start rolling back, restoring them will be hard, perhaps impossible, absent a major provocation.
Mr. Rouhani will not supply one. Instead, he will continue making on-again, off-again gestures seducing the West into protracted negotiations. Meanwhile, Iran's nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs will proceed unimpeded in unknown, undisclosed locations. This was his 2003-05 playbook.
Extended negotiations will enable Mr. Obama to argue that a "diplomatic process" is under way to resolve the Iranian nuclear threat. No phrase is more beloved at the State Department. Mr. Obama will then use this process on Israel to prevent pre-emptive military action against Iran's nuclear program.
In time, even Hamlet came to understand that "one may smile, and smile, and be a villain." Maybe one day President Obama will figure it out.
Mr. Bolton is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of "Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad" (Simon & Schuster, 2007).
3a)Netanyahu can't hope to regain Israel’s voice in headlong US-Russian-Iranian nuclear diplomacy
Although a face to face between prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama is obviously worthwhile for both countries, the prime minister need not expect to deflect the president from his pursuit of a nuclear deal with Tehran when they meet Monday, Sept. 30. At best, he will come away with soothing assurances that any new intelligence he presents will be seriously looked into. But he can’t hope for real substance for two reasons:
The wily supreme leader Ali Khamenei in fact sees his chance of turning the situation around to the Islamic Republic’s advantage. He grasps that the American and Russian leaders are in a hurry to reap the results of the Obama administration’s decision to forswear a military option for bringing Tehran round. Their headlong quest for quick results gives Tehran the leverage for extracting previously withheld concessions on its nuclear program, such as extreme flexibility on its enriched uranium production and stocks.
The tempo of the negotiations, dictated by Obama and Putin, will make it easy to blur facts and the present minor concessions as major achievements.
Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov are already smoothing the way for the understandings to come with messages that fit neatly into world media headlines. Sunday, Kerry echoed President Rouhani’s of a nuclear accord achievable in months. At the same time, mindful of the Obama-Netanyahu meeting Monday, the US Secretary said in a TV interview, “A bad deal is worse than no deal,” while US Ambassador Dan Shapiro assured Israelis in a radio interview Monday morning “The US and Israel share the same goals – preventing a nuclear-armed Iran.”
Meanwhile, last month’s buzz phrase for the Syrian accord, which called for “a credible military option” to underpin the understanding, has been quietly mothballed in both the Syrian and Iranian WMD context.
One of odder ones was the sight of hundreds of lobbyists from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee fanning out on Capitol Hill to lobby members of the House and Senate to support Obama's plan to launch what Secretary of State John Kerry called "unbelievably small" air strikes against empty regime controlled buildings in Syria.
AIPAC officials claimed they were doing this because the air strikes would help Israel.
But this claim was easily undone. Obama and Kerry insisted nothing the US would do would have any impact on the outcome of the Syrian civil war. This was supposed to be the strikes' selling point. But by launching worthless strikes, Obama was poised to wreck America's deterrent posture, transforming the world's superpower into an international joke.
In harming America's deterrent capabilities by speaking loudly and carrying an "unbelievably small" stick, Kerry and Obama also harmed Israel's deterrent posture.
Israel's deterrence relies in no small measure on its strategic alliance with the US.
Once the US is no longer feared, a key part of Israeli deterrence is removed.
Obama did not announce his intention to bomb empty buildings in Syria in order to impact the deterrent posture of either the US or Israel. He probably gave them little thought. The only one who stood to gain from those strikes - aside from Syrian President Bashar Assad who would earn bragging rights for standing down the US military - was Obama himself.
Obama wanted to launch the unbelievably small strikes to prove that he wasn't lying when he said that Syria would cross a red line if it used chemical weapons.
So if the strikes were going to harm the US and Israel, why did AIPAC dispatch its lobbyists to Capitol Hill to lobby in favor of them? Because Obama made them.
Then, with hundreds of AIPAC lobbyist racing from one Congressional office to the next, Obama left them in a lurch. He announced he was cutting a deal with Russia and had decided not to attack Syria after all.
What did AIPAC get for its self-defeating efforts on Obama's behalf? Obama is now courting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in the hopes of making a deal that Iran will use as cover for completing its nuclear weapons program.
Such a deal may well involve ending sanctions on Iran's oil exports and its central bank - sanctions that AIPAC expended years of effort getting Congress to pass.
And that's not all. Monday, as Obama meets with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the UN General Assembly in New York, Vice President Joe Biden will become the highest ranking administration official to date to address the J Street conference.
J Street was formed in order to weaken AIPAC, and force it to the left.
