Just back from Athens Art Tour to GMOA and two private collections.
I believe all had a good time, were surprised by the quality of art they experienced and the tour went better than the election if you are a raving liberal.
Leaving for Tampa.
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Election Wave that Obama never admitted hit his shore! Too arrogant to admit the slap-down!!!!
After all that change which led to no hope Obama will now seek to make himself relevant. If he tries to do so by being thuggish he will end by making himself thoroughly disliked.
He better tread carefully but I doubt he will.
Obama just cannot resist drinking his own bath water!!!
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Can Obama lose gracefully? (See 1, 1a and 1b below.)
Numb and dumb? (See 1c below.)
Numb and dumb? (See 1c below.)
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Iran continues to throw sand in the gears. (See 2 below.)
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Dick
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1) How to Lose, and Win, Graciously
1) How to Lose, and Win, Graciously
If the president’s party loses big on Tuesday, as appears likely, much of the loss will be due to 3 C’s—competence, coherence and credibility. Competence: The administration has shown little talent for or focused interest in running the federal government well, and has managed th executive agencies very poorly. Coherence: The administration has been unable to explain persuasively the reasoning behind its current priorities (global warming? really?) or its decisions in areas from foreign policy to Ebola in a way that has allowed the public to follow their thinking. Credibility: If you want your doctor you can keep your doctor, red lines, it’s highly unlikely Ebola will come here, there’s not a smidgen of corruption in the IRS, etc. It’s a terrible thing when a president loses his credibility.
Absolute failure in any one of the 3 C’s will bring trouble, and when you fail in all three you get very big, even historic trouble.
All this explains nostalgia for a certain former president. You can get quite a conversation going in any room in Manhattan now by comparing Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter, with everyone defending Carter.
It will mean a great deal how the president handles all this.
Two weeks ago we lauded Bill Clinton’s handling of his 1994 midterm drubbing. In a news conference the next day he accepted responsibility and suggested the political meaning of the election was that the public was more conservative than he was. That took some guts and humility. Cleverness, too. By convincing those on his left that they had to face reality, he opened the door for his historic compromises with the Contract Congress. This in turn gave Clinton room to breathe and gather his forces.
I wasn’t able to quote a lot of George W. Bush’s press conference the evening after the second term midterm thumpin’ in which his party lost 30 House seats, six Senate seats, and control of both chambers.
But in his news conference you hear the sound of an old graciousness that has eluded President Obama, who has long said there’s little he can do with obstructionists in Congress who are stuck on hating him.
For those who think Mr. Obama has faced unusual levels of rhetoric, consider this question from a reporter to Mr. Bush:
“Thank you, Mr. President. With all due respect, Nancy Pelosi has called you incompetent, a liar, the emperor with no clothes and, as recently as yesterday, dangerous. How will you work with someone who has such little respect for your leadership and who is third in line to the presidency?”
This is how Mr. Bush replied. “I’ve been around politics a long time. I understand when campaigns end and I know when governing begins. And I’m going to work with people of both parties. You know, look, people say unfortunate things at times. But if you hold grudges in this line of work, you’re never going to get anything done. And my intention is to get some things done, and soon—we’re start visiting with her Friday with the idea of coming together.”
That is the sound of political graciousness. It would be nice to hear it from Mr. Obama on Wednesday.
As for the Republicans, if they have as good a Tuesday night as they increasingly expect, it would be nice if they were gracious and big-minded, and a real relief if they didn’t look smug and get that curled smile that says “We got it back, baby, and Harry Reid will soon be out of that pretty office.” Wouldn’t it be nice if they were happy but modest, and made it clear they’re aware of the fix we’re in? “It is not about me and it’s not, my hardworking friends, about you. It’s about this thing we were given called America. It needs our help. So we are happy tonight, but it’s work in the morning, and the kind of work that is the most important, saving our country.”
Or, more pointedly: “I know what this is. It’s the base giving the party one last chance. They are telling us we better do something. That’s the meaning I take. and I mean to come through.”
1a) Since 2008, Obama Has Lost 69 House Seats, 13 Senate Seats
Since he first took office, President Barack Obama has legislatively decimated the Democratic Party, losing more seats under his watch than any president since Harry Truman.
From 2008, Democrats have forfeited at least 69 House seats, and that number could increase as unsettled midterm election results are announced, The Hill reports.
Add to that the loss of 13 Democratic seats in the Senate during Obama's six years in the White House, and it becomes obvious that Democratic candidates who blame Obama's negative influence for their loss have a legitimate complaint.
David Krone, chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told The Washington Post, "The president's approval rating is barely 40 percent. What else more is there to say? He wasn't going to play well in North Carolina or Iowa or New Hampshire. I'm sorry. It doesn't mean that the message was bad, but sometimes the messenger isn't good."
David Gergen, adviser to four presidents and now a CNN political analyst, told CNN, "It should be sobering for the White House that when Obama took office, Democrats had 59 senators and 256 House members. After Tuesday night, they will likely have 45-47 senators and some 190 House members. That is one of the biggest slides in congressional seats of any modern president.
"Surely, [Obama's] White House has to take serious responsibility — and look for ways to leave a better legacy.
"The verdicts in the 2014 midterm races make it clear that President Barack Obama cannot simply blame Democratic losses on a bad map."
Democrats under Truman lost 83 House seats in two midterms in 1946 (55 seats) and 1950 (28 seats). After that, Eisenhower dropped 66 seats in l954 and l958, but no president since Truman has equaled Obama's loss of seats, the Rothenberg Political Report states.
"Are the Democrats' losses due to the increasingly partisan nature of our elections and the makeup of the past two Senate classes," Rothenberg asked, "or is the president at least partially to blame because he failed to show leadership on key issues and never successfully moved to the political center?
"The answer, most obviously, is, 'Yes.'"
John Dickerson, chief political correspondent for Slate, wrote, "The Republican Party had one strategy it followed in nearly every Senate race: Run against the president. It paid off. Democratic candidates couldn't get out of the president's shadow. The 2014 election was less an endorsement of Republican ideas and more a rejection of a president in the sixth year of his presidency."
And The Washington Post commented, "Years of midterm election losses have shown that the president's party, and his popularity, are deeply important indicators of chances in midterm elections. This year, the weight of Obama's standing proved too much for many Democrats."
In today’s foreign-relations climate, even a Jimmy Carter would seem like a godsend.
A weak, lame-duck Barack Obama, who has now eroded a once exuberant Democratic party, will be even weaker in the next two years.
What is dangerous about Younesi’s cruel dismissal of Obama is not that an Iranian high official despises an American president, but that such venom follows an extraordinary effort by Barack Obama to reach out to Tehran. Obama ran in 2008 on a promise to hold face-to-face talks with the Iranian theocracy. He kept mum in the spring of 2009 when a million anti-Khomeini Iranians hit the streets. He leaked occasional unhappiness at any Israeli idea of preempting the Iranian nuclear program. He ignored his own serial “deadlines,” demanding that Iran stop further uranium enrichment. He lifted the comprehensive sanctions to stop enrichment. And he is now stealthily courting Iran as a de facto ally in the American war against the Islamic State.
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2) Iran Blocks Inspections, Hobbling Nuclear Deal
WASHINGTON—Iran’s government continues to stonewall United Nations weapons inspectors, complicating the Obama administration’s effort to forge a nuclear agreement with Tehran by a late-November deadline, according to U.S. and U.N. officials.
The State Department announced Friday that Secretary of State John Kerry would meet with his Iranian counterpart, Javad Zarif, in Oman on Nov. 9-10 in a bid to support the nuclear negotiations. The final talks will then shift to Vienna.
U.S. officials have voiced guarded optimism that a deal could be reached by the November deadline. Absent that, they have suggested the diplomatic process could be extended.
State Department officials didn’t respond to questions about how Mr. Amano’s assessment might complicate the Vienna talks. But A number of the U.S.’s closest Middle East allies, particularly Israel and Saudi Arabia, have voiced concerns in recent weeks that the U.S. and P5+1 have softened their negotiating position with Iran.
Riyadh will “also seek to have the same terms in developing our nuclear energy,” the Saudi royal said during a speech in Washington this week.
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3) Why is the Obama Administration Provoking Israel?
A senior Obama administration official recently went on the record with journalist Jeffrey Goldberg in calling Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “chickenshit.” A second senior official also went on the record calling Netanyahu a “coward” on the issue of Iran’s nuclear threat.
BY ROGER L. SIMON
If Democratic senators who had been his stalwart supporters — voting with him over 97 percent of the time — campaigned on not wanting any connection with Obama, one can imagine what our enemies abroad think of him. If Obama adopted policies of neo-appeasement when he enjoyed a 65 percent approval rating in 2009, one can imagine his approach when his positives dip below 40 percent. But there is no need for imagination when Ali Younesi, the senior adviser to the Iranian president, bluntly dismisses Obama as “the weakest of U.S. presidents” and sums up his six years in office as “humiliating.”
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Given Obama’s ending of the special relationship with Israel (has a high Obama-administration official ever dubbed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, Vladimir Putin, or Kim Jong-un “a chickens—” or trashed any of them in an open-mike putdown?), there is little likelihood that any state will move to preempt the Iranians’ effort to develop a bomb (for the politically obsessed Obama there would be no political upside any longer, given that after today there will be no more general elections during his tenure).
Accordingly, it is more than likely that in the next two years Iran will become a nuclear power. That fact will immediately change the Middle East. Iran’s getting a bomb will ensure that Iraq and Lebanon become its clients, encourage radical Shiite movements in the Gulf, and push Gulf monarchies and other Sunni “moderates” into even more openly supporting radical terrorist Sunni groups, as they pool resources to obtain their own nuclear deterrent.
By deliberately having a high administration official leak disparaging slurs against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — from slandering the war veteran as “a chickens—” to claiming that he suffers from Asperger’s syndrome (in the spirit of the president’s earlier joke about the Special Olympics) — the Obama administration is green-lighting more Palestinian adventurism in the Middle East. Just as our special relationship with Recep Erdogan encouraged Turkey to whip up hostility, so too the constant harangue against Israel will convince militants that another intifada or rocket barrage against Israel is tacitly not opposed by the Obama administration. After all, if two high officials can, without consequences, smear Netanyahu to a useful journalist, why would not radical Palestinians believe that with a wink and a nod the Obama administration is supporting their “cause” against a supposedly cowardly and autistic Israel?
By cutting defense expenditures to a projected level below 3 percent of GDP, while demonstrating his lack of interest in NATO, Obama has all but ended the alliance. When Americans spend less than 3 percent on defense, then the Europeans will assume that they can regress to 1 percent.
Our special relationship with Recep Erdogan’s Islamist Turkey has been all one-way. Turkey no longer extends its bases for joint American-Turkish contingencies, but it has invoked Article IV of the NATO charter three of the four times it has been used. Any war that Turkey might find itself in, whether real or rhetorical, against Greece, Greek Cyprus, Armenia, the Kurds, or Israel would find most Americans sympathizing with Turkey’s enemies. No American would wish to die on behalf of an Islamist Turkey crushing weaker and mostly pro-Western peoples.
Privately, NATO members must hope that if Vladimir Putin moves against the Baltic States, none of the bullied will cite Article V. If they did, the call probably would not be honored, at least to any great degree, which would lead to the formal end of NATO. Indeed, NATO’s future is more in Putin’s hands than in Obama’s.
The new triangulation with Putin by once staunchly pro-Western nations in Eastern Europe is a reminder that friendship with Putin is preferable to neglect from Obama. The Eastern Europeans provide a blueprint of what to expect of our Pacific allies. An increasingly aggressive China will take the role of Putin, assuming that such a window of opportunity for profitable aggrandizement may not open again. Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and perhaps even Australia and New Zealand will keep asking Washington for reassurances that they remain safely within the U.S. defense perimeter and that their seas and airspace will remain sacrosanct. If these reassurances are not given, they will quietly consider either going nuclear or making the necessary concessions to China to salvage a Potemkin autonomy.
The complete pullout from Iraq in 2011, with the subsequent empowerment of the Islamic State, is a model for Afghanistan in 2015. The Taliban is currently as quiet as the Islamic State was in 2010, patiently waiting to overwhelm the country and dish out the customary savage reprisals. Such a reckoning will cement the notion that partnering with the U.S. is about the most dangerous thing that a Middle Eastern country can do.
The deer-in-the-headlights Obama reactions to the Ebola crisis and the so-called lone-wolf Islamist terrorists remind the world that a particular sort of political correctness overrides American realism about even our national security. When the U.S. government seems less concerned with protecting its own citizens and more worried about losing its politically correct multicultural fides, then most of our enemies assume, even if wrongly, that they are not going to face an angry, unpredictable, and devastating response to their aggression.
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Trivialities can become iconic: Obama once shut down U.S. travel into Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport, but did not curtail U.S. connecting flights to and from Liberia — the common denominator not being security worries as much as multicultural politics. Just as the Obama administration was confused about the Islamic State (from “jayvee” to “manageable problem” to existential threat), confused about the Free Syrian Army (from “amateurs” to the foundation of our ground strategy against the Islamic State), confused about post-American Iraq (“secure,” “stable,” “greatest achievement”), and confused about Ebola (little chance of infection in the U.S., no need to restrict flights, need to restrict arrivals to targeted airports, no quarantines, some quarantines, etc.), so too our enemies will believe that we are confused about their intent and actions.
The danger from Islamist terror in the next two years is not that Obama might not reply strongly to it (he might well, given a Republican Congress and overwhelming public sentiment), but that he has clumsily given indications (the apology tour, the mythographies about Islam, the loud remonstrations with Israel, the surreal euphemisms about jihadist violence, the inane commentary about Islamism from CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, the outreach to Hamas, etc.) that he envisions “root causes” that prompt understandable violence. Such impressions, again whether legitimate or not, will only encourage more terrorist attempts in the upcoming two years, which will ultimately demand risky responses, in a fashion that transcends Obama’s preference for drone executions.
Six years of open borders, coupled with fraudulent statistics about enforcement, have changed the American Southwest. For all practical purposes, there is no longer a secure southern border or a definable notion of U.S. citizenship. For the sake of adding to the pool of future Obama constituents, we are losing the very notion of an autonomous United States with a sacrosanct legal system and national sovereignty. If Mexico were shorn of its romance, then its behavior would be seen more as that of a belligerent than as that of a friend. Its policy toward the United States is patently anti-American: ship across the border its own impoverished peoples against U.S laws, thereby winning billions of dollars in remittances, transferring billions of dollars in social-services costs from Mexico to the U.S., creating a powerful pro-Mexican expatriate constituency inside the U.S., and avoiding needed social reform at home by exporting potential dissidents. Unless we end illegal immigration, adopt meritocratic, ethnically blind, and more limited legal immigration, and return to assimilationist practices, a new buffer state neither quite Mexican nor quite American will replace much of the present landscape of the Southwest.
Finally, an additional $7 trillion of national debt, continued $600 billion–plus budget deficits after tax hikes and sequestration, huge increases in entitlements and government regulations, and the failed stimuli of zero interest rates, big deficits, and government expansion all suggest to enemies that at some point soon the U.S. will not have the wherewithal to defend its interests even if it wished to. Or is it worse than that? The move to European social democracy by intent ensures that there will be fewer dollars for defense, as in Europe — and that, in the eyes of the Obama administration, is a good thing, consistent with an overriding therapeutic view of human nature. Hard powers like the Chinese, Iranians, jihadists, and Russians all welcome the new U.S. preference for EU-like soft power.
After the election we will be entering one of the most dangerous phases of U.S. foreign relations since the late 1970s.The problem is not just that there are no Ronald Reagans around, but that even a Jimmy Carter would now seem like a godsend.
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of The Savior Generals.
1c) Obama Seems Numb
“I hear you,” President Obama said to the voters who gave Democrats an electoral drubbing in Tuesday’s midterm elections.
But their message went in one presidential ear and out the other.
Yet when Obama fielded questions for an hour Wednesday afternoon, he spoke as if Tuesday had been but a minor irritation. He announced no changes in staff or policy, acknowledged no fault or error and expressed no contrition or regret. Though he had called Democrats’ 2010 losses a “shellacking,” he declined even to label Tuesday’s results.
Obama declared that he would continue with plans for executive orders to expand legal status to undocumented immigrants — even though, minutes before Obama’s news conference, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said that would be “like waving a red flag in front of a bull.” Obama repeated a familiar list of priorities — a minimum-wage hike, infrastructure and education spending, climate-change action — and brushed off various Republican proposals.
Obama was blase by comparison. “Obviously, Republicans had a good night,” he said, but “beyond that, I’ll leave it to all of you and the professional pundits to pick through yesterday’s results.” The message that Obama took from the election, he said, was that Americans “want us to get the job done. All of us in both parties have a responsibility to address that sentiment.”
