Jackson Diehl, "Obama’s next earthquake": As Part of His Legacy, Is Obama Seeking to Break Israel?

I have always believed that Obama is a radical in moderate's clothing. A moderate doesn't "hang around" with the likes of Rashid Khalidi, the Reverend Wright, and former Weatherman Bill Ayers. How the American electorate chose to ignore this "baggage," which would sink any other candidate, is a testimony to David Axelrod's public relations wizardry. Now, as we edge toward the end of Obama's second term, he is beginning to cast away some of his "moderate" disguise, particularly as he undertakes measures to ensure the enfeeblement of Israel.

Regarding Iran, Obama doesn't care if Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei responds to chants of "Death to America" by declaring "Of course yes, death to America." Obama doesn't care if Khamenei continues to call for the annihilation of Israel. And Obama doesn't care if Iran has effectively achieved suzerainty over large swaths of Iraq, Syria and Yemen. After all, Obama has dedicated what is left of his presidency to establishing the Islamic Republic of Iran, which hangs homosexuals and stones to death women accused of adultery, as a "very successful regional power."

And even as Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the former head of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, describes Obama's Middle East policy as one of "willful ignorance," Obama persists in capitulating to all of Khamenei's terms in order to reach a Swiss cheese-like arrangement in Lausanne, purportedly reining in Iran's nuclear development program.

As reported today by The New York Times in an article entitled "Iran Backs Away From Key Detail in Nuclear Deal" by David E. Sanger and Michael R. Gordonmarch, Iran is now backing away from a requirement to ship their atomic fuel to Russia, two days away from the deadline for an interim agreement. Obviously, Khamenei knows that Obama is desperate to do this deal and that he will find some new means to appease him, so as to avoid new Congressional sanctions.

But making Iran into a regional power appears to be only one of the measures being pursued by Obama in order to bring Israel to its knees. In a Washington Post opinion piece entitled "Obama’s next earthquake," Jackson Diehl today tells us:

"Now Obama is contemplating going forward with a [UN] resolution that was drafted last year by Secretary of State John Kerry and his Mideast negotiations team at the State Department. The language was drawn up in response to efforts by the Palestinians and France to win support for Security Council resolutions following the collapse of Kerry’s attempt to get Israeli and Palestinian assent to a 'framework agreement.'

. . . .

Why go forward with a text that both sides would spurn? Obama’s hope would be that his initiative could win unanimous support from the Security Council and thus set the terms of reference for a future settlement, presumably under different Israeli and Palestinian leaders. He could eventually become the grandfather of Middle East peace; at a minimum, diplomats who now talk of the 'Clinton parameters' from 2000 would henceforth speak of the 'Obama framework.'

There would be other effects, of course, among them an unprecedented breach in U.S.-Israeli relations and a vast acceleration of the global movement to boycott and sanction the Jewish state in the likely event it resisted the U.N. terms. But judging from Obama’s demeanor in assailing Netanyahu last week, the president might welcome that legacy, too."

With the entire Middle East embroiled in chaos, America's Narcissist-in-Chief, convinced of his own omniscience, wishes to add the "Obama framework" to this seething cauldron? Isn't there someone in his inner circle capable of telling him that he has already done enough damage in the region, bringing American credibility and deterrent power to a unfathomable nadir?

In a New York Times op-ed entitled "The Method to Obama’s Middle East Mess," Ross Douthat claims that Obama is shifting from a "Pax Americana Model" in the Middle East to an "offshore balancing system":

"In an offshore balancing system, our clients are fewer, and our commitments are reduced. Regional powers bear the primary responsibility for dealing with crises on the ground, our military strategy is oriented toward policing the sea lanes and the skies, and direct intervention is contemplated only when the balance of power is dramatically upset."

However, if sea lanes remain important pursuant to this offshore balancing system, the Strait of Hormuz, adjoining Iran and controlling shipment of much of the world's oil, is now under Khamenei's control. Moreover, with Shiite Houthi rebels under the patronage of Iran gaining control of Yemen, the Strait of Bab al-Mandab, controlling access to the Suez Canal from the Arabian Sea, could also fall under Iran's thumb.

Yes, Obama has made a muddle of the world, and it remains to be seen if future American presidents will be able to repair the damage. Israel? It is already counting the days until Obama leaves office.

Maureen Dowd, "Slaves to Prejudice": Why Be Troubled by Double Standards?

In her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Slaves to Prejudice" (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/27/opinion/sunday/dowd-slaves-to-prejudice.html?ref=maureendowd&_r=0), Maureen Dowd begins by observing:

"WHEN a cranky anarchist in a cowboy hat starts a sentence saying 'I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,' you can be dang sure it’s going downhill from there.

The unsettling thing about Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s ugly rant on the Virgin River on Saturday, The Times’s Adam Nagourney told me, was that there was no negative reaction from the semicircle of gun-toting and conspiracy-minded supporters who had gathered round to hear it. The oblivious 67-year-old Bundy, who has refused for 20 years to pay for his cattle to graze on our land, offered a nostalgic ode to slavery.

Recalling that he saw African-Americans sitting on the porch of a public-housing project in North Las Vegas who seemed to have 'nothing to do,' Bundy declaimed: 'They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy?'"

Yes, this is horrifying, racist rot. Indeed, Fox News owes the nation an apology for eulogizing Bundy.

And yet I can't help thinking back to 2008, when much of the media conveniently chose to ignore presidential candidate Obama's 20-year relationship with a bigot. At the time, Dowd wrote in an op-ed entitled "Praying and Preying" (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/opinion/30dowd.html):

"Obama, of course, will only ratchet up the skepticism of those who don’t understand why he stayed in the church for 20 years if his belief system is so diametrically opposed to [Rev. Jeremiah]Wright’s.

He’s back on the tricky path he faced as a child, navigating between two racial cultures. At Trinity, he may have ignored what he should have heard because he was trying to assimilate to black culture. Now, he may be outraged by what he belatedly heard because he’s trying to relate to the white lunch-pail set."

Dowd's attempt at the time of rationalizing away Obama's "error"? I didn't buy it then, I don't buy it now.

Obama's association with Wright should have ruled him out as a presidential candidate. It didn't.

But why should I be troubled by double standards? Whoever said the world is fair?

Maureen Dowd, "President of Scandinavia": Reverend Wright and "What Obama Doesn't Know, Can't Hurt Him"

The second term Obama administration is currently paralyzed by scandals and busy trying to put out the fires. How to respond? Simple!

Do you remember the Reverend Wright scandal? Over the course of twenty years, Obama had listened to horrifying racist rants from his beloved minister, yet in 2008 Obama still managed to claim that he had never heard any of this disturbing language, and the American electorate, in love with an image created by Axelrod, Plouffe and Dunne, ignored this obvious character failing and elected him president. A quick learner, Obama internalized this lesson: not Bart Simpson's "I didn't do it," but rather "I didn't hear it," or a variant on "what I don't know can't hurt me." And so, the responsibility of White House chief counsel Kathryn Ruemmler was born: "protector of the presidency" from, for example, the findings of the inspector general’s audit of the IRS (see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/white-house-counsel-kathy-ruemmler-from-outsider-to-protector-of-the-presidency/2013/05/26/78a6986e-c3f0-11e2-914f-a7aba60512a7_story.html?hpid=z2). After all, the president cannot be blamed for acting or not acting if he can claim that he discovered something in the newspapers in the same way as other Americans.

In her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "President of Scandinavia" (http://wap.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/opinion/dowd-president-of-scandinavia.html?from=opinion), Maureen Dowd is critical of Obama's communication skills. Dowd writes:

"David Plouffe told [journalist and author Jonathan] Alter that Obama was 'better suited to politics in Scandinavia than here,' meaning, Alter writes, 'that he was a logical and unemotional person in an illogical and emotional capital.' Ironic, given that it was Obama’s emotional speeches that precociously vaulted him into the Oval Office."

Why ironic? Those carefully crafted teleprompter speeches, having no connection whatsoever to Obama's psyche, could just as easily have been conveyed by a computer generated image. Americans were hungry for "change," and it didn't matter if it came from someone willing to sit in silence through warped Sunday sermons. America got what it paid for . . . twice.

Dowd concludes:

"When Obama was elected, he assumed he would be a good bridge-builder. 'But he just had no experience dealing with Republicans in any significant way,' Alter told me. 'He wasn’t in the leadership in Springfield or the Senate. He thought that just because he mussed up Tom Coburn’s hair that he knew how to deal with Republicans.'

. . . .

The man who prides himself on his self-awareness is now trying to use more tools in the toolbox. So the main question, Alter says, is 'whether learned behavior and his determination to have a successful second term and do things differently can win out against his natural inclinations.'

The historian believes that Obama does have the capacity to change. 'He gets it now,' Alter says. 'Is it too late? I doubt it. He wants to be remembered for more than being the first African-American president.'"

Indeed, Obama was elected without experience or communications skills essential to any leader. Does Obama "have the capacity to change"? How quaint.

Does Obama wish "to be remembered for more than being the first African-American president"? This is heresy. In case you have forgotten, Obama in his first term already ranked his legislative and foreign policy accomplishments with those of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln.

Or in other words, Obama is a bit detached from reality and more than a bit narcissistic.

Why does Obama need to do more in order "to be remembered for more than being the first African-American president"? Obama already thinks that he is there.

The bigger concern is whether the emergence of the Benghazi, IRS and AP/Rosen scandals and Obama's "What I don't know can't hurt me" outlook won't paralyze the executive branch of the US government for the remainder of his second term, when the US economy is still flaccid and when the US is facing challenges from rogue regimes in Iran and North Korea.