After arrogantly scolding both Israeli and U.S. Jewish leaders about their selfish ways, Obama turned his attention to the “international community.” Speaking before the virulently anti-American, anti-Israeli United Nations General Assembly in September 2009, Obama told his audience that “America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.” The UN crowd went wild. Obama had been repeatedly warned by Middle East experts that the demand that Israel halt settlement construction would be disastrous, but he went ahead anyway. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas then ran with it, making a settlement freeze a precondition for negotiations, knowing he was backed by the American president. Since Israel agreed to only limited construction stoppages, the result was the longest period without direct talks between the parties in over seventeen years.
Abbas later said that he felt betrayed by Obama, who, feeling the pressure from American Jewish leaders and congressional Democrats, essentially backed away from the settlement demand and left Abbas twisting in the wind. Abbas said, “We both went up the tree. After that, he came down with a ladder and he removed the ladder and said to me, jump. Three times he did it.” If you’re going to sell out a close American ally, at least do it in a way that doesn’t also tick off the adversary you’re trying to help.
In the spring of 2010, Vice President Joe Biden visited Israel. While he was there, a local Jerusalem office announced plans for new settlement construction in a part of the city. Biden left Israel in a huff and Obama began a full-frontal assault on the Jewish state. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dressed down Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a forty-five-minute phone call during which she blamed him for “harming the bilateral relationship.” When she was done berating him, she ordered the Israeli ambassador to the State Department and had him flogged in much the same way. The administration canceled their Middle East envoy’s scheduled trip to Israel, and it joined a European Union condemnation of Israel. Members of Team Obama fanned out on television and radio to call Israel’s planned housing construction an “insult” and an “affront.” Apparently, everyone in this world is allowed to build houses except Jews. Hamas can build houses in Gaza, and Hezbollah can build houses in Lebanon. But if you’re a Jew? No house for you. Did Obama really believe he could tell a country that it couldn’t build houses in its own capital city? I guess so. Or perhaps he was just mad that his fellow anti-Israel kook, Jimmy Carter, wasn’t asked to help build the houses with Habitat for Humanity.
The ease and rapidity with which they could summon all of this sound and fury against Israel was striking, and yet they couldn’t manage one word of condemnation for the Palestinians who, just minutes after Biden had left the West Bank, honored Dalal Mughrabi, a Palestinian terrorist responsible for an attack that had killed thirty-eight people, including children and an American. The response from the administration? Crickets and tumbleweeds. Within two weeks, Netanyahu had arrived in Washington to try to smooth things over but was left cooling his heels at the White House by Obama, who not only ditched Bibi mid-meeting to have dinner with his family, but who also denied him a photo-op, a joint statement, and even an honorable exit. He forced Netanyahu to leave through a side door, perhaps to commune with the Dalai Lama who had been shoved out the same trash-strewn exit.
Obama’s anti-Israeli moves escalated. In late May 2010, a flotilla sponsored by the Islamist forces in Turkey set sail with the stated mission of busting the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of terrorist-run Gaza and to distribute “humanitarian” aid to Palestinians living there. Israel was allowing all kinds of humanitarian and other assistance into Gaza, had invited the flotilla organizers to transport the aid through land crossings but was refused, and Gaza had its own government, Hamas, which was supposed to be providing for its people. But none of that mattered to the flotilla organizers, who included American radicals such as Bill Ayers and Jodie Evans, the leader of the leftist organization CODEPINK, who colluded with Hamas to arrange the operation. Another American kook who was involved in the Free Gaza movement was former Democratic congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, also known as “Much Ado About a Hairdo.” She has repeatedly joined with Muslim radicals in attempting to overrun the Israeli blockade. At one point, she was even caught and held in an Israeli detention facility. Unfortunately for us, the Israelis couldn’t stand her either and deported her back to the United States.
On May 31, the ships were intercepted by Israeli speedboats and helicopters, from which Israeli commandos arrived to force the ships to dock in the Israeli port of Ashdod for inspection. The commandos were brutally attacked aboard one of the ships by what a United Nations report later described as a “hard-core group” armed with iron bars and knives. Ten Israeli commandos were wounded in the attack, and nine of the Gaza-bound militants were killed.
This had been a deliberate act of provocation, designed to instigate a violent confrontation in order to bring global condemnation of Israel, and yet Israel responded by easing its blockade of Gaza, freeing the flotilla militants, and returning the ships. What did Israel get for its magnanimity? Israel got the Turkish government breaking off diplomatic relations with Jerusalem, rupturing one of Israel’s closest strategic partnerships in the Muslim world. And it got the American president offering no backup to its ally; instead, in the perverse anti-Israel world of Obama, he actually pressured the Israeli government to apologize to Turkey for defending itself.
In late May 2011, with the Arab world in turmoil, Israel’s partnership with Egypt threatened, and Israel’s enemies in Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood emboldened, Obama slammed into the Jewish state with a brazen demand that it return to its indefensible pre-1967 cease-fire lines with land swaps. At one of its greatest moments of vulnerability, Israel heard the person who should have been its greatest friend and defender publicly negotiate away its security position yet again.
