Posted by
Bill Crawford on Saturday, May 21, 2011 10:38:40 PM
I used to worry about this. Back in the heady days of 2009, when it was a lot easier to blame lack of progress on anything to "the damage Bush left us", Obama was busy trying to win over our enemies and show us all he could talk to anybody.
Evidently part of this process was to confuse or anger our longest term allies- particularly Great Britain and Isreal. The most plausible theories I read was that these actions would aid with relations with countries that went cold on us long ago.
So, when Benjamin Netanyahu showed up for a White House visit in '09 and responded to Barrack's new initiatives with his all-too-expected stubbornness, the White House left him in the hallway. No photographs, no press conference. Cancelled. Go out and get your own dinner. It was one of the most shameful acts of diplomacy I ever remember from the White House. I worried that it would do long term damage. America is still the 800 lb. gorilla in the room, even if it is being led by a naivete.
Well, I was wrong. There was (and still is) damage done, but the world moves in. Benjamin went home and still dealt with the reality around him he had left to come here.
Fast forward two years. The Isreali PM was invited to speak to Congress this week, and Obama decided to get out in front of him. Evidently tired of the lack of progress in talks regading the Palestinian "two state solution", the President came out with his chosen agenda- starting with a return to the 1967 Isreali borders- pre-seven day war.
Well, that set a whole bunch of people off. Myself, I was asking rhetorical questions about the length of the bus Barrack took to school. Gees, I thought he was an Ivy League Law grad. Don't they teach you the first year to never ask a question you don't know what the answer to it will be? Negotiations are done by staffers. Heads of state step in after all the questions are either answered or determined to be interminable. If negotiations are done at that level, they are done in private.
So what the hell good did it do anybody for the two of them to sit in front of the cameras and have Netenyahu lecture a silent Obama, telling him, "That's just not going to happen"? Now we've told the world that we are not standing behind Isreal, and we have no power to change anything on the question any more.
That's pathetic. When does the "reset" get rebooted? Because somebody needs to pull a plug somewhere, before the Muslim players trying like hell to play the "Arab Spring" into their hands get carte blanche.