OBAMA’S NAME-CALLING STRATEGY

DATELINE: Barnyardville, October 30 – The Jeffrey Goldberg interview with two unnamed senior Obama administration officials published in The Atlantic two days ago is causing quite a stir. “The Crisis in U.S.–Israel Relations Is Officially Here” is a far-ranging exploration of the current issues and tensions between the two allies. The stirring part is the revelation that the White House views Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as an uncooperative, cowardly, politically motivated chickenshit.

The reaction to the article has been predictably negative. Just as predictably, the White House refuses to apologize or identify the senior officials who trashed Netanyahu. It is impossible to believe that such a tirade against our only ally in the Mid East was not cleared with the President first. It is almost impossible to decipher the advantage that Obama hoped to gain from the juvenile rant.

Almost. The face-to-face meetings between Netanyahu and Obama are notoriously unproductive. The Israeli leader rejects the concessions our President urges upon Israel. After Tuesday, their talks, if any occur, will be even less fruitful. In fact, the article may signal an end to a long-standing relationship, at least for the next two years. That has to be obvious to all.

Equally obvious is that fact that Obama uses Goldberg to publically disparage and humiliate the Israeli. Talk about chickenshit. Come to think of it, giving such a mud-slinging interview while insisting on anonymity is totally chickenshit, too.

Beneath Obama’s contemptible choice of message delivery to Netanyahu lies another twisted vein running through the article. The senior chickenshits repeatedly criticized Israel’s Prime Minister for allegedly basing all of his decisions on political considerations.

As Goldberg understood their criticisms, Netanyahu has a near-pathological desire for career preservation through pandering to his base. One of them stated,

“The bad thing about him is that he won’t do anything to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians or with the Sunni Arab states. The only thing he’s interested in is protecting himself from political defeat.”

That’s real chutzpah. Barack Obama is the most politically motivated politician on the planet with his persistent pandering to his base. Ascribing the President’s grossest defect of leadership to Netanyahu is insulting to us all.

The administration did provide an official response to the Goldberg article. The ever-feckless Susan Rice claimed that the Israel-U.S. relationship has never been stronger. She also stated, amid a vociferous chorus of opposing voices from the Israeli parliament, that no crisis exists between the two countries.

Rice must have skipped the article and read from a prepared statement. But, there is one thing everyone can agree on. Whenever Obama’s national security adviser opens her mouth ridiculous untruths escape with reckless abandon.

This is not Goldberg’s first interview of White House officials on the relationship between the Obama administration and the Israeli Prime Minister. Last March, The Atlantic ran a Goldberg interview of the President himself about the difficulties Obama faced in attempting to contain Israel’s threatened aggression against Iran.

At that time, the White House feared an Israeli preventative strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. But, according to Obama’s chickenshits this week, aggression from the gutless Israeli leader is no longer a concern.

Netanyahu must be thinking sticks and stones and all that and a bunch of other things as well.