As we reported this weekend, Israel and its supporters are flipping out over the apparent thaw between the United States and Iran, precipitated by Obama’s climbdown on Syria. Here is an angry piece by Bill Kristol at the Weekly Standard, calling Obama an appeaser, Rouhani Hitler, Assad Mussolini, and saying that only Israel can lead. It seems the piece is written in desperation: Kristol marshaling what forces he still has at his disposal to head off any understanding between the US and Iran.
There is so much hysteria here that I need to quote a lot of Kristol’s argument to give full measure to his world view. How many Americans share this understanding? Notice Kristol’s extended and repeated Hitler analogies, the characterization of Obama as an appeaser who will leave the U.S. to be eaten by locusts, the overblown tone employing Shakespeare and Churchill references, and the heroic description of Israel as “for now the leader of the West” because it will act against Iran.
Act Two opens at the United Nations. There, we’ll see a charm offensive worthy of Richard III by the new Iranian president and veteran deceiver of the West, Hassan Rouhani. In response, the Obama administration will move on from punting in Syria to appeasing Iran….
Smaller retreats lead to larger ones. The West’s failure to resist Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935—and his troops’ use of poison gas—was merely a foretaste of the failure to resist Hitler when he took the Rhineland in March 1936. In his essay in the volume Present Dangers, the historian Donald Kagan tells the story. Hitler had expected Britain to slap down Mussolini…. Hitler drew the lesson. The occupation of the Rhineland followed shortly.
There will be no Rhineland this time. Iran isn’t 1930s Germany, and the United States is more formidable than Britain. For now, Iran will have to achieve its goals by stealth and diplomacy, while Hitler achieved his by bravado and force. But the accommodation of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons lies ahead as surely as the accommodation of Nazi Germany’s expansionist dreams. Moreover, Rouhani knows what he is doing. He was Iran’s top nuclear negotiator for two critical years a decade ago and proved then his skill at duplicity in the furtherance of his regime’s nuclear ambitions.
And the Obama administration, too, will play its role, echoing the Baldwin government, which Winston Churchill in 1936 characterized as “decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.” Churchill continued, “So we go on preparing more months and years—precious, perhaps vital to the greatness of Britain—for the locusts to eat.”
As Iran moves closer to nuclear weapons, undeterred by the West’s leading power, a 21st-century tragedy threatens to unfold. Unless. Unless a dramatis persona who didn’t exist in 1936 intervenes: Israel. Ariel Sharon once famously said that Israel would not play the role of Czechoslovakia in the 1930s. Nor will it play the role of Poland. Despite imprecations from the Obama administration, Israel will act. One prays it will not be too late.
It is a strange course of events, heavy with historical irony, that has made the prime minister of Israel for now the leader of the West.
Once again this demonstrates the significance of MJ Rosenberg holding the line on the use of the term Israel Firster. Kristol is surely an Israel Firster. But only when people are allowed to talk about this allegiance freely will there actually be a public understanding: that not all Jews are Zionist, that Zionism calls on tribal and paranoid elements inside the Jewish community, and it has helped to build a militarist and discriminatory regime that is more and more isolated from positive world opinion.
Israel isn’t even part of the west ffs. It is just another tinpot middle eastern statelet run by a nutjob military junta.
they are seriously becoming unhinged.
It’s pretty obvious why people with a racist and paranoid world view like that would oppose so-called ‘Arabists’ within the Republican party who tended to have a more balanced(actually realistic view of American interests, which necessarily de-empethaized Israel).
The problem for Kristol and other hard-right Jewish neocons is that to recruit gentile fellow-travellers they had to sugar the deal somehow. Blind loyalty for Israel works if you’re from a Jewish background with skin in the game. If not, what’s in it for you?
Enter islamophobia.
That’s what the Steve Emersons’ of the world have peddled and Kristol have been more than willing to help along.
They used the 9/11 atrocities to the max to gin this feeling up – and then use it for Israel. The problem is that the so-called ‘muslim horde’ was never going to take over Europe, in some countres in Europe most Arabs aren’t even muslim, which is now obvious. Secondly, muslims aren’t going to ‘take over’ America in some kind of paranoid ‘stealth jihad’ and thirdly most Americans who get to know muslims know they’re decent people.
Add 10 years of failed wars in the middle east and Kristol is start to look like the boy who cried wolf one too many times.
The additional problem for Kristol is that an ever-growing segment of the American mainstream population(which I define as people not very political and/or interested in the minute foreign policy issues) are starting to see AIPAC, and by extension Israel, for what it is. I still believe that the Ron Paul moment of the 2012 election was a watershed moment few still have grappled with properly. It was the first strong grassroots message to the elites of both parties, but particularly the GOP, that there must be a new course. I believe Obama saw and understood that, and adapted accoringly.
I also think more and more Americans now view Israel in its true light; as a parasite state trying to goad America to fight its wars. Israel cannot fight Iran alone – even if it pretends so – which is why it wants to use American military to achieve its aims.
For me, it will be interesting to see the continual neocon/realist split inside the Republican party. How long will people talk about ‘isolationism’ instead of talking about warmongers and, perhaps more importantly in Kristol’s case, Israel Firsters? (The same is true in the case of Jennifer Rubin).
But I’m pessimistic on the GOP. The strongest realist movement is now inside the Democratic party; Mearsheimer himself used to be a Rockefeller Republican but now openly admins he identifies more closely with the left on foreign policy and in his sparse comments on domestic policy does suggest a strong shift to the left.
What will win this battle is demographics. The GOP cannot win without much more minority voters – who tend to understand that it makes no sense to spend money on wars when there are such gaping inequalities in America. Kristol’s party will not win.
Will he defect back to where he belonged on all other issues than foreign policy; the dems? The neocons used to be Marxist Zionists who didn’t trust the left on Israel. That’s why they switched. If they see the Democratic party as inevitably the ruler for generations to come, could we see a switch back?
I’m not sure if the Democratic party has a well-thought out alternative yet. Mostly opposition to what we don’t want.
The arrogant and belligerent school-yard bully repeatedly threatens to beat up the quiet, unpopular kid.
But he doesn’t, because his friends have conveniently agreed to restrain him.
The bully hopes no-one sees through the pretence, or that his friends decide to stop holding him back…
PNAC Kristol.
How in the hell can he compare President Rouhani to Hitler? I am so sick of the evocation of Hitler and the Holocaust– can’t they ever even pretend to be honest? Mr. Obama needs to stand up to this bs NOW. Because never, ever should this become true:
“It is a strange course of events, heavy with historical irony, that has made the prime minister of Israel for now the leader of the West. But irony is better than tragedy.”
He should be ostracized and ridiculed for his eternally stupid pov. As for Netanyahu, he is the leader of crazies. He’s not my President and is not our friend. This ‘best ally in the world status’ has given birth to a most unholy alliance, and one I wish we were rid of.
If Israel has the cojones to “act” out of paranoia and with zero effort toward peace– let them go it alone. I feel sorry for the helpless Palestinians and Israelis, but I don’t want my government to lift a finger to help the deliberately warmongering and delusional Zionists.