It’s true that voters are disgusted with both parties, but they were particularly unhappy with Obama. In exit polls, 33 percent said their votes were to show disapproval of him (19 percent said they were showing support). In The Post, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid’s chief of staff all but blamed Obama for the loss.
But Obama wasn’t about to acknowledge fault, or the need for change. He allowed that, as president, he has “a unique responsibility to try and make this town work.” But his solution was to defer responsibility: “I look forward to Republicans putting forward their governing agenda.”
Indeed, Tuesday’s returns did not trouble him greatly, he said. “There are times when you’re a politician and you’re disappointed with election results,” he said. “But maybe I’m just getting older. I don’t know. It doesn’t make me mopey.”
Reporters tried, with little success, to elicit any hint of a new direction from Obama.
After election night's blow to the Democratic Party with the Republican takeover of the Senate, President Obama says that he can work with the GOP on the areas they agree on, like creating new jobs. (AP)
“Do you feel any responsibility to recalibrate your agenda?” asked Julie Pace of the Associated Press.
Obama leaned casually on the lectern, left toe touching right heel. “A minimum-wage increase, for example,” he said, is “something I talked about a lot during the campaign.”
But any changes? “Every single day, I’m looking for, ‘How can we do what we need to do better?’ ” was the vague reply.
ABC News’s Jon Karl asked whether it was “a mistake for you to do so little to develop relationships with Republicans in Congress.”
“Every day I’m asking myself, ‘Are there some things I can do better?’ ” Obama demurred.
Fox News’s Ed Henry pointed out the obvious: “I haven’t heard you say a specific thing during this news conference that you would do differently.”
Obama restated his passive stance, saying it would be “premature” to talk about changing personnel or policies. “What I’d like to do is to hear from the Republicans.”
NPR’s Scott Horsley gave a last try, asking Obama whether he saw “some shortcoming on your part” because Democratic policies fared better than Democratic candidates. (Minimum-wage increases passed in five states, and exit polls found support for Democratic views on climate change, immigration, abortion, same-sex marriage and health care.)
Obama replied in the conditional: “If the way we are talking about issues isn’t working, then I’m going to try some different things.”
But after Tuesday, it’s no longer a question of “if.”
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2) Iran Blocks Inspections, Hobbling Nuclear Deal
WASHINGTON—Iran’s government continues to stonewall United Nations weapons inspectors, complicating the Obama administration’s effort to forge a nuclear agreement with Tehran by a late-November deadline, according to U.S. and U.N. officials.
The U.S. and the European Union have said Iran’s cooperation with the U.N. in addressing evidence that Tehran conducted studies in the past on the development of atomic weapons is crucial to reaching a broader accord on the future of the Iranian nuclear program.
But Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, said Friday there has been almost no progress in resolving the outstanding allegations of weapons development, despite a year of negotiations with Iranian President Hasan Rouhani ’s government.
The IAEA and Tehran last year outlined 12 areas of concern that needed to be addressed before the agency could close its file on Iran, which has been the target of four rounds of U.N. sanctions. Mr. Amano said there has been significant progress in only one of these areas.
“What is needed now is concrete action,” Mr. Amano said during a speech in Washington. “Progress is limited.”
The IAEA is seeking access to leading Iranian nuclear scientists who are believed to have been involved in nuclear-weapons research.
The agency also is demanding access to Iranian research and military sites. Among them is a military base south of Tehran, called Parchin, where the IAEA and the U.S. believe atomic-weapons development occurred.
Iran so far has denied Mr. Amano’s investigators access to the scientists or the sites, despite Tehran’s insistence that its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes. Iran also has said that the IAEA’s evidence of weapons work is based on fabricated intelligence.
Mr. Amano said the IAEA’s evidence is based on “broadly credible information.” He also said there is a possibility that Iran has continued to conduct nuclear-weapons research, even during the negotiations with the West.
An intelligence estimate released by the George W. Bush administration in 2007 concluded that Tehran’s weapons research likely ended in 2003.
The U.S. and other powers are intensifying negotiations with Iran in an effort to meet the Nov. 24 deadline. The Obama administration is part of a diplomatic bloc, called the P5+1, which is made up of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany.
The State Department announced Friday that Secretary of State John Kerry would meet with his Iranian counterpart, Javad Zarif, in Oman on Nov. 9-10 in a bid to support the nuclear negotiations. The final talks will then shift to Vienna.