In early September 2011, the Arab “Spring” came knocking on the door of the Israeli embassy in Cairo, Egypt. A mob of thousands, many of whom were tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, swarmed around the embassy. In short order, they took a battering ram to the concrete security wall, breached it, and then ransacked the embassy, smashing furniture and tossing confidential documents from the windows to the streets below. Israeli embassy staff found safety in a steel-doored safe room, but were ultimately whisked to safety by Egyptian commandos. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta assured the Israelis that the United States would provide protection for the embassy personnel, but Obama’s only public reaction was a written statement expressing his “grave concern.”
A few months later, Obama sent out Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to yell at the Israelis to “get to the damn table” and negotiate with the Palestinians. Panetta also scolded Israeli officials about their supposed eagerness to launch a full-fledged war against Iran’s nukes. Obama then wheeled out Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to blast Israel over what she called “anti-democratic” legislation proposed by Israel’s religious right regarding the media, charities, and the courts. Team Obama refused to “meddle” in Iranian and Syrian internal affairs while those regimes were slaughtering their people and refused to criticize the Muslim world generally for its systematic oppression, but it had no problem “meddling” in internal Israeli controversies.
Several months later, Obama attended the G-20 meeting in France and was caught by a hot microphone denigrating Netanyahu to French president Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy said, “I cannot bear Netanyahu. He’s a liar,” to which Obama replied, “You’re fed up with him? I’ve got to deal with him every day!” Sarkozy subsequently apologized to Netanyahu. Obama did not.
Obama made it clear that under his leadership, America was through kissing Israeli butt. He didn’t demand meaningful concessions from the Palestinians in terms of demanding that they recognize Israel’s right to exist, quit terrorism, give up the so-called right of return, which would dilute the Jewish state out of existence, and negotiate in good faith over the final status of Jerusalem. Obama paid spor
adic lip service to those things, but he never pushed the Palestinians to carry them out. The burden was always placed on the Israelis to negotiate more, self-reflect more, give up more.
Perhaps this is why, in September 2011, the Palestinians ignored Obama’s entreaties to refrain from seeking statehood through the United Nations and did it anyway. They knew that under Obama, Israel would get the security guarantee of the United States but not much more, even as the United States was rushing to elevate its Islamist enemies and pressuring Israel not to defend itself against the existential threat posed by a nuclear Iran. This is somewhat worse than getting your Churchill bust thrown back at you, but it’s reflective of the same anti-ally attitude.
But if you’re an enemy of the United States, belly right up to the bar! Let’s canoodle, Iran! Let’s nuzzle, Russia! How about an aperitif, North Korea? Take a load off and enjoy a state dinner, China! What up, Hugo Chávez!
You can’t treat allies like this and expect them to stay allies for long. But if the overarching Obama objective has been to weaken America’s place in the world in order to create a new world order in which the bad guys are elevated by our own hand, then he has succeeded. The actions of the president have clearly shown that he’s more comfortable consorting with our enemies than bunking with our friends.
In July 2010, President Obama sat down with the Washington Post investigative reporter Bob Woodward, who was writing a book about Obama’s national security and foreign policies. During their talk and as quoted in Obama’s Wars, the president uttered four incredibly revealing things.
Woodward reported that Obama and his team were bombarded by warnings of terrorist attacks on the homeland and were scrambling to find ways to prevent them. When asked by Woodward about it, Obama replied, “We can absorb a terror attack. We’ll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever … we absorbed it and we are stronger.”
Consider his language: “we can absorb a terror attack.” It’s cold, sterile, robotic. It’s Michael Dukakis’s answer when he was asked what he’d do if his wife were raped and murdered. “We can absorb it.” It’s detached and programmatic. It’s not emotional and raw and real, which is what we would expect a president’s response to be in the post-9/11 era. Just like his September 19, 2001, article, Obama’s answer to Woodward was foreign, alien, inhuman. What if Obama had used that phrase after Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot? He wouldn’t have dared. And yet he can very calmly rationalize something worse happening to all of the American people.
The second revealing moment came in an October 26, 2009, conversation between Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about the possible troop surge in Afghanistan. “This needs to be a plan about how we’re going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan,” Obama said, according to Woodward. “I’m not doing ten years. I’m not doing long-term nation building. I am not spending a trillion dollars.”
Suddenly the Keynesian freak was concerned about spending $1 trillion. Also note his Big Daddy tone with Gates and Clinton: you will do this because I said so! Obama was obsessed with pulling all of our troops out of Iraq and as many as logistically possible out of Afghanistan for three reasons: (a) he doesn’t believe that the United States should be projecting its power around the world; (b) to launch meaningful U.S. military retrenchment; and (c) to redirect that $1 trillion (and more) into his domestic adventure. Again, the weakening of the military is a critical part of that project, so it’s a kook two-fer.