Sending Biden to headline at the J Street conference is an act of aggression against AIPAC. It also signals that Obama remains committed to strengthening the anti-Israel voices at the margins of the American Jewish community at the expense of the pro- Israel majority.
The question is why is AIPAC cooperating with Obama as he abuses it? Why didn't they just say no? Because they couldn't.
AIPAC is not strong enough to stand up to the president of the United States, particularly one as hostile as Obama.
Not only would it have suffered direct retaliation for its refusal, Obama would have also punished Israel for its friend's recalcitrance.
In a recent interview with The Times of Israel, Eitan Haber, late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin's closest aide, made the case that Israel is powerless in the face of White House pressure. Haber claimed that only when a person becomes prime minister does he understand "to what extent the State of Israel is dependent on America. For absolutely everything... we are dependent on America."
Haber noted that the US can collapse every aspect of Israel. From this he concluded that no Israeli leader can stand up to Washington.
Haber recalled a menacing conversation Rabin had with then-US secretary of state James Baker during which Baker became angry at Rabin.
"America is right even when it is wrong," Baker admonished the Israeli leader.
Haber warned that Israel cannot stand up to the US even when the US is behaving in a manner that endangers Israel. "It's possible that they don't understand the region and that they are naïve and stupid," he said, "But they are America."
Haber said rightly that that the White House can destroy Israel's economy, defenses and diplomatic position any time it wishes. In the past administration threats of economic sanctions or delays in sending spare parts for weapons platforms have been sufficient to make Israeli leaders fall into line.
For the past five and a half years Obama has dangled US diplomatic support at the UN Security Council over Israel's head like the Sword of Damocles.
Obama forced Netanyahu to make concession after concession to secure his veto of the PLO's request that the UN Security Council accept "Palestine" as a member state two years ago. Netanyahu's sudden support for Palestinian statehood and his 10- month long freeze on Jewish property rights in Judea and Samaria were the most public concessions he was forced to cough up.
The timing of the EU announcement that it was barring EU entities from forging ties with Israelis that operate beyond the 1949 armistice lines was revealing in this context. The EU announced its economic sanctions the day Kerry announced the start of negotiations between Israel and the PLO. The message to Israel was absolutely clear: Do what we order you to or you will face economic sanctions far more damaging.
Obama's appointment of Samantha Power to serve as US ambassador to the UN was another signal of ill intent. Power became the object of fear and fury for Israel supporters after YouTube videos of a 2002 interview she gave went viral during the 2008 elections. In that interview Power called for the US to send "a mammoth protection force" to Israel to protect the Palestinians from "genocide" that Israel would commit. That is, she called for the US to go to war against Israel to protect the Palestinians from a nonexistent threat maliciously attributed to the only human rights-respecting state in the Middle East.
And just after his reelection, Obama sent Power to the epicenter of international blood libels and attempts to outlaw the Jewish state.
Obama's deal with Russia President Vladimir Putin was also a signal of aggression, if not an act of aggression in and of itself. The ink had barely dried on their unenforceable agreement that leaves Iran's Arab client in power, when Putin turned his guns on Israel. As Putin put it, Syria only developed its chemical arsenal "as an alternative to the nuclear weapons of Israel."
The Obama administration itself has a track record in putting Israel's presumptive nuclear arsenal on the international diplomatic chopping block. In 2010 Netanyahu was compelled to cancel his participation in Obama's nuclear weapons conference when he learned that Egypt and Turkey intended to use Obama's conference to demand that Israel sign the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty.
Obama's behavior demonstrates his bad intentions. So Israelis and our American supporters need to ask whether Haber is right. Is Israel powerless in the face of a hostile US administration? Let's reconsider Obama's decision to turn to AIPAC for support on Syria.
Why did he do that? Why did he turn to an organization he wishes to harm and order it to go to the mattresses for him? Obama turned to AIPAC primarily because AIPAC could help him. AIPAC hold sway on Capitol Hill.
Where does that power come from? Does AIPAC wield influence because it frightens members into submission? No.
AIPAC is powerful because it serves as a mouthpiece for the overwhelming majority of Americans. The American people support Israel. If something will help Israel, then most Americans will support it. Obama wanted Congressional support. He couldn't win it on the merits of his feckless plan. So he sent in AIPAC to pretend that his strikes would benefit Israel.
Obama's demand that AIPAC help him is reality's response to Haber's protestations of Israeli powerlessness.
Israel's alliance with the US, upon which it is so dependent, was not built with America's political or foreign policy elites. Saudi Arabia's alliance with the US was built on such ties.
