To those who downrated my flip answer to bob-gardner’s flip comment: why say that Trump was doing the bidding of PM Netanyahu? Why not the governments of Saudi Arabia or the other Arab states that have supported the President’s move? Why not the many Republican foreign policy types who have opposed the deal for years? Why point to the Prime Minister of the Jewish state as the puppetmaster pulling the United State’s strings? The question answers itself.
I should say, by the way, that I think the President’s announcement was a mistake.
jconwaysays
Equating any criticism of Netanyahu or Israel with anti-semitism only emboldens the hard right turn his government has taken and makes the Israeli center left further and further irrelevant politically. The Saudis were against the deal before, but have not been nearly as vocal about it as Netenyahu. A leader who took the unprecedented step of denouncing a sitting President before a joint session of Congress and hiring a former Republican lobbyist to be his ambassador to DC to jettison the deal congressionally. The Saudi lobby holds almost no sway with Democrats while AIPAC got Schumer and other Democrats in Jewish districts to oppose their own President on this deal.
The Saudis did not leak intelligence last week or give her another major speech urging the President to back out of the deal. The Saudis were not on the phone for hours after Trump met with Macron. Netanyahu did all of those things. The Saudi leaders are not under investigation from their own government, something Trump and Netenyahu also have in common.
Netenyahu is the worst leader the Jewish state has ever had. A venal, corrupt, short sighted charlatan just like Trump. Both of these idiots are going to drag their respective states into an unwinnable and entirely avoidable war with Tehran.
It’s okay to be critical of Netanyahu–of course. But to single him out from among all those who wanted Trump to do what he did because of some supposed power he has to determine the United States’s policy is just a 2018 riff on classic anti-Semitic themes. Especially when there’s no reason to think that he had some kind of covert and malign influence, as the comment suggested.
bob-gardnersays
“. . . no reason to think . . . “I
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that maybe Trump could be corrupt and subject to foreign influence. And the New Yorker has reported on the activities of Black Cube, an organization which has ties to the Israeli government.
jconwaysays
Frankly, the activity of Black Cube is just as disturbing as the Russian campaign to interfere with our elections. Key Obama aides had their privacy violated and were personally targeted by a shady firm with direct connection to Israeli intelligence.
Until his final year in office, President Obama treated the Israeli government the exact same way he treated Republican leadership in Congress. With deference and good faith they did nothing to deserve. Despite a half a trillion in weapons aid, freeing the traitor Pollard, and doing next to nothing to stop settlement construction or aid the Palestinian Authority, the Obama administration was still tarred and feathered as the most anti-Israel President in history.
Despite the fact that both Bushes, particularly the first one, imposed far more restrictions on settlement construction and were more even handed in their treatment of Palestinian concerns. Despite the fact that Ike and Johnson actually passed sanctions against Israel over Suez and the 67′ war. Despite that Nixon and Kissinger openly debated taking out their nuclear capability. Despite the fact that Reagan saved Arafat and forced Israel to stop its war in Lebanon.
Just like McConnell wanted to make him a one term President, Bibi could never look Obama in the eye and not see a shvartze. He openly campaigned for Romney and Trump. They deserve each other and one hopes they both end their tenure in politics in a jail cell.
SomervilleTomsays
I downrated your “flip” answer because of its knee-jerk hostility to a long-time participant of BMG.
bob-gardnersays
“Why not the governments of Saudi Arabia or the other Arab states that have supported the President’s move?”
No reason not to include them. We need a special prosecutor to investigate all the ties between American politicians and all these countries. In the meantime, maybe a moratorium on American aid to these countries, all of them. And possibly sanctions on the individuals who have interfered in our political process. For all these countries, I agree.
jconwaysays
Absolutely agree. No foreign government should be able to lobby a sitting member of Congress, but it happens all the time. Our founders and even politicians from a generation ago would be appalled at how frequently this happens and how the typical member of Congress will sell out American interests to chase a cheap buck.
jconwaysays
The current relationship with the Saudi and Israeli government is entirely one sided. We are subsidizing actors that are actually doing harm to our long term national security in the region and beyond.
jconwaysays
The irony is this decision is not in the long term interest of the United States or her neediest client state in the region. Funny how the America First agenda often puts America last behind second rate powers from Russia to China to Israel. The right loved to accuse Obama of presiding over an American decline, it is hard to argue the incumbent is not accelerating trends that will do just that.
SomervilleTomsays
Today’s action reversing the Iran deal is, in my opinion, even more damaging than Mr. Bush’s catastrophic blunder in invading Iraq in 2003.
It seems to me that the most likely outcome here is that Iran becomes a full-fledged nuclear power by the 2024 election.
By reneging on the deal after Iran has complied, Mr. Trump has shown the entire world that America cannot be trusted to comply with any deal it makes. I am very confident that Europe, China, and Russia (not to mention Japan and the Koreas) will do all in their power to step up and fill the resulting vacuum.
America will be paying a stiff price for elevating this madman for generations to come.
jconwaysays
I pray it is not. The other irony is Iraq under Saddam acted as a check on Iranian ambitions and a buffer between the Islamic Republic and the Saudis. The primary legacy of our Iraq folly, in addition to thousands of needless Iraqi and American casualties and trillions of dollars down the toilet that should have been spent here, is ISIL and the Sunni-Shia conflict. President Bush went back on our word then and refused to allow the inspectors to do their job after Saddam acquiesced to American demands, removing him anyway. President Obama went back on our word with Libya and removed that regime anyway despite their cooperation in giving up their WMD’s. Now President Trump went back on our deal with Iran. Why should North Korea trust anything this administration promises them on denuclearization after this? Why should Iran?
Christophersays
This is domestic politics at work and Netanyahu knows how to play. The Christian Zionists who make up Trump’s base are a lot more Israel, right or wrong than even many American Jews.
petrsays
Does anyone doubt that Netanyahu calls the shots at the White House?
I do. I doubt it very much. For all his faults and failings, and they are many, Netanyahu remains a republican politician and not the Eye of Sauron. Netanyahu’s efforts to sway Trump on scrapping the Iran nuclear deal were no more, nor less, than the efforts of Merkel and Macron to get Trump to keep the deal. I doubt very much that, had Trump decided to keep the deal, anybody would be saying ‘Emmanuel Macron calls the shots at the White House.’
I think this is simply Trump being Trump: a child breaking something to get attention. If he could have gotten more attention by keeping the deal, that’s exactly what he would have done… It is, as the poet says, “As if increase of appetite had grown/By what it fed on“: the more attention he gets the more he wants and needs attention. Everything else — including the safety of the world — is comprehensively incidental.
jconwaysays
That is a fair assessment Petr. The fatal flaw in the controversial Mearsheimer-Walt book is that it is highly likely Bush would have gone to war in Iraq even if there had been no Israel Lobby. Also they did not mention that Sharon himself and many AIPAC members were actually convinced (correctly) that the war would strengthen Iran and Saudi Arabia and weaken Israel’s long term security concerns. AIPAC had nothing to do with a bipartisan foreign policy establishment drunk on the post-Cold War delusion that we were living in a unipolar/end of history world and could pursue any foreign policy we pleased.
Let us also not pretend that far more stable potential Republican presidents from Jeb! to Little Marco to Lyin Ted to John Kasich were all committed to scrapping this deal. Even the Republican Senators criticizing Trump today voted against the Deal to begin with, along with the Democratic Senate Minority Leader. There is a ton of pressure beyond AIPAC and Netenyahu to toe a hard line on every single front. The reality is, America cannot act with impunity on a global scale. We can only wage war on one front at a time, as the two front war we fought the last decade and a half conclusively proves. We have done a far better job using diplomacy to disarm dictators than force. The small c conservative foreign policy is one that recognizes the limits and constraints reality imposes on American might.
bob-gardnersays
“. . . Trump being Trump: a child breaking something to get attention. . . ”
True enough, Petr. Would you use that same reasoning to explain away Trump’s embrace of Putin?
I agree that it’s a factor across the board with Trump. But that’s no reason to stop asking if there are other factors.
SomervilleTomsays
The more we learn about the several investigations underway, the more I am convinced that it is organized crime and plain old-fashioned graft that will ultimately bring down Mr. Trump.
I strongly suspect that the world is chock-full of players — public and private — that have more than enough material to pull the already unpredictably erratic Mr. Trump from one terrible act to another.
I suggest that Mr. Putin is just one of many people pulling the strings of Mr. Trump.
bob-gardnersays
During the bloodiest year of the Berlin Wall (1962) twenty-two East Germans were killed trying to cross the wall.
This morning, according to the latest total I’ve seen, 41 Gazans have been killed trying to cross the border between Israel and Gaza.
Of course, the comparison is not really fair. The East German regime was not getting any military aid from the U. S. Government.
tedf says
Delete your account
tedf says
To those who downrated my flip answer to bob-gardner’s flip comment: why say that Trump was doing the bidding of PM Netanyahu? Why not the governments of Saudi Arabia or the other Arab states that have supported the President’s move? Why not the many Republican foreign policy types who have opposