"A slap in the face" from the US

"Other Israeli leaders also used unusually harsh language to condemn Washington’s willingness to work with the government Mr. Abbas swore in on Monday. “American naïveté has broken all records,” said Gilad Erdan, a minister from Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party. The leader of the nationalist Jewish Home faction, Naftali Bennett, said the American decision “sends a message that terrorism pays.” Even Nachman Shai, a lawmaker with the left-leaning Labor Party, called the step “a slap in the face from the Americans.”

And Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, rebuked both the new Palestinian government and his host country’s embrace of it, posting on Facebook that “with suits in the front office and terrorists in the back office, it should not be business as usual.”"  NY Times

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Yup, "business as usual," that is the order of the day from the Obama Administration.

“A slap in the face from the Americans,”  Yup, that's what it was.

(Irony alert for all you engineers out there)  IMO the time has come for the Israelis to cut the Americans loose.  They should give the goyim and self-hating Jews as well, a hearty YOYO (you're on your own) and tell them that henceforth "you gringos will be responsible for your own security as a nation, if you can call it that.  And furthermore, there will be no more grants from Israel's treasury and business for the purpose of 'shoring up' the American economy."

So there!   pl

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/04/world/middleeast/israel-troubled-by-us-plan-to-work-with-palestinian-unity-government.html?_r=0

Comments

[Edward Amame]

I don't come here for laughs, but this post is so perfectly on target and funny...Bravo!

[Highlander47]

The Israelis are publicly voicing their disgust with "Hope and Change", the Saudis and gulf states are doing the same, the President of Afghanistan basically tells POTUS he won't see him and to kiss off, Putin all but laughs out loud at POTUS, and the Chinese quite recently and quite explicitly said US foreign policy suffers from "erectile dysfunction".

My guess is our geopolitical opponents have completed their psychological profiling of this president and his administration. Judging from their recent comments and actions, I would say their conclusion,is they are dealing with a narcissistic,clueless, coward, who will fold in a crunch.

If so,within 30 months some type of coordinated major attack on the economic underpinnings of the United States of America will occur. If successful stand by for $15 a gallon gasoline, $20 Big Macs, and 10 to 15% interest rates.

But not to worry,we have according to NYT and WAPO the most intelligent POTUS in history, and he is responsible for protecting your future economic well being. If he isn't up to it, the plight of the PALESTINIANS will be the least of our worries.

[John Adamson]

Colonel:

Are Israel and the Israeli Lobby finally coming to the point where they might "jump the shark"?

On the one hand I see more and more people get fed up with their whining, their demands, and their false narratives.

On the other hand, I still see American politicians sound more like they're running for a seat in the Knesset rather than a seat in the U.S. Congress.

I also see a guy with dual citizenship, and a past Governor of the Bank of Israel, confirmed as a Fed Governor and up for confirmation as Vice Chair of the Fed - and nobody says a thing.

How long it will take before "the powers that be" finally put our interests before Israel's?

Or is it naive to think that's possible?

[Buzz Meeks]

One could hope.

[r Whitman]

The s''t will really hit the fan if Obama signs even a temporary agreement with the Iranians.

[Margaret Steinfels]

Look on the bright side. Maybe now the Chinese, the Saudis and Putin can put up with Netanyahu's whining, and subvent his settlement policies.

[Matthew]

R Whitman: Turn on the fan. We will do a deal with Iran before Iran is completely pulled into the developing Sino-Russian axis.

Even the canny Persians could not have foretold the times where the US would target Iran, Russia, and China simultaneously!

[turcopolier]

Matthew

IMO an Iranian move into the orbit(s) of our adversaries is virtually inevitable. If we play our cards right we can achieve the same result with Egypt. pl

[Matthew]

Col: Touche!

[turcopolier]

All

http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/British-foreign-secretary-joins-European-Union-in-praising-Fatah-Hamas-unity-accord-355362

Perfidious Albion (more irony) pl

[Fred]

Col.,

You just can't trust anyone (to do your bidding) these days.

[Highlander]

They already do. They could give a rat's behind less about the PALESTINIAN's interest, when compared to what world side Jewish interests may do for or against them.

[alba etie]

Highlander 47
So because we found an alternative to not bombing Assad over the CW - but instead shipped it out of Syria - President Obama folded ? And because of that we will be the victim of a coordinated major attack ?
And exactly how is President Obama a coward ? Is it because he is not kowtowing to BiBi and the other War Party Likudniks ?

[alba etie]

Margaret Steinfels ,
So I wonder how you say "Bibi don't let the door hit you in the ass " in Yiddish ?

[Highlander]

That would take cubic dollars tp simply keep purchasing the Egyptian's allegiance. Take a look at all those carriers tied up to the docks in Norfolk.

We be broke.

Sad but true. Just like for the former Soviet Union, our economic day of reckoning approaches.It won't be pleasant.

[kao_hsien_chih]

One difference is that, especially in case of the Chinese (don't know about the others), they actually do demand real payment for their services. The secrets Israelis stole from us worked very well in the past as payment for the cooperation they got out of the Chinese. I suppose, if we actually start guarding our secrets, Israel won't be able to pay the Chinese (at least not as much) with our stuff....

[confusedponderer]

The point the asia pivot is to contain a rising China. China for a long time lacked serious allies and access to energy resources.

In that light, it is doubly ironic, also giving testiomony to the lack of clearheaded thinking, that joint neo-con, neo-liberal and R2P regime change action in Ukraine has had the result of pushing Russia into the arms of China, solving, as Anatol Lieven has put it so well, China's two problems for them with one stroke.

And as far as Russia is concerned ... to wit:

When you act hostile and contemtupous to a nation that really wants to be your friend for two decades, don't wonder if that nation turns against you in frustration at some point.

The US predicament is fully a self inflicted wound. No amount of blaming Putin can gloss that over.

Given the lack of any indications that the US players in the joint neo-con, neo-liberal and R2P wings perceive any flaw in their policies, here again Lieven's warning:

"I think the Americans have been profoundly foolish in that regard. It does weaken their credibility in alliances elsewhere. [...] If the United States extends to China the kind of attitudes and the kind of policies that it has to Russia over the past generation, then, ladies and gentlemen, we will find ourselves in another major international war which will bring the world economy down in ruins and with it, probably, many democracies around the world including our own. I hope that the fact that an American policy which did this would deserve the results it got will be a comfort to our descendants."

@ (1:27:40)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4YTpvEhb-I

[Babak Makkinejad]

This is not an American-specific issue; it runs across the board with the EU.

I ask you, how did EU decide that Iran is her enemy?

Did the bad bad US force them?

Or did they willing follow US?

[Matthew]

Fred: Remember the immortal words of California giant Jesse Unruh on lobbyists: "If you can't eat their food, drink their booze, screw their women and then vote against them, you have no business being up here." See Wiki.

[confusedponderer]

You are right, this is not just the EU, and the point that hostility creates hostility applies to US-Iranian relations also. It will be a monumental task to overcome that, in light of entrenched hostility to any rapprochment in the US and Iran.

As for the US, they are so doctrinaire in their emphasis that the Iranian government must surrender in order to satisfy US demands as to make an old orthodox Commie envious.

Unless Obama gives a clear order to cut that crap, this is to continue, and iirc we have an election year in the US. R's can be counted on to denounce Obama of 'surrendering to Iran'.

As far as Iran policy by itself is concerned, Germany and Iran have a history of good economic and cultural relations. US and later Israeli lobbying ended that.

Germany is still not emotionally able to formulate a rational policy vis a vis any entity labeled as an enemy by Israel because of collective subconscuious guilt.

IMO, and lamentably, as for Europe, the EU policy is herd behaviour as a result of successful Antlantic and European elite consensus building.

[oofda]

How about PNGing Ambassador Derner?
Or maybe recalling our Ambassador?

[David Habakkuk]

CP,

When, as not infrequently happens, I hear people quote the famous line from the ‘Melian dialogue’ from Thucydides – ‘the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must’ – I am reminded of some remarks by the most significant British post-war analyst of Soviet military strategy, Michael MccGwire.

In a footnote in a polemic against what he called the ‘national security paradigm’ he wrote just before the attack on the World Trade Center, MccGwire noted that:

‘Those who argue that fairness is irrelevant to a ‘realistic’ view of international relations ignore its correlate – resentment. It was German resentment over the terms of the Versailles Treaty that led to the Weimar 1920s and the rise to power of Hitler.’

(For the paper, see http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/public/International%20Affairs/Blanket%20File%20Import/inta219.pdf .)

There was a personal history behind this: MccGwire’s father, who had been convinced since 1933 of the dangers of Hitler and German rearmament, sent him in 1937 to the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth. This was partly because the family did not have much money, and perhaps also because he thought that in the war that was becoming increasingly likely, his son would be better off fighting at sea than in the trenches.

But there is no incompatibility between thinking that the opponents of ‘appeasement’ were right, and also that it had not been the brightest of ideas, after the defeat of Imperial Germany, to make ‘the weak suffer what they must.’

Leaving aside questions of morality, the principle only works if one can certain both that ‘the weak’ can be ground so decisively into the dust that they cannot recover – and also that one’s treatment of them will not impact the perceptions of other relevant actors of how one is likely to treat those actors, given the chance.

Over the last twenty-five years, I have watched triumphalists in the United States – and also Britain – enjoying the pleasures of victory. With Clinton, Strobe Talbott, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Madeleine Albright, Robert Kagan and so many others, I have seen the same toxic combination one saw in Western leaders in their treatment of the defeated Germany of 1918: political opportunism, combined with the indulgence of the pleasures of revenge, both in their electorates and in themselves.

Whether the implicit assumption that grinding the adversary into the dirt would be costless was correct or not has long puzzled me. My own view has been that an element of magnanimity might made sense, not simply for moral but also Machiavellian reasons. Whether this was, or was not, naivety on my part may become clearer in coming months and years.

[Highlander]

Alba,

I said,apparently the Chinese and Russians judging by their recent actions(the Ukraine and South China Sea provocations are two examples)and their contemptuous public statements concerning POTUS. Lead me to believe,they have decided Barack Hussein Obama is not a serious man ,and he probably lacks the moral courage to successfully resist them.

I don't know for sure, but I suspect they are right. But right or wrong, their obvious lack of respect for him is the stuff major wars are made from.

[The beaver]

"Did the bad bad US force them?

Or did they willing follow US?"

Babak,

You are forgetting the threat of sanctions.
Just have to watch how BNP Paribas is dancing these days - the US treasury via the US Attorney ia asking for $10B ( however GS or JP Morgan are untouchables when they pull the same kind of stunt). The exe mgmt in Paris is not sure whether they want to involve the Elysée palace and/or Fabius.

As far as a deal with Iran, the P3 members are undergoing a musical chair dance with their preps at the p5+1 nuclear discussions

[Fred]

David,

You pose some very good observations. I would add that if a nation is going to impose a Carthaginian peace then it needs to make certain its enemies have suffered the same fate as the Carthaginians.