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Charles Krauthammer writes on the moral clarity in the Middle East.
Israel accepts an Egyptian-proposed Gaza cease-fire; Hamas keeps firing. Hamas deliberately aims rockets at civilians; Israel painstakingly tries to avoid them, actually telephoning civilians in the area and dropping warning charges, so-called roof knocking.
“Here’s the difference between us,” explains the Israeli prime minister. “We’re using missile defense to protect our civilians, and they’re using their civilians to protect their missiles.”
Rarely does international politics present a moment of such moral clarity. Yet we routinely hear this Israel-Gaza fighting described as a morally equivalent “cycle of violence.” This is absurd. What possible interest can Israel have in cross-border fighting? Everyone knows Hamas set off this mini-war. And everyone knows the proudly self-declared raison d’etre of Hamas: the eradication of Israel and its Jews.
Apologists for Hamas attribute the blood lust to the Israeli occupation and blockade. Occupation? Does no one remember anything? It was less than 10 years ago that worldwide television showed the Israeli army pulling die-hard settlers off synagogue roofs in Gaza as Israel uprooted its settlements, expelled its citizens, withdrew its military and turned every inch of Gaza over to the Palestinians. There was not a soldier, not a settler, not a single Israeli left in Gaza. …
We turn attention back to the sad sack in the white house. Power Line has some thoughts.
… As we noted here the other day, Obama has fully matched Jimmy Carter’s fecklessness, reviving Henry Kissinger’s summation, which is worth repeating:
“The Carter administration has managed the extraordinary feat of having, at one and the same time, the worst relations with our allies, the worst relations with our adversaries, and the most serious upheavals in the developing world since the end of the Second World War.”
I think it was Glenn Reynolds who first remarked that a rerun of Carter might be a best-case scenario for the Obama presidency, and it appears he has understated the depth of the problem. This is what happens when you have a president who decides the U.S. can simply check out of world leadership. The Rand Pauls of the world have a point that the U.S. is overextended in the world, and a rethinking of our commitments and grand strategy is certainly a valid undertaking. I noted here two years ago, after John argued that we should withdraw from Afghanistan, that Winston Churchill might well have agreed.
But Obama is not giving us a thoughtful reconsideration of American grand strategy. He’s just bugging out.
The Manchester Union Leader’s editors say the president’s priority is raising money.
The Middle East is imploding, our southern border is effectively erased, the economy continues to sputter, Social Security is inching closer to insolvency, and our national debt is on track to exceed the entire U.S. economy in 25 years. What has President Obama been doing? Holding fundraisers.
The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that President Obama has held 393 fundraisers, including 34 so far this year. President George W. Bush held 318 fundraisers in his entire two terms.
Republicans made hay about Obama not coming to the border during his recent trip to Texas. Why was he in Texas? To raise money.
Obama has managed to find a great deal of time to raise money for Democrats and make television appearances. What he has done with the rest of his time is a mystery. But maybe it is better this way. Had Obama stayed in the Oval Office diligently attempting to manage the government, things might be even worse.
Ron Fournier says the president needs to get over himself, but he staffed the administration with sycophants.
“Every political cause has a narrative. And every narrative has a plot.” Over lunch in Georgetown last month, a top Democratic spokesman, somebody who works intimately with both the White House and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s team, wanted me to understand his frustration with President Obama. He said every plot has a hero. And every hero leaps overwhelming obstacles to accomplish a goal.
“Who’s the hero in the White House narrative?” the Democrat asked.
I shrugged; “Barack Obama.” Aren’t all elections about the candidate, and all White Houses about the president?
The Democrat shook his head. “That’s the problem with this White House. Barack Obama is the hero of their narrative, but he’s not supposed to be,” he said. “The hero of every political narrative should be the voters.”
I thought of this exchange while vacationing the last two weeks in Michigan, a state still recovering from the 2008 recession, still limping out of the industrial era, and just now dealing with the decades-long decline of its largest city, Detroit. …
OpEd from The Daily Mail,UK on the big talking, small acting president.
… His emotionless reference to the attack as ‘a terrible tragedy’ seemed disconnected from the horrific moment, particularly as he immediately reverted to script to praise his administration and criticise Republicans.
It was a far cry from President Reagan’s 1983 fierce denunciation of the Soviet shooting down of a Korean airliner as a ‘crime against humanity’.
But it only confirmed the chaos into which US foreign policy has descended since the summer of 2012 when reporters at a White House briefing asked Mr Obama about the security of chemical weapons in the Syrian stockpile.
The commander in chief went beyond safety and said: ‘We have been very clear to the Assad regime … that a red line for us is [when] we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilised.’
The term ‘red line’ is the kind of clear, emphatic language major powers use only when they are prepared to back words with action.
A little over a year later, the Assad regime utilised chemical weapons against its own people.
The number of blunders that the President and his administration committed in the ‘red line’ affair is hard to fathom.
Before the President spoke, no one vetted the term and its consequences in the White House policy process and, once the words came out, no one undertook preparations in case Syrian president Bashar al-Assad called Mr Obama’s bluff.
According to reports, no one made the diplomatic rounds to line up the support of allies just in case, or the congressional rounds to line up the support of Congress. No one developed military plans or sent quiet signals to Assad that the US was not to be trifled with on this matter.
These actions are routine when any White House makes as definitive a commitment as the President made, except, apparently, this White House. …