What the (Bleep) Just Happened? (44 page)

The illegal alien invasion squares nicely with the kooks’ objective of removing American greatness, which is why Obama and Holder sued some of our own states and never apologized for the violent mayhem of Fast and Furious. In fact, the gunwalking operation continues exactly as planned, with Holder predicting that “for years to come, guns lost during this operation will continue to show up at crime scenes on both sides of the border.” Kook mission accomplished.

We usually assume that our leadership is on the side of the rule of law and law enforcement. But as Obama reminded La Raza: “The Democrats and your president are with
you
.… Remember who it is we need to move to change the laws.”

Obama’s active encouragement of the illegal invasion is community organizing at its best. It’s also a genius application of Alinsky’s revolutionary strategy: stoke chaos to pave the way for your radical agenda. To the leftists, the
American
people need to be browbeaten, sued, abused, and attacked by their own government in service of their greater goal of “fundamentally transforming” the nation. And if you don’t like it, here comes a Mexican drug lord with a Fast and Furious gun we gave him to convince you of the error of your ways.

Obama seems to believe that diplomacy is a zero-sum game: that is, as you seek improved relations with your adversaries, you must sucker-punch your friends. No American president has blown off long-standing and loyal allies with as much speed and fervor as Obama has slammed into Israel, Egypt, Great Britain, France, Germany, Honduras, Iraq, Japan, and South Korea, prompting them all to think, “What the @$%&! just happened?”

When he first entered the White House, Obama dissed our greatest allies, the British, by returning a bust of Winston Churchill, the savior of Western civilization. The bust was a gift from the British government, but Obama needed to make room for all of those photos of Michelle showing off her buff arms, so something had to go. He also disrespected the British by giving the then prime minister, Gordon Brown, DVDs that he was unable to watch on European players, and to Her Majesty the Queen, he gave an iPod. As she turned it on for the first time, eagerly anticipating the latest Flo Rida single, the British sovereign had her ears assaulted by endless Obama lectures on the virtues of wind farms. She was further stunned to discover that Obama had forgotten to erase a bunch of things from it, like Reverend Wright’s sermons, the Jane Fonda workout, a video clip of Fredo Corleone screaming in
The Godfather: Part II
, and a ton of Barbra Streisand songs.

He insulted the French by arriving in Paris only to turn down a dinner invitation from French president Nicolas Sarkozy. He further offended the French by sending a letter to the French president—Jacques Chirac—when Sarkozy was the actual president of France at the time, and he held a town hall meeting while there but didn’t call on a single French citizen.
Mon Dieu!

He dinged the Germans by canceling his scheduled appearance in Germany on November 9, 2009, to mark the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The collapse of the wall is one of the greatest triumphs of liberty over tyranny in the history of mankind, but Obama couldn’t be bothered. He had other stuff to do. Like play golf. Smoke. Chat up J. Lo. Shoot hoops.

He dissed our South Korean allies by refusing to deal aggressively with their—and our—North Korean enemy on its nuclear program, its widespread proliferation, its attack on a South Korean ship that killed forty-six South Korean citizens, and its military assault on the South that resulted in several deaths. The message South Korea and another great U.S. ally, Japan, took from this? You’re on your own. Good luck with that whole North Korean nightmare thingy. Oh, and that Chinese colossus thingy too.

Obama blew off the pro-American, pro-Israel Kurds in northern Iraq who, once they heard about his decision to withdraw completely from Iraq, sent their leader, Kurdistan president Massoud Barzani, to Tehran to seek protection from the Iranian government.

Obama has sold out Honduras, which was desperately trying to prevent a socialist takeover by an anti-American authoritarian whom Hillary Clinton’s State Department thought was a swell fellow to support. This thrilled the Cuban dictators Fidel and Raúl Castro and South American strongmen such as Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and Bolivian president Evo Morales. Their fight for socialism was made so much easier with the United States not just out of the way but actively championing their cause.
Muchas gracias
, American gringos!

In the most egregious example of the Obama ally blow-off, he took our special friendship with Israel—our historically close friend, our most reliable strategic partner in the Middle East, and a nation with which we share democratic and free market principles—and he drop-kicked it. Schooled on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the terrorist sympathizer and Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, Obama came to office with the view that Israel is an occupying force of lands historically, legally, and morally Palestinian and that Israel bullies its way around the region, exaggerating the threats it faces and holding the so-called peace process hostage with outrageous demands. It’s no wonder that once he became president, he reoriented our policy away from a staunch alliance with Israel and toward one far more sympathetic to Palestinian demands. When he was campaigning in 2008, then–Senator Obama blurted out, “There is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you’re anti-Israel.” If Obama’s GOP rival, Senator McCain, had said that, the leftist press would have raked him over the coals for its outrageousness as well as its inaccuracy. When Obama referred to Likud, the party had been out of power for two years, replaced by the centrists of Kadima and led by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who had been discussing a major territorial compromise. Furthermore, it was under Likud governments that Israel had carried out its biggest territorial withdrawals from Sinai and Gaza. But to Obama, Likud and frankly every Israeli government was seen as uncompromising and hostile to peace.

A few months after entering office, Obama told American Jewish leaders that essentially he had had enough of the close U.S.-Israeli relationship. Referring to the Bush years, he said, “For eight years there was no light between the United States and Israel, and nothing got accomplished.” It was during those “nothing” years that Likud prime minister Ariel Sharon removed thousands of Israelis from Gaza and the northern part of the West Bank and enforced the withdrawal with the Israeli Defense Forces. Sharon was so committed to a two-state solution that he resigned from Likud to form a new party to try to see it through.

After arrogantly scolding both Israeli and U.S. Jewish leaders about their selfish ways, Obama turned his attention to the “international community.” Speaking before the virulently anti-American, anti-Israeli United Nations General Assembly in September 2009, Obama told his audience that “America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.” The UN crowd went wild. Obama had been repeatedly warned by Middle East experts that the demand that Israel halt settlement construction would be disastrous, but he went ahead anyway. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas then ran with it, making a settlement freeze a precondition for negotiations, knowing he was backed by the American president. Since Israel agreed to only limited construction stoppages, the result was the longest period without direct talks between the parties in over seventeen years.

Abbas later said that he felt betrayed by Obama, who, feeling the pressure from American Jewish leaders and congressional Democrats, essentially backed away from the settlement demand and left Abbas twisting in the wind. Abbas said, “We both went up the tree. After that, he came down with a ladder and he removed the ladder and said to me, jump. Three times he did it.” If you’re going to sell out a close American ally, at least do it in a way that doesn’t also tick off the adversary you’re trying to help.

In the spring of 2010, Vice President Joe Biden visited Israel. While he was there, a local Jerusalem office announced plans for new settlement construction in a part of the city. Biden left Israel in a huff and Obama began a full-frontal assault on the Jewish state. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dressed down Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a forty-five-minute phone call during which she blamed him for “harming the bilateral relationship.” When she was done berating him, she ordered the Israeli ambassador to the State Department and had him flogged in much the same way. The administration canceled their Middle East envoy’s scheduled trip to Israel, and it joined a European Union condemnation of Israel. Members of Team Obama fanned out on television and radio to call Israel’s planned housing construction an “insult” and an “affront.” Apparently, everyone in this world is allowed to build houses except Jews. Hamas can build houses in Gaza, and Hezbollah can build houses in Lebanon. But if you’re a Jew? No house for you. Did Obama really believe he could tell a country that it couldn’t build houses in its own capital city? I guess so. Or perhaps he was just mad that his fellow anti-Israel kook, Jimmy Carter, wasn’t asked to help build the houses with Habitat for Humanity.

