Pages

Sunday, January 25, 2015

Speaker Boehner Pulls a David Lycnh

     New Yorkers are appalled with the arrogant way that he took it upon himself to place the police unions above the people of NYC by making baseless charges against a duly elected Mayor, disrespecting Mayor de Blasio in public-and so disrespecting all New Yorkers-and pushing a work stoppage as an attempt to hold the City to ransom.

    http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/01/al-sharpton-more-popular-than-patrick.html

    It needs to be appreciated that what Boehner and his GOP House are doing is no less arrogant. He is disrespecting the American people's President and potentially causing a serious breach between the U.S. and Israel diplomatically. This is something that not only Americans have criticized but many Israelis as well.

    Like Lynch, Netanyahu is motivated by politics and is Americans will no more appreciate him tampering in American politics than New Yorkers appreciate Lynch tampering in NYC politics. Netanyahu is trying to force the President's hand to increase sanctions against Iran a very serious thing for him to try to do. Yet it seems to be backfiring.

     "There seems to be a growing backlash to the Netanyahu-Boehner speech stunt, both in the United States and Israel. As you can see from our current feature story, former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren has said the speech threatens a rift with the US and should be canceled. I want to say more about Oren's remarks and their context. But before getting to that, a few other developments."

      "There is a must-read column by Chemi Shalev in Haaretz which you can read in English. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) gave a statement to Haaretz roundly trashing Netanyahu's visit - both for the breach of diplomatic protocol and for the substance of what Netanyahu is trying to do: blow up US diplomatic efforts to reach an agreement with Iran.

"Inviting Prime Minister Netanyahu without consulting the administration is clearly a breach of protocol and an unwelcome injection of partisan politics into our foreign policy. It puts the United States in the middle of Israel’s election, which is highly inappropriate ... I also believe imposing additional sanctions on Iran in the midst of negotiations — which is what Netanyahu will reportedly discuss — would collapse the negotiations and ruin a historic diplomatic opportunity. Imposing sanctions now is reckless and dangerous.”


      "Feinstein's willingness to speak so aggressively is a good measure of the damage caused by Netanyahu's actions. But just as notable in Shalev's reporting is that the speech debacle appears to be weakening Democratic support for the Menendez-Kirk bill to push forward a new round of sanctions on Iran - the bill President Obama has promised to veto. At least in the context of US politics and politicking around Iran, Netanyahu's move appears to be backfiring."

     http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-step-too-far--2

     Netanhayu's Likud party has been trying to build their foreign policy around the GOP. 

     "If that holds up, it's an astounding development. It means Netanyahu's norm-breaking behavior and decision to subordinate Israel-US ties to his reelection campaign have managed to overcome - at least in certain cases - Democratic senators' usual unwillingness to get outflanked to the right on security issues tied to Israel. The level of affront is almost unprecedented: we now know that Israeli Ambassador Dermer - a primary architect of the effort to align Israel around the GOP and himself a former Republican political operative - met with Secretary Kerry for several hours the day before the Netanyahu speech was announced and never mentioned it to Kerry. In almost any other case, such bad faith and duplicity would lead a host country to ask that an ambassador be withdrawn."

     Meanwhile Netanyahu's former Ambassador is calling for him to call off the trip to see Boehner. 

      "The behavior over the last few days created the impression of a cynical political move, and it could hurt our attempts to act against Iran. It's advisable to cancel the speech to Congress so as not to cause a rift with the American government. Much responsibility and reasoned political behavior are needed to guard interests in the White House."
The point is pretty clear: Netanyahu is too reckless to safeguard the Israel-US alliance. He hits all the key points, the mix of recklessness and placing political opportunism above the national interest.

      I guess you could paraphrase Noam Chomsky a bit and call Lynch, Boehner, and Netanhayu as a kind of 'fateful triangle.'

      http://www.amazon.com/Fateful-Triangle-Palestinians-Updated-Classics/dp/0896086011

      I'm not saying I agree with everything Chomsky says in the book-but the phrase sure sums up what's going on now. 

   

No comments:

Post a Comment