U.S. officials have voiced guarded optimism that a deal could be reached by the November deadline. Absent that, they have suggested the diplomatic process could be extended.
Mr. Amano met Thursday with Mr. Kerry and spoke with White House National Security Adviser Susan Rice Friday.
State Department officials didn’t respond to questions about how Mr. Amano’s assessment might complicate the Vienna talks. But A number of the U.S.’s closest Middle East allies, particularly Israel and Saudi Arabia, have voiced concerns in recent weeks that the U.S. and P5+1 have softened their negotiating position with Iran.
Prince Turki al-Faisal, a leading member of the Saudi royal family, said his country could also seek to develop the technologies used in building nuclear weapons if Iran was allowed to maintain them as part of a final agreement.
Riyadh will “also seek to have the same terms in developing our nuclear energy,” the Saudi royal said during a speech in Washington this week.
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3) Why is the Obama Administration Provoking Israel?
A senior Obama administration official recently went on the record with journalist Jeffrey Goldberg in calling Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “chickenshit.” A second senior official also went on the record calling Netanyahu a “coward” on the issue of Iran’s nuclear threat.
If these reports are accurate, the following question must be asked: did the Obama administration—indeed perhaps President Obama himself—authorize two senior officials to issue these highly provocative and challenging statements? The White House has now tried to distance itself from the views expressed by these individuals, but it seems unlikely that two senior administration officials would go on the record using such explosive words without White House approval.
The author of the report, Jeffrey Goldberg, tells us that this is the way American and Israeli officials now talk about each other “behind closed doors.” But these statements were not made behind closed doors. They were made to a prominent journalist, with the intention of having them published and read not only by American and Israeli officials, but also by Iranian officials.
That question becomes particularly important in light of another quotation attributed to one of the senior officials:
“It’s too late for him to do anything [regarding a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities]. Two three years ago, this was a possibility. But ultimately he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. It was a combination of our pressure and his own unwillingness to do anything dramatic. Now it’s too late.”
That official added:
“The feeling now is that Bibi’s bluffing…he’s not Begin at Osirak.”
This disclosure of such classified administration assessments—whether true or false—will certainly be welcomed in Tehran. It strengthens the Iranian bargaining position, and weakens the power of the United States to demand more of Iran in the ongoing nuclear negotiations, and to demand more of our allies in the event these negotiations break down and additional sanctions are needed.
Goldberg acknowledges that “the Obama administration used the threat of an Israeli strike in a calculated way to convince its allies (and some of its adversaries) to line up behind what turned out to be an effective sanctions regime.” By now revealing its belief that there is no longer a real threat of an Israeli strike—again whether their assessment is correct or incorrect—these senior officials have done considerable damage to security of the United States and to the possibility of striking an effective deal with Iran.
The bottom line result of these disclosures by two senior Obama officials is to make it more likely that Iran will develop nuclear weapons. Revealing intelligence assessments that suggests that Netanyahu is bluffing can only encourage the Iranians to move forward more quickly with their nuclear weapons program. It also encourages them to believe that the United States will no longer be able to use the threat of an Israeli military strike to shore up support among reluctant allies to increase or even maintain sanctions. Why then were these officials sent out to talk to Jeffrey Goldberg? By whom were they sent? And why now?
If they were not authorized to make these statements and took it upon themselves to do so, they should be fired. That is the only way to send a powerful message to foe and friends alike that the views they expressed do not represent those of the President. If they are not fired, then Congress should ask why two senior Obama administration officials have endangered American national security by increasing the likelihood that Iran will develop nuclear weapons. President Obama has himself acknowledged that a nuclear armed Iran would be a “game changer” that would directly endanger our national security.
Congress has an obligation to get to the bottom of this foreign policy mess. It need not subpoena the journalist, who will surely invoke reportorial privilege. But it can subpoena the handful of senior Obama administration officials who might have made these disclosures. Once Congress establishes who the two senior officials are, they can be asked whether the disclosures were authorized, and if so, by whom? The president may well invoke executive privilege, but Congress’ need to know who is undercutting American foreign policy and why, should trump any claim of privilege. No administration should have the right to leak damaging information to America’s enemies and then hide behind privilege to prevent Congress from learning the source of the leaks and the reasoning, if any, behind the decision to disclose such damaging information.
Beyond the damage done with regard to Iran, is the damage done to United States-Israel relations by the insulting and demeaning words used by senior Obama administration officials to describe the Prime Minister of a close ally. Benjamin Netanyahu fought bravely for his country in one of Israel’s most elite and dangerous military units. He has rescued hostages, defended his country against terrorists and lost a brother at Entebbe. To call him a “chickenshit” or a “coward” is beneath contempt. Having seen the heavy cost of warfare, he has always been cautious and prudent about committing Israeli troops to battle. For this he should be praised rather than condemned.
Netanyahu may soon have to make an existential decision about whether to allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons that might be used against Israeli citizens or to authorize a dangerous military attack designed to destroy and delay Iran’s capacity to develop such weapons of mass destruction. This decision would be difficult for any leader, and it is even more difficult for a leader of a tiny country surrounded by enemies and isolated by much of the international community. To trivialize and reduce this decision to name-calling words like “chickenshit” and “coward” demonstrates extraordinary bad judgment on the part of those who used the words and those who may have authorized their use.
There are legitimate and important differences between the Obama and Netanyahu administrations over issues such as building in Jerusalem and the stalled peace negotiations. Each side has criticized the others position on their merits and demerits. But scatological name-calling on the record has no place in an alliance between friends. Those responsible for these provocative and dangerous ad hominems and for the unwarranted disclosure of classified intelligence assessments must be held accountable by the American public and by all those who care about peace in the Middle East.
Alan Dershowitz’s latest e-book is Terror Tunnels: The Case For Israel’s Just War Against Hamas (Rosetta Books 2014, available early November in hard cover). Originally published in the Boston Globe
Depending on whether Barack Obama decides to behave like an adult or not in the face of massive defeat, all Hell can break loose in the next few months.
Republicans won an historic wave victory on Tuesday of amazing proportions. They will probably end up with 54 Senate seats (after Mary Landrieu takes an almost inevitable swan dive in a December run-off) and came within a whisker of ending up with an astounding 56. No one that I know of was predicting that — not even Sean Hannity on a fifth martini. And then there were the gubernatorial races. Massachusetts, Maryland and Illinois? Are there any blue states left? Obama destroyed them all. (Well, there’s still California — but we’re working on it.)
Too bad there’s no time to celebrate. We almost lost our country. There’s no time to lose getting it back.
Depending on whether Barack Obama decides to behave like an adult or not in the face of massive defeat, all Hell can break loose in the next few months. He can subvert Congress and initiate an absurd amnesty program that nobody wants except for perhaps some random aging members of La Raza. Just as bad, or maybe worse — it involves weapons of mass destruction — he can subvert Congress again and sign a deal with the Iranian mullahs that, on latest reports, relies on our good friends the Russians to police the Iranian nuclear program. How insane is that? Ask any Ukrainian.
And that’s only getting started. The litany of possible mischief small and large is endless from Obamacare to accusations of racism (how else could Obama lose?) to that monumental absurdity the “War on Women.” (That one doesn’t seem to be working out too well lately with the Senate filling up with Republican women.)
And then there are the Clintons who have been in their Westchester bunker all night long working the phones while staring at walls of televisions and plotting their way back, speaking of the “War on Women.” There must be another way. It doesn’t matter what to them. Power is all.
So what should Republicans do? Stand up and lead, obviously. Come up with programs and put them through the House and Senate. Do away with Obamacare, either in one gulp or, if that’s not possible, piecemeal.
But they all should make a monumental and immediate outreach to African Americans. No group has been so brutally screwed over by the Democratic Party — and I suspect more than a few of them are beginning to realize it. Republicans should take this opportunity to come up with some fresh ideas and communicate with them, and with Latinos, and Asians, and with women, and break the back of our identity politics that is so reactionary and divisive, so hurtful to the very people it pretends to help.
This victory creates the beginning of an opportunity to end it. It won’t be easy. Identity politics is so deeply entrenched in our culture sometimes I think we’re a bunch of Shiite tribesman building IEDs south of Fallujah. But think of this — even a thirty percent inroad by Republicans into the black vote would change the political landscape of our country beyond recognition. And it would do so much for all those minority groups into the bargain.
Okay, now I’m going to celebrate. But just for a few hours. In the end, it’s just like tennis. The minute you think you’re ahead, you start to lose. Stay hungry.
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