The ease and rapidity with which they could summon all of this sound and fury against Israel was striking, and yet they couldn’t manage one word of condemnation for the Palestinians who, just minutes after Biden had left the West Bank, honored Dalal Mughrabi, a Palestinian terrorist responsible for an attack that had killed thirty-eight people, including children and an American. The response from the administration? Crickets and tumbleweeds. Within two weeks, Netanyahu had arrived in Washington to try to smooth things over but was left cooling his heels at the White House by Obama, who not only ditched Bibi mid-meeting to have dinner with his family, but who also denied him a photo-op, a joint statement, and even an honorable exit. He forced Netanyahu to leave through a side door, perhaps to commune with the Dalai Lama who had been shoved out the same trash-strewn exit.

Obama’s anti-Israeli moves escalated. In late May 2010, a flotilla sponsored by the Islamist forces in Turkey set sail with the stated mission of busting the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of terrorist-run Gaza and to distribute “humanitarian” aid to Palestinians living there. Israel was allowing all kinds of humanitarian and other assistance into Gaza, had invited the flotilla organizers to transport the aid through land crossings but was refused, and Gaza had its own government, Hamas, which was supposed to be providing for its people. But none of that mattered to the flotilla organizers, who included American radicals such as Bill Ayers and Jodie Evans, the leader of the leftist organization CODEPINK, who colluded with Hamas to arrange the operation. Another American kook who was involved in the Free Gaza movement was former Democratic congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, also known as “Much Ado About a Hairdo.” She has repeatedly joined with Muslim radicals in attempting to overrun the Israeli blockade. At one point, she was even caught and held in an Israeli detention facility. Unfortunately for us, the Israelis couldn’t stand her either and deported her back to the United States.

On May 31, the ships were intercepted by Israeli speedboats and helicopters, from which Israeli commandos arrived to force the ships to dock in the Israeli port of Ashdod for inspection. The commandos were brutally attacked aboard one of the ships by what a United Nations report later described as a “hard-core group” armed with iron bars and knives. Ten Israeli commandos were wounded in the attack, and nine of the Gaza-bound militants were killed.

This had been a deliberate act of provocation, designed to instigate a violent confrontation in order to bring global condemnation of Israel, and yet Israel responded by easing its blockade of Gaza, freeing the flotilla militants, and returning the ships. What did Israel get for its magnanimity? Israel got the Turkish government breaking off diplomatic relations with Jerusalem, rupturing one of Israel’s closest strategic partnerships in the Muslim world. And it got the American president offering no backup to its ally; instead, in the perverse anti-Israel world of Obama, he actually pressured the
Israeli
government to apologize to Turkey for defending itself.

In late May 2011, with the Arab world in turmoil, Israel’s partnership with Egypt threatened, and Israel’s enemies in Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood emboldened, Obama slammed into the Jewish state with a brazen demand that it return to its indefensible pre-1967 cease-fire lines with land swaps. At one of its greatest moments of vulnerability, Israel heard the person who should have been its greatest friend and defender publicly negotiate away its security position yet again.

In early September 2011, the Arab “Spring” came knocking on the door of the Israeli embassy in Cairo, Egypt. A mob of thousands, many of whom were tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, swarmed around the embassy. In short order, they took a battering ram to the concrete security wall, breached it, and then ransacked the embassy, smashing furniture and tossing confidential documents from the windows to the streets below. Israeli embassy staff found safety in a steel-doored safe room, but were ultimately whisked to safety by Egyptian commandos. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta assured the Israelis that the United States would provide protection for the embassy personnel, but Obama’s only public reaction was a written statement expressing his “grave concern.”

A few months later, Obama sent out Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to yell at the Israelis to “get to the damn table” and negotiate with the Palestinians. Panetta also scolded Israeli officials about their supposed eagerness to launch a full-fledged war against Iran’s nukes. Obama then wheeled out Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to blast Israel over what she called “anti-democratic” legislation proposed by Israel’s religious right regarding the media, charities, and the courts. Team Obama refused to “meddle” in Iranian and Syrian internal affairs while those regimes were slaughtering their people and refused to criticize the Muslim world generally for its systematic oppression, but it had no problem “meddling” in internal Israeli controversies.