The Two Faces of Barack Obama

.

{Cross-Posted at Israel Thrives}

Having read over Barack Obama's speech to AIPAC today what jumps out, to me at least, is the claim that Israelis have the right to make their own decisions regarding their own self-defense:

We all prefer to resolve this issue diplomatically. Having said that, Iran's leaders should have no doubt about the resolve of the United States just as they should not doubt Israel's sovereign right to make its own decisions about what is required to meet its security needs.

How odd.

The Obama administration has just spent months trying to convince the Israelis not to exercise any sovereign right to make their own decisions about what is required to meet their security needs.

Obama has, in effect, been arguing that the Israelis should not exercise their sovereign rights to self-defense, but to leave that to him. The argument has been that Israel must wait for the "crippling sanctions" to take effect before rushing forward to eliminate, if possible, the Iranian nuclear program. Israel has a lower "red line" on this than does the US for at least two reasons. The first, of course, is Israel's proximity to Iran, as well as its small geographic size, which makes an Israeli response more urgent to them than an American response would be to us at this point.

The second is that Israel does not have America's military capacity and therefore, if they are going to strike, they would be forced to do it before the US would need to because they have a smaller window of opportunity than does the US. Thus Barack Obama has been essentially arguing that world Jewry must leave Jewish self-defense to the United States. This is implicit in the US demand that Israel continue to wait... and to wait and wait and wait... but handing over responsibility for Israeli security to another power flies directly in the face of what Zionism is about.

And, yet, he stands before the world and claims to respect "Israel's sovereign right to make its own decisions"? This strikes me as exceedingly two-faced. You cannot, on the one hand, insist that Israel defer its self-defense to the United States, while simultaneously claiming that Israel's self-defense is up to Israel.

He seems to want it both ways.

I am suddenly reminded of another AIPAC speech a few years ago wherein Obama claimed that Jerusalem must remain the undivided "eternal" capital of the Jewish state shortly before demanding that Israel cease building housing units on the east side of town.

He lied to us then, so is he lying to us now?

I just do not trust the guy. No one who thinks that the rise of political Islam in the Middle East is a good thing, the joyous outpouring of democracy, can possibly be trusted with Israel's security.

.