Israel's alliance with the US is built on the American public's support for Israel. And although Obama himself doesn't need to face American voters again, his Democratic colleagues do. Moreover, even lame duck presidents cannot veer too far away from the national consensus.
It is because of this consensus that Obama has to send signals to Israel - like the EU sanctions, and Power's appointment to the UN - rather than openly part ways with Jerusalem.
Obama is powerful. And he threatens Israel. But Israel is not as powerless as Haber believes. Israel can make its case to the American public.
And assuming the American people support Israel's case, Obama's freedom of action can be constrained.
For instance, on the Palestinian issue, Haber said Israel has to accept whatever Obama says. But that isn't true. Netanyahu can set out the international legal basis for Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria and explain why Israel's rights are stronger than the Palestinians'.
The government can expose the fact that the demographic doomsday scenario that forms the basis of support for the two-state formula is grounded on falsified data concocted by the PLO.
Demography, like international law, is actually one of Israel's strategic assets.
Then there is Iran.
Were Netanyahu to defy Obama and order the IDF to attack Iran's nuclear installations, he would be pushing the boundaries of the US political consensus less than Menachem Begin did when he ordered the air force to destroy Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981. He would also be pushing the US consensus less than Rabin did when he embraced Yasser Arafat in 1993.
No, Israel cannot say no to everything that Obama wishes to do in the Middle East.
And yes, it needs to make concessions where it can to placate the White House.
AIPAC's decision to take a bullet for Obama on Syria may have been the better part of wisdom.
Israel has three-and-a-half more years with Obama.
They won't be easy. And there is no telling who will succeed him. But this needn't be a catastrophe. Our cards are limited. But we have cards. And if we play them wisely, we will be fine.
3a)Netanyahu can't hope to regain Israel’s voice in headlong US-Russian-Iranian nuclear diplomacy
Although a face to face between prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama is obviously worthwhile for both countries, the prime minister need not expect to deflect the president from his pursuit of a nuclear deal with Tehran when they meet Monday, Sept. 30. At best, he will come away with soothing assurances that any new intelligence he presents will be seriously looked into. But he can’t hope for real substance for two reasons:
1. Obama can no longer turn away from the path he has set himself, because he is driven by the ambition to prove that international problems can be solved without military force and solely by good will, negotiations and diplomacy.
2. After convincing Russian President Vladimir Putin that he means what he says and is not planning to repeat his “mistaken” US military involvement in the 2011 Libyan civil war, Obama removed a major obstacle in the way of a US-Russian deal on Syria’s chemical weapons.
It is now the turn for Washington, Moscow and Tehran to continue the process with a parallel consensual deal on Iran’s nuclear program.
It is now the turn for Washington, Moscow and Tehran to continue the process with a parallel consensual deal on Iran’s nuclear program.
From Tehran, the US and Russia might be seen to be preparing to impose a nuclear settlement on Iran in the same way as they did for Syrian President Bashar Assad’s chemical weapons. However, if that is what is contemplated, Obama and Putin will soon find Tehran is not Damascus, and the ayatollah in Tehran is a completely different proposition from his Syrian ally.
The wily supreme leader Ali Khamenei in fact sees his chance of turning the situation around to the Islamic Republic’s advantage. He grasps that the American and Russian leaders are in a hurry to reap the results of the Obama administration’s decision to forswear a military option for bringing Tehran round. Their headlong quest for quick results gives Tehran the leverage for extracting previously withheld concessions on its nuclear program, such as extreme flexibility on its enriched uranium production and stocks.
Netanyahu may hear Obama promising to stand by his demand that Iran stop enriching uranium and export the bulk of its stocks, or surrender it for destruction like Syria’s chemical weapons. But he will also discover that Obama and Putin are running ahead together at breakneck speed after dropping Israel by the wayside. And the negotiations with Iran behind the scenes - and continuing in Geneva on Oct. 15 with the five Security Council powers and Germany - are more than likely to produce a compromise unacceptable to Israel.
Iran and Russia will have to make some concessions for a deal. But so too will the United States, and the uranium enrichment issue will loom large in the way of an agreement unless Washington gives way on that point. Obama has already covered much of this ground in secret contacts with Tehran.
The tempo of the negotiations, dictated by Obama and Putin, will make it easy to blur facts and the present minor concessions as major achievements.
Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov are already smoothing the way for the understandings to come with messages that fit neatly into world media headlines. Sunday, Kerry echoed President Rouhani’s of a nuclear accord achievable in months. At the same time, mindful of the Obama-Netanyahu meeting Monday, the US Secretary said in a TV interview, “A bad deal is worse than no deal,” while US Ambassador Dan Shapiro assured Israelis in a radio interview Monday morning “The US and Israel share the same goals – preventing a nuclear-armed Iran.”
