WaTimes: Netanyahu and American Exceptionalism

In happier times when foreign dignitaries were graced with VP Biden’s presence…

Charles Hurt with the Washington Times has a few words to say about Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Congress yesterday:

Mr. Obama pointedly skipped Mr. Netanyahu’s speech but was quick to dismiss it as “nothing new.” He may be as arrogant as he is ignorant, but at least he is modest.

Negotiating with such feral beasts as Iran’s theocratic dictators is certainly dangerous. It is also a fool’s errand.

And who better to tap for a fool’s errand than Secretary of State John Kerry himself! The fool’s fool, the very jester in the court of jesters!

In about three sentences, Hurt encapsulated the entire argument against a deal with the Iranians — not to mention an open reference to the magisterial work done by Ben Birnbaum and Amir Tibon over at The New Republic on how Secretary of State John Kerry blew up the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

For the Israelis, no deal with a nation that has openly declared its willingness to wipe Israel off the map is a good deal.  None.

In fact, any deal that doesn’t dismantle the heavy-water plant at Arak and reduce the number of centrifuges to somewhere in the 5-6,000 range permanently is a deal that hardwires an Iranian path to weaponization.  Such a path opens the door for the Saudis to either purchase or build their own nuclear weapons.  Turkey is already proceeding with not one but four nuclear reactors at Akkuyu financed by the Japanese.  Pakistan and India are already weaponized, but an arms race towards mutually assured destruction (MAD) would not be off the table.  Finally, with a weakened NATO in the face of the Ukrainian crisis, and Russia playing games in the Ukraine, Syria, and with Iran… how does this end well?

The message Netanyahu conveyed to bipartisan applause was simple: Israel would rather act in concert with America, but Israel will act alone if it must.  It is the Islamic Republic — not Israel — that is bringing things to a fine point.

What the Obama administration seems to be accomplishing is converting the “special relationship” with Israel into a multilateral relationship across the Middle East that puts Iran and Saudi Arabia on par with the Israelis themselves — a dangerous form of moral equivalency that undermines American strategic interests over the long term for short term interests (read: doing something about ISIL).  The misplaced faith that we are merely buying time against the Iranians in the hopes of a “Persian Spring” has already hit its brick wall in Ba’athist Egypt and the Syrian Civil War.

Believing for a moment that we are purchasing stability with rubrics did not work with Saddam Hussein in the 1990s; there are few reasons to believe that Iran merely wants “this much and no further” while they possess the means and motivation to manufacture weapons-grade plutonium.

So why does Netanyahu come to the United States?  Democrats (and primarily Democrats) seem to think it’s a whistle stop for Likud in the wake of the mid-March elections.  Perhaps so — especially since Organizing For America has boots on the ground trying to influence the outcome of the election in Israel… the very idea of outside groups campaigning back home being the most horrible of horribles to the progressive left.

Yet what most of the world saw — and most Americans across the political divide inferred — was a statesman laying forth his nation’s legitimate security concerns and claims.  Moreover, what the American-educated Netanyahu asked America to do was something very much in line with our foreign policy dictates since the Reagan era, namely to support the only viable democracy in the Middle East.

It’s often said that were the Palestinians to set down their weapons today, there would be peace tomorrow and a Palestinian state within a week.  Were the Israelis to do likewise?  There would be no more Israel.

The question Americans get to ask isn’t one of realpolitik or an accommodation with our enemies.  Rather, the question we must answer in the Middle East is whether or not the Pax Americana is worth defending, or whether we are willing to concede leadership in the Middle East to a frayed patchwork that even our closest allies understand will come undone and at a terrible price — one they made clear on Tuesday they are not willing to pay or even consider.

The American public and a bi-partisan Congress have made their choice for Israel.  One would like to think the Obama administration would opt for a stabilizing presence rather than an upending of a multi-decade relationship with the Jewish State.

Which side are we on?  As Hurt explains:

Mr. Netanyahu paid great homage to President Obama, Democrats and the U.S. Congress, which he called “the most important legislative body in the world.” Unlike some, Mr. Netanyahu is a true believer in American Exceptionalism.

Of course, all freedom-lovers around the world forced to stare down the barrel of a gun or living under the boot of tyranny believe in American Exceptionalism.

For them, it is their only hope.

…and that is the moral credibility we are gambling with in the Middle East today.  We broke our word to the Sunni tribes in Iraq not once, not twice, but three times.  Syria is in flames and under the boot of ISIL, al-Qaeda is rejuvenated, Afghanistan is tenuous at best, Libya is killing our ambassadors without consequence, Egypt no longer leads, the Saudis continue to finance Islamist terror while failing to quash it under their own roof, the Gulf States shiver under the threat of Iranian missiles, and even the NATO alliance shudders while refusing to back Ukrainian territorial integrity.

Reagan was right.  The last, best hope for mankind on earth is one heck of a day job… but if not us, whom?  That’s the question Netanyahu raises.

Either we will be exceptional, or we will recede into history and concede the role of leadership to others.  Best of luck with the latter.

UPDATE:  Jeff Schapiro with the Richmond Times-Dispatch offers his own thoughts this morning:

Once the only Jewish Republican in Congress, Cantor has said little publicly about politics or policy since he was denied renomination nine months ago in the Henrico County-anchored 7th District and joined a Los Angeles investment firm. In an Op-Ed this past weekend in USA Today, Cantor said the focus should be on Netanyahu’s concerns about Iran rather than the setting in which he expressed them.