Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has just played one of the most masterful political games of chess ever seen. Brilliantly avoiding a public relations trap set by an avowed team of progressive leftists attempting to place Israel into a defenseless corner.
We cannot be naive to the fact that President Obama and his administrative team strategically timed the new Obama Mid-East Doctrine speech to coincide one day before Prime Minister Netanyahu was set to visit the United States. Especially when you consider the backdrop of volatility within the region as one islamic nation after another seems to erupt in the fire of ‘cries for democracy’ only to inevitably end up burning in the furnace of ‘radical sharia compliant islamofacism’. It is beyond a doubt the current state of Mid-East affairs is incredibly dangerous for Israel at this very moment. And subsequently, as outlined by Netanyahu in his speech, the potential threats of action are literally possible tomorrow, not in a distant speculative future, but actually tomorrow.
It is also apparent the invitation by House Speaker John Boehner to speak to a joint session of congress irked the anti-Israel coalition that firmly exists in the White House. That specific coalition consists of many influential policy advisors, but particularly a highly influential member of the senior advisory staff, Samantha Power. Much of the motivation behind Obama’s Israeli policy stems from the ideology of Samantha Power, the Irish-American, hard-Left humanitarian activist who has been the president’s Director for Multilateral Affairs at the National Security Council since 2009 (and, incidentally, the wife of Obama’s “Regulatory Czar” Cass Sunstein). Power is the woman behind the curtain in terms of Obama’s policy toward the Middle East, but a look at what she advocates reveals a troubling agenda.
Power has advocated a foreign policy that can easily be described as what Stanley Kurtz calls “humanitarian interventionist.” Power and other activists like her seek to build American foreign policy around merely stepping into situations in the name of preventing genocide and other humanitarian aims. This type of foreign policy relies heavily on international law and multilateralism. While this type of foreign policy agenda might in some small way make sense to some people in a situation like the one in Libya, it is absolutely dangerous as the basis for an entire mid-east foreign policy. You see, Samantha Power and her supporters have Israel in their sights as a target for American military intervention on humanitarian grounds. Witness this exchange in an interview Power gave with Harry Kreisler, director of the Institute for International Studies at the University of California, Berkeley in 2002:
In another interview five years later, Power stated that we in the United States brought terrorist attacks on ourselves because of our relationship with Israel, and she noted that relationship:
…has often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer reflexively to Israeli security assessments, and to replicate Israeli tactics…
In the eyes of activists like Power, we are chained to a genocidal power by aligning with Israel. So, is not a matter of whether large chunks of Obama’s foreign policy fall into the hands of dangerous Leftists like Samantha Power, it is entirely a matter of extent. Stanley Kurtz explains the Obama-Power history well:
It seems reasonable to conclude from his long-term relationship with Power that Obama shares her interest in making humanitarian military interventions more common. Yet the president has said little about this, and the obvious policy implications of his ties with Power are rarely drawn. In his biography of Obama, David Remnick describes the beginnings of the Power-Obama relationship thus: “Obama did not strike Power as a liberal interventionist or a Kissingerian realist or any other kind of ideological ‘ist’ except maybe a ‘consequentialist.’ In foreign policy, Obama said, he was for what worked.”
Here we have the classic protective presentation of Obama. The future president reads a book by a passionately ideological humanitarian interventionist and quickly hires her as his key foreign policy advisor. Yet the obvious ideological implications of this are left entirely unexplored. Instead we are quickly reassured that Obama is nothing but a pragmatist.
There is a germ of truth to the pragmatism claim. Obama doesn’t seem to have a single overarching strategic perspective. Instead he “pragmatically” juggles competing sensibilities on foreign policy, ranging from multiculturalist non-interventionism, to postcolonial exhortation, to humanitarian interventionism, to a political desire to keep foreign-policy problems sufficiently in check to allow a focus on domestic transformation.
That’s right, Barack Obama is willing to sub-contract his foreign policy to fellow leftists like Power in order to concentrate on his stealth socialist domestic agenda. In his brilliant book, Radical-In-Chief, Kurtz illuminates the way Obama’s foreign policy takes a back seat to a transformational, radical domestic agenda:
Obama’s stance toward foreign policy and cultural issues combines quick and easy progressive changes with a still stronger desire to hold political conflict at bay. The point is to keep side issues stable enough to permit Obama to focus on structural changes to the economy.