Meanwhile, last month’s buzz phrase for the Syrian accord, which called for “a credible military option” to underpin the understanding, has been quietly mothballed in both the Syrian and Iranian WMD context.
3b)Obama's power and its limitations
By Caroline B. Glick
Sending Biden to headline far-left confab is an act of aggression against Israel and her supporters
US President Barack Obama's rapidly changing positions on Syria have produced many odd spectacles.
One of odder ones was the sight of hundreds of lobbyists from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee fanning out on Capitol Hill to lobby members of the House and Senate to support Obama's plan to launch what Secretary of State John Kerry called "unbelievably small" air strikes against empty regime controlled buildings in Syria.
AIPAC officials claimed they were doing this because the air strikes would help Israel.
But this claim was easily undone. Obama and Kerry insisted nothing the US would do would have any impact on the outcome of the Syrian civil war. This was supposed to be the strikes' selling point. But by launching worthless strikes, Obama was poised to wreck America's deterrent posture, transforming the world's superpower into an international joke.
In harming America's deterrent capabilities by speaking loudly and carrying an "unbelievably small" stick, Kerry and Obama also harmed Israel's deterrent posture.
Israel's deterrence relies in no small measure on its strategic alliance with the US.
Once the US is no longer feared, a key part of Israeli deterrence is removed.
Obama did not announce his intention to bomb empty buildings in Syria in order to impact the deterrent posture of either the US or Israel. He probably gave them little thought. The only one who stood to gain from those strikes - aside from Syrian President Bashar Assad who would earn bragging rights for standing down the US military - was Obama himself.
Obama wanted to launch the unbelievably small strikes to prove that he wasn't lying when he said that Syria would cross a red line if it used chemical weapons.
So if the strikes were going to harm the US and Israel, why did AIPAC dispatch its lobbyists to Capitol Hill to lobby in favor of them? Because Obama made them.
Obama ordered AIPAC to go to Capitol Hill to lobby for the Syria strikes. He did so knowing that its involvement would weaken public support for AIPAC and Israel. Both would be widely perceived as pushing the US to send military forces into harm's way to defend Israel.
Then, with hundreds of AIPAC lobbyist racing from one Congressional office to the next, Obama left them in a lurch. He announced he was cutting a deal with Russia and had decided not to attack Syria after all.
What did AIPAC get for its self-defeating efforts on Obama's behalf? Obama is now courting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in the hopes of making a deal that Iran will use as cover for completing its nuclear weapons program.
Such a deal may well involve ending sanctions on Iran's oil exports and its central bank - sanctions that AIPAC expended years of effort getting Congress to pass.
And that's not all. Monday, as Obama meets with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the UN General Assembly in New York, Vice President Joe Biden will become the highest ranking administration official to date to address the J Street conference.
J Street was formed in order to weaken AIPAC, and force it to the left.
Sending Biden to headline at the J Street conference is an act of aggression against AIPAC. It also signals that Obama remains committed to strengthening the anti-Israel voices at the margins of the American Jewish community at the expense of the pro- Israel majority.
The question is why is AIPAC cooperating with Obama as he abuses it? Why didn't they just say no? Because they couldn't.
AIPAC is not strong enough to stand up to the president of the United States, particularly one as hostile as Obama.
Not only would it have suffered direct retaliation for its refusal, Obama would have also punished Israel for its friend's recalcitrance.
In a recent interview with The Times of Israel, Eitan Haber, late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin's closest aide, made the case that Israel is powerless in the face of White House pressure. Haber claimed that only when a person becomes prime minister does he understand "to what extent the State of Israel is dependent on America. For absolutely everything... we are dependent on America."
Haber noted that the US can collapse every aspect of Israel. From this he concluded that no Israeli leader can stand up to Washington.
Haber recalled a menacing conversation Rabin had with then-US secretary of state James Baker during which Baker became angry at Rabin.
"America is right even when it is wrong," Baker admonished the Israeli leader.
Haber warned that Israel cannot stand up to the US even when the US is behaving in a manner that endangers Israel. "It's possible that they don't understand the region and that they are naïve and stupid," he said, "But they are America."
Haber said rightly that that the White House can destroy Israel's economy, defenses and diplomatic position any time it wishes. In the past administration threats of economic sanctions or delays in sending spare parts for weapons platforms have been sufficient to make Israeli leaders fall into line.
For the past five and a half years Obama has dangled US diplomatic support at the UN Security Council over Israel's head like the Sword of Damocles.
