February
14, 110 Sunday 8 AdarI 3870 13:57 IST
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Column
One: Sarah Palin’s friendship
By CAROLINE
GLICK
12/02/2010
Hers is
the strongest single American voice opposing Obama’s foreign policy, supporting
Israel and denying Iran nuclear weapons.
photo
from same article at CenterForSecurityPolicy.org
US
President Barack Obama is an inept, incompetent leader. More than his failure
to pass his domestic agenda on health care and global warming despite his
Democratic Party’s control over both houses of Congress, Iran’s announcement on
Thursday that it is a nuclear power and has the capacity to produce
weapons-grade uranium is a testament to Obama’s feckless incompetence. Even his
most ardent supporters are admitting this.
Take The
New York Times. In a news analysis Thursday of Obama’s failure to prevent Iran
from advancing with its nuclear program, David Sanger wrote that for the US
president, the last year has been “a year in which little in his dealings with
Iran has gone the way that the White House expected.”
Since
Obama first announced his wish to sit down with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at a
Democratic presidential candidates’ debate in the spring of 2008, the 44th US
president’s only strategy for dealing with Iran has been to appease its
leaders. And as of Tuesday, he still believes that ingratiating himself with
the regime is his best bet.
On
Tuesday, Obama wouldn’t admit that appeasement has failed, even as all of
Iran’s top leaders said they were expanding their illicit uranium enrichment
activities. The most he would do was acknowledge that the regime’s leaders
“have made their choice so far, although the door is still open.”
As for
sanctions, well, Obama said it will take “several weeks” to put those together
at the UN.
The
distressing truth is that Obama’s aim has never been to prevent Teheran from acquiring
a nuclear weapon. His whole “sanctions-if-engagement-fails” strategy is just a
ruse. The Obama administration has never intended to place biting sanctions on
Iran. As one senior administration official told The New York Times, the
purpose of the sanctions talk is to get the Iranians to agree to negotiate. As
he put it, “This is about driving them back to negotiations, because the real
goal here is to avoid war.”
Got that?
As far as Obama is concerned, Iran with nuclear weapons isn’t the main concern.
Israel using force to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons is the main
concern.
US
PRESIDENTS have a far freer hand in foreign policy than they have in domestic
affairs. A president’s ability to implement his domestic agenda is constrained
by Congress. Congress has much less of a say in foreign policy. But the main
constraining factor for a US president in both domestic and foreign affairs is
public opinion.
Over the
past year, Obama failed to pass his domestic agenda even though he enjoyed governing
majorities in both houses of Congress, because the public opposed his agenda.
So, too, if the public is able to express its opposition to his foreign policy,
particularly as it relates to Israel and Iran, he will be unable to sustain it.
To date, in
light of his sinking approval ratings, the main thing Obama has had going for
him is that since the presidential election, his political opponents have
lacked a leader capable of uniting his opponents around an alternative path.
Over the past week, that leader may have emerged.
On
Saturday, former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah
Palin gave the keynote address at the Tea Party Movement convention in
Nashville, Tennessee. As she did in the presidential campaign, Palin electrified
her audience in Nashville by credibly channeling the populist impulses of
American voters. In her signature line she asked, “So how’s that hopey changey
stuff working out for ya?”
Palin
excoriated Obama on his handling of US foreign policy. Among other things, she
noted that a year into his quest to appease dictators, America’s international
standing is in shambles. “Israel, a friend and a critical ally, now questions
the strength of our support,” she added.
Palin
bellowed that on issues of foreign policy, there is no room for self-delusion.
As she put it, “National security, that’s the one place where you’ve got to
call it like it is.” And then, “We need a foreign policy that distinguishes
America’s friends from her enemies and recognizes the true nature of the
threats that we face.”
If her
address wasn’t enough to convince Americans – and specifically American Jews –
that Palin thinks supporting Israel and standing up to Iran are the keys to US
national security, then there was her interview on Fox News Sunday. Asked how
Obama can win reelection in 2012, Palin responded, “Say he decided to declare
war on Iran or decided really to come out and do whatever he could to support
Israel, which I would like him to do.”
And if
that still isn’t enough, there is her lapel pin. The politician who leads the
populist opposition to Obama decided to make her most important speech since
the 2008 election wearing a pin featuring the US flag and the Israeli flag.
Palin,
who is considering a run in the 2012 Republican presidential primaries, is
using her public platforms to reassemble the coalition of security hawks,
social conservatives and blue collar workers that propelled Ronald Reagan to
the White House in 1980. Her support for Israel serves her in building support
among both security hawks and social conservatives.
