Pat Buchanan Sides with Obama against Israel
Pat Buchanan has for years been such a virulent opponent of Israel that he has frequently been accused of anti-Semitism, and this column condemning Benjamin Netanyahu for supposedly interfering in America’s internal affairs by opposing the Iran deal is not going to erase that impression. The paleocon Right hates Israel with such abiding passion that it is increasingly self-contradictory: for a small government advocate like Buchanan defending Barack Obama and tacitly supporting a deal that threatens not just Israel, but the U.S. as well, manifests a moral myopia of catastrophic immensity.
But it’s no surprise. I’ve noted before how the paleocons over at Buchanan’s American Conservative have embraced the hard Left’s invention of “Islamophobia” and even come out in favor of submitting to violent intimidation and kowtowing to the foes of the freedom of speech. If they’re the opposite end of the political spectrum from the hard Left, the ends are meeting.
And now Pat Buchanan pretends that Barack Obama, who has shown himself again and again to have the attitude and assumptions and sensibilities of a Marxist internationalist, is an old-school President like Truman or Ike who only makes deals with other nations with America’s best interests at heart. That’s some serious hatred of Israel, to make Pat Buchanan pick up the pom-poms for a far-Left statist. But lines are being redrawn all over the place these days.
“How to Seal the Iran Deal,” by Patrick J. Buchanan, The American Conservative, August 7, 2015:
In his desperation to sink the Iran nuclear deal, Bibi Netanyahu is taking a hellish gamble.
Israel depends upon the United States for $3 billion a year in military aid and diplomatic cover in forums where she is often treated like a pariah state. Israel has also been the beneficiary of almost all the U.S. vetoes in the Security Council. America is indispensable to Israel. The reverse is not true.
Yet, without telling the White House, Bibi had his U.S. ambassador arrange for him to address a joint session of Congress in March—to rip up the president’s Iran nuclear deal before it was even completed.
The day the deal was signed, using what the Washington Post calls “stark apocalyptic language,” Bibi accused John Kerry of giving the mullahs a “sure path to a nuclear weapon” and a “cash bonanza of hundreds of billions of dollars … to pursue its aggression and terror.”
Bibi has since inspired and led the campaign to get Congress to kill the deal, the altarpiece of the Obama presidency. Israel Ambassador Ron Dermer, a former Republican operative now cast in the role of “Citizen Genet,” has intensively lobbied the Hill to get Congress to pass a resolution of rejection.
If that resolution passes, as it appears it will, Obama will veto it. Then Israel, the Israeli lobby AIPAC, and all its allies and auxiliaries in the think tanks and on op-ed pages will conduct a full-court press to have Congress override the Obama veto and kill his nuclear deal.
Has Bibi, have the Israelis, considered what would happen should they succeed? Certainly, there would be rejoicing in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and Bibi would be crowned King of Capitol Hill. But they will have humiliated an American president by crushing him by two-to-one in his own legislature. Such a defeat could break the Obama presidency and force the resignation of John Kerry, who would have become a laughing stock in international forums.
The message would go out to the world. In any clash between the United States and Israel over U.S. policy in the Middle East, bet on Bibi. Bet on Israel. America is Israel’s poodle now.
With the Gulf nations having joined Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia in backing the deal, Israel is isolated in its opposition. And, two weeks ago, Kerry warned that if Congress rejects the deal, “Israel could end up being more isolated and more blamed.”
Hardly an outrageous remark. Yet, Israel’s ex-ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren fairly dripped condescension and contempt in his retort: “The threat of the secretary of state who, in the past, warned that Israel was in danger of being an apartheid state, cannot deter us from fulfilling our national duty to oppose this dangerous deal.”
But this is not Israel’s deal. It is our deal, and our decision. And Israel is massively interfering in our internal affairs to scuttle a deal the president believes is in the vital interests of the United States. When the U.S. and Israel disagree over U.S. policy in the Mideast, who decides for America? Them or us?
Why does Barack Obama take this? Why does John Kerry take this?…
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