[…]
For Obama, slow-motion economic transformation (in a socialist direction) is the key to every other change.
Rather than disproving the claim that Obama is a socialist, these [issues] reveal a president clever enough to preserve his political capital for the structural changes that matter most.
The long and the short of it is that Obama connects the advice and counsel of those like Samantha Power to shape major identities within the United States foreign policy under his watch. This while he focuses more intensely on domestic economic transformation. But all the while, when the opportunity exists, you see Obama extending his global influence in ways that reflect an undermining of former key alliances, and more specifically advocating for positions strengthened by the views of advisors like Power. Major foreign policy decisions in the hands of people like Samantha Power not only make for strange actions like those surrounding Egypt, Libya, Syria, et al, but they also create hazardous situations for Israel. But, as noted above those within the administration of similar mindset to Power, such as Susan Rice, and other members of the anti-Israel coalition feel the alliance with Israel has been a shortcoming of America.
So the stage was set for Obama to “throw Israel under the bus” with his new doctrine of Israeli expectation:
- Peace Negotiations beginning with the 1967 Israeli borders as a starting point.
- A contiguous Palestinian State (fundamentally absurd)
- and, Public airing of what previously was always private discussions.
Now, with everything you have read above ask yourself why would Obama announce such a radical departure from former positions toward Israeli-American policy on the eve of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s arrival? Not only did Obama make the speech literally 24 hours before Netanyahu arrived, but immediately before, and up to the moment of the speech, there were reassurances from the State Department to Israel that nothing surprising would be stated. How do you reconcile that?
President Obama could just as easily have waited until he and Netanyahu crossed paths prior to the AIPAC conference, discussed his new approach, listened to Netanyahu’s concerns, and then made his Mid-East speech in conjunction with the AIPAC event. wouldn’t you expect to converse with a friend prior to publicly discussing a new position toward your friend, if indeed you really “viewed him” as your friend? Lastly, if this new Obama Mid-East doctrine was not specifically aimed at undermining the position of Israel, then wouldn’t it have included much more language and substantive consideration of Iran which was barely mentioned. Or Yemen, or Syria, or…, well you get the point. Obviously the entire ideological context of this speech was the new Israeli position, and other directional verbage was sprinkled in merely to create the guise of a broader “mid-east” policy narrative.
Why? Well, I suggest you go back and look at the Quote from Senior Policy Advisor Samantha Power again regarding how our relationship with Israel has impacted our actions:
…has often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer reflexively to Israeli security assessments, and to replicate Israeli tactics…
Yes, indeed our protective alliance with Israel has been the backdrop for many decisions regarding how we interact with other elements and nations within the greater Middle East. Of course it has. But, by itself this is not a bad thing unless you are Obama. You see, we (you and me) consider Israel as representative of the only free democracy in the region. We view the export of principles about freedom as natural outcroppings from the beacon of American exceptionalism. Obama, and his administration team, DO NOT. They do not hold such a belief. They would, if they could get away with it, cut off Israel and leave her to fight for her life completely on her own. Their view of intervention is on behalf of the oppressed, not the oppressor, and they -along with the radical left- see Israel as the oppressor. Period.
But, Prime Minister Netanyahu did one of the most brilliant strategic maneuvers I have ever witnessed on the stage of statesmen. He saw through their agenda. He knew factually what he was up against. He knew the Obama team wanted him to publicly rail against the slight, the ire, heck the outright back stab he obviously felt, yet he remained composed and focused on disarming them head on. Netanyahu must have felt a certain nervousness not knowing with absolute confidence that the vast majority of Americans supported his position, and not Obamas’. Yet he stood incredibly strong, and actually used the power of Obama’s words against him. By consistently repeating the truth about the allegiance with the United States people, and by completely respectfully re-asserting Israels right to exist peacefully, he deflected the fast pitch animosity and gracefully sidestepped the pitfall of reactive condemnation. In essence, Bibi drew, and won, even larger gains in the hearts and minds of Americans than existed before.
America watched a true Statesman in action. A principled man proud of his nation, who can speak extemporaneously with brilliance and simultaneously retain a patriotic humility that endears all Israelis to the vast electorate of America. Netanyahu spoke to all that is great about America and all that is great about Israel, and he wove the two ideologies together magnificently. Freedom loving people all over America connected to incredible statesmanship. Well done sir. Well Done.
As for President Obama. Well, “checkmate” dude, you were outclassed.