Unlike
Obama’s empty protestations of support for Israel, Palin’s support is obviously
heartfelt and therefore will not diminish while Obama remains in office. And as
Palin becomes stronger, her ability to influence the US debate in a manner that
constrains Obama’s freedom to intimidate Israel into allowing Iran to become a
nuclear power will rise.
In spite
of Palin’s extraordinary support for Israel, the American Jewish community
overwhelmingly rejects her. As Jennifer Rubin noted in her article, “Why Jews
hate Palin,” in Commentary magazine, Jews disapproved of Sen. John McCain’s
choice of Palin as his running-mate by a 54 to 37 percent majority. The sneering
broadsides published against Palin by leading American Jewish writers are
legion.
In her
article, Rubin gives a number of reasons for American Jews’ rejection of Palin.
On the
one hand, American Jews, who overwhelmingly self-identify as Democrats and disproportionately
identify as liberals, oppose Palin for the same reason they oppose all
social-conservative Republicans – because she isn’t a liberal Democrat. What
makes American Jews’ rejection of Palin unique is its emotional potency. Rubin
argues that the visceral hatred that many American Jews express towards Palin
is effectively an issue of class hatred, or snobbery. They are four generations
removed from the sweatshops where their great grandparents labored on New
York’s Lower East Side. And they don’t like this woman with a funny accent who
went to University of Idaho, guts fish and shoots moose.
This may
be true. But if it is, American Jews might want to rethink their loyalty to
their social class. As the demonstrations against Ambassador Michael Oren at UC
Irvine, against former prime minister Ehud Olmert at University of Chicago,
against Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon at Oxford, as well as the
disinvitation of Prof. Benny Morris at Cambridge and the celebrity of Harvard’s
anti-Semitic Prof. Steve Walt show clearly, the bastions of intellectual
elitism where American Jews feel most at home have become the repositories of
the most virulent hatred of Jews in America and the West today. Liberal
standard bearers like Hollywood have had no compunction about giving
prestigious awards to movies like Paradise Now, which glorified murderers of
Jews in a manner unmatched since the days of Leni Riefenstahl. Elite media
outlets like The Atlantic monthly are only too happy to publish the rantings of
newly fashionable critics like Andrew Sullivan.
Liberal
Democratic Jewish voices, like Leon Wieseltier at The New Republic, are aware
that there is a problem with the rampant anti-Semitism in their camp. And they
fear that as a consequence, American Jews may take a second look at Palin with
her Israeli flag lapel pin. As Wieseltier wrote this week, “A day does not go
by when I do not do my humble part to prevent such a transformation [of
American Jewry from liberals to conservatives] from coming to pass.”
THE FACT
of the matter is that for Israel’s sake such a transformation can’t happen
quickly enough. It isn’t that American Jews have to change their social agenda,
but they must recognize that today, sadly, there is not meaningful bipartisan
support for Israel in the US Congress. The 54 lawmakers who wrote Obama a
letter last month asking him to force Israel to open up Gaza’s borders were all
Democrats. Opposition to passing sanctions against Iran, and opposition to an
Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear installations, are only politically
significant among Democrats.
In her
speech at the Tea Party Conference, Palin said, “We need a commander-in-chief,
not a professor of law standing at the lectern.”
The fact
of the matter is that Obama came to many of his anti-Israel sensibilities
through his professor friends – Rashid Khalidi, John Mearshimer, Samantha
Power, William Ayres, Bernadine Dohrn and, of course, the late Edward Said.
Americans interested in national security – and particularly American Jews who
support Israel – should be the first ones to second Palin’s statement.
Sarah
Palin’s emergence as the mouthpiece of populist opposition to Obama presents
Israel’s supporters – and particularly Israel’s Jewish supporters – with an
extraordinary opportunity and an extraordinary challenge. Palin’s coupling of
support for Israel with her populist domestic agenda marks the first time that
support for Israel has been treated as a core, populist issue. The opportunity
this presents for American Jews who care about Israel is without precedent.
But of
course, to make the best use of this opportunity, American Jews who support
Israel have to disappoint Wieseltier. They have to acknowledge that the Left
has rejected their cause and increasingly, rejects them.
Obama’s
failure to prevent Iran from moving forward with its nuclear program, and his
stubborn refusal to support an Israeli move to deny Iran the ability to
threaten Israel and global security as a whole, place Israel and core US
national security interests in unprecedented jeopardy. His fellow Democrats’
willingness to support him as he maintains this perilous course means that the
Democratic ship has abandoned Israel, and strategic sanity.
Palin’s
future in politics is unknowable. But what is clear enough is that today hers
is the strongest single American voice opposing Obama’s foreign policy and the
loudest advocate for supporting Israel and denying Iran nuclear weapons. For
this she deserves the thanks and support of American Jewry.
caroline@carolineglick.com