Obama forced Netanyahu to make concession after concession to secure his veto of the PLO's request that the UN Security Council accept "Palestine" as a member state two years ago. Netanyahu's sudden support for Palestinian statehood and his 10- month long freeze on Jewish property rights in Judea and Samaria were the most public concessions he was forced to cough up.
The timing of the EU announcement that it was barring EU entities from forging ties with Israelis that operate beyond the 1949 armistice lines was revealing in this context. The EU announced its economic sanctions the day Kerry announced the start of negotiations between Israel and the PLO. The message to Israel was absolutely clear: Do what we order you to or you will face economic sanctions far more damaging.
Obama's appointment of Samantha Power to serve as US ambassador to the UN was another signal of ill intent. Power became the object of fear and fury for Israel supporters after YouTube videos of a 2002 interview she gave went viral during the 2008 elections. In that interview Power called for the US to send "a mammoth protection force" to Israel to protect the Palestinians from "genocide" that Israel would commit. That is, she called for the US to go to war against Israel to protect the Palestinians from a nonexistent threat maliciously attributed to the only human rights-respecting state in the Middle East.
And just after his reelection, Obama sent Power to the epicenter of international blood libels and attempts to outlaw the Jewish state.
Obama's deal with Russia President Vladimir Putin was also a signal of aggression, if not an act of aggression in and of itself. The ink had barely dried on their unenforceable agreement that leaves Iran's Arab client in power, when Putin turned his guns on Israel. As Putin put it, Syria only developed its chemical arsenal "as an alternative to the nuclear weapons of Israel."
The Obama administration itself has a track record in putting Israel's presumptive nuclear arsenal on the international diplomatic chopping block. In 2010 Netanyahu was compelled to cancel his participation in Obama's nuclear weapons conference when he learned that Egypt and Turkey intended to use Obama's conference to demand that Israel sign the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty.
Obama's behavior demonstrates his bad intentions. So Israelis and our American supporters need to ask whether Haber is right. Is Israel powerless in the face of a hostile US administration? Let's reconsider Obama's decision to turn to AIPAC for support on Syria.
Why did he do that? Why did he turn to an organization he wishes to harm and order it to go to the mattresses for him? Obama turned to AIPAC primarily because AIPAC could help him. AIPAC hold sway on Capitol Hill.
Where does that power come from? Does AIPAC wield influence because it frightens members into submission? No.
AIPAC is powerful because it serves as a mouthpiece for the overwhelming majority of Americans. The American people support Israel. If something will help Israel, then most Americans will support it. Obama wanted Congressional support. He couldn't win it on the merits of his feckless plan. So he sent in AIPAC to pretend that his strikes would benefit Israel.
Obama's demand that AIPAC help him is reality's response to Haber's protestations of Israeli powerlessness.
Israel's alliance with the US, upon which it is so dependent, was not built with America's political or foreign policy elites. Saudi Arabia's alliance with the US was built on such ties.
Israel's alliance with the US is built on the American public's support for Israel. And although Obama himself doesn't need to face American voters again, his Democratic colleagues do. Moreover, even lame duck presidents cannot veer too far away from the national consensus.
It is because of this consensus that Obama has to send signals to Israel - like the EU sanctions, and Power's appointment to the UN - rather than openly part ways with Jerusalem.
Obama is powerful. And he threatens Israel. But Israel is not as powerless as Haber believes. Israel can make its case to the American public.
And assuming the American people support Israel's case, Obama's freedom of action can be constrained.
For instance, on the Palestinian issue, Haber said Israel has to accept whatever Obama says. But that isn't true. Netanyahu can set out the international legal basis for Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria and explain why Israel's rights are stronger than the Palestinians'.
The government can expose the fact that the demographic doomsday scenario that forms the basis of support for the two-state formula is grounded on falsified data concocted by the PLO.
Demography, like international law, is actually one of Israel's strategic assets.
Then there is Iran.
Were Netanyahu to defy Obama and order the IDF to attack Iran's nuclear installations, he would be pushing the boundaries of the US political consensus less than Menachem Begin did when he ordered the air force to destroy Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981. He would also be pushing the US consensus less than Rabin did when he embraced Yasser Arafat in 1993.
No, Israel cannot say no to everything that Obama wishes to do in the Middle East.
And yes, it needs to make concessions where it can to placate the White House.
AIPAC's decision to take a bullet for Obama on Syria may have been the better part of wisdom.
Israel has three-and-a-half more years with Obama.
They won't be easy. And there is no telling who will succeed him. But this needn't be a catastrophe. Our cards are limited. But we have cards. And if we play them wisely, we will be fine.
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