In his interview with Woodward, Obama made a third telling comment. When asked about the possibility of nuclear terror in the United States, Obama called it “a potential game changer.” He continued, “When I go down the list of things I have to worry about all the time, that is at the top, because that’s one where you can’t afford any mistakes.”
If a nuclear attack on the homeland by Islamic terrorists is the highest worry on his list, then why is he so coldly academic about it? Perhaps because he’s a cold academic. He stated that we “could absorb” a terror attack and, in reference to a nuclear attack in particular, referred to it as a “potential game changer.” To Obama, a mushroom cloud over Manhattan is just a “potential game changer.” Maybe an actual game changer, maybe not. Depends on the size of the nuke or if it were detonated by Iran or al-Qaeda or a terrorist lone wolf or how many fallout victims there were or whether Obama had intended to take Michelle on a date night in New York that day and the damn radiation ruined their plans. No American president should ever be referring to a nuclear terror attack on U.S. soil as a “potential game changer,” as if he’d have to have Valerie Jarrett run a focus group first to figure out how to respond. It would be a true game changer of such magnitude that the future of the world would be put on a completely different trajectory.
The fourth revealing Obama moment: after he informed the military brass of his decision to ignore their request for 40,000 additional troops for Afghanistan and go with 30,000 in just a brief escalation, the commanders continued to push for more troops. Obama snapped, “Why do we keep having these meetings?”
Woodward then quotes Obama as scolding the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, Gates, and Clinton: “In 2010, we will not be having a conversation about how to do more. I will not want to hear, ‘We’re doing fine, Mr. President, but we’d be better if we just do more.’ We’re not going to be having a conversation about how to change [the mission] … unless we’re talking about how to draw down faster than anticipated in 2011.”
This was Obama as Super Big Daddy. It was his way or the highway, the nation’s security be damned. According to Woodward, General David Petraeus, who had engineered the successful surge in Iraq, interpreted Obama’s decision as a personal repudiation. Petraeus had argued for continuing a “protect the Afghan people” counterinsurgency approach, but Obama insisted on a far narrower and shorter-term plan because he wanted out of there. And Obama’s own “responsibility to protect” approach had yet to kick in; it was good enough for the Libyans but not, apparently, for the Afghanis.
These four exchanges tell us a few things about the commander in chief. They tell us that to him, the American people are a blob he’s forced to protect instead of millions of individuals with lives, families, and beating hearts. They tell us that “no drama Obama” has drama happening all around him, much of it self-created. They tell us that he’s a petty man who’s a terrible manager and a reckless commander of the armed forces. And they tell us that he’s a stone cold kook.
American superpower exists to keep the world’s most malevolent forces at bay, but when we’re considered a pushover, the bad guys act up and it never ends well. The inevitable result will be a collapse of order and violent chaos, in which the forces of evil march forward—unless they are stopped by force applied by the good guys. But when the world’s biggest and most powerful good guy checks out, it’s curtains for peace and stability.
In Obama’s hands, American decline isn’t just a few statistics on a piece of paper. It’s a steep, irreversible, and very real plummet to weakness and irrelevance—and Obama is taking us there fast with his own foot on the $4-per-gallon gas.
By turning us from America the Exceptional into America the Ho-Hum, Obama has ushered us into the years of living dangerously.
PART V
AMERICA, UNLEASHED
DOROTHY: Oh, will you help me? Can you help me?
GLINDA: You don’t need to be helped any longer. You’ve always had the power to go back to Kansas.
DOROTHY: I have?
SCARECROW: Then why didn’t you tell her before?
GLINDA: Because she wouldn’t have believed me. She had to learn it for herself.
—The Wizard of Oz
America Lost?
* * *
“You are an American, yes?” The burly New York City cabdriver looked at me through the rearview mirror as he asked the question, his voice saturated with a heavy Eas
tern European accent.
“Yes, I am,” I replied.
“Tell me: what are you doing?”
About a year into Barack Obama’s presidency, I climbed into this man’s cab for a short trip across Manhattan. Engaging city taxi drivers can go one of two ways: it can either be an enjoyable, interesting experience or it can end in a torrent of profanity in multiple languages. This particular cabdriver was friendly and gregarious, particularly when I asked him about the source of his accent.
“The Bronx,” he replied. “Oh, you mean where I am from?” He paused for a moment and then said, “I was born in Bulgaria. But I am an American.” And then this big, strapping man grew emotional as he told me his story: “I am an American by choice. And you’ll forgive me, but I think those of us who are Americans by choice rather than by birth have a different view. Many Americans, you do not appreciate your freedom. You have always had it. You don’t know anything else. I have lived under communism. I have been beaten and put in jail. I have heard the knock of the secret police in the middle of the night. I have had neighbors disappear. I have had the government open my mail and listen in to my phone. I have gone days eating only potatoes because the store shelves were bare. There was no medicine, no good doctors.”
He told me that his family fled Bulgaria to escape the tyranny and brutality of Communist rule and came to the United States to seek the very promise of America: freedom. That’s when he asked me, “Tell me: what are you doing? Why are you letting America be destroyed?”
What the (Bleep) Just Happened? Page 34