“The United States will always have Israel's back when it comes to Israel's security.”
Barack Obama, March 5, 2012
The Israeli back that Barack Obama likes to talk about must be getting pretty sore from all the times the President has stabbed it rather than protect it.
The latest undercutting of Israel’s national security interests came this week with the Obama Administration leaking classified intelligence that Israel had “gained access to airbases in Azerbaijan,” the Muslim nation on Iran’s northern border. The extremely sensitive and strategically critical information was reported in Foreign Policy magazine as confirmed by “four senior diplomats and intelligence officials.”
This leak was no accident.
While the Obama Administration fecklessly watches as Iran continues its quest for a nuclear weapon, Israel must wrestle alone with the existential threat they face. Last month, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta threw Israel under the Obama Administration’s bus by disclosing to the Washington Post that “there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May, or June.”
The open-mic disaster in Seoul, South Korea between Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had to add to the anxiety of the already exacerbated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. With a paternalistic pat on the knee, Obama told the Russian that after his “last election” next November he’d have “more flexibility” on missile defense. Exactly why Barack Obama feels compelled to cut side deals with Vladimir Putin who reclaimed the Russian Presidency in a corrupt election that was marked by an extremely anti-American campaign agenda is yet another of the Obama paradoxes.
The Russians have become Iran’s greatest defender and ally and are arming Bashar Assad’s relentless assault on his own people in Syria – Israel’s other arch-enemy. Syria has been listed as a state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. since 1979 and “knowingly harbors and gives financial aid, political support, artillery and military training to terrorist organizations, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, and Hezbollah and other extremist groups,” according to the Middle East experts at The Israel Project.
Obama obviously no longer believes in the clear delineation of the post-9/11 Bush Doctrine that “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”
The great Charles Krauthammer offered the following summation of Obama’s obsession with placating Putin and “resetting” U.S. relations with Russia. Doubtlessly, Netanyahu must be having a similar level of frustration with the American Commander-in-Chief:
“In addition to canceling the Polish/Czech missile-defense system, Obama gave the Russians accession to the World Trade Organization, a START treaty that they need and we don’t (their weapons are obsolete and deteriorating rapidly), and a scandalously blind eye to their violations of human rights and dismantling of democracy. Obama even gave Putin a congratulatory call for winning his phony election.”
“In return? Russia consistently watered down or obstructed sanctions on Iran, completed Iran’s nuclear reactor at Bushehr, provides to this day Bashar Assad with huge arms shipments used to massacre his own people (while rebuilding the Soviet-era naval base in the Syrian port of Tartus), conducted a virulently anti-American presidential campaign on behalf of Putin, pressured Eastern Europe, and threatened Georgia.”
“On which of ‘all these issues’ — Syria, Iran, Eastern Europe, Georgia, human rights — is Obama ready to offer Putin yet more flexibility as soon as he gets past his last election? Where else will he show U.S. adversaries more flexibility? Yet more aid to North Korea? More weakening of tough Senate sanctions against Iran?”
Krauthammer asks rhetorically, “Can you imagine the kind of pressure a re-elected Obama will put on Israel?”
Working side deals with the Russians and hanging Israel – America’s great friend - out to dry is what qualifies as enlightened foreign policy for Barack Obama. With friends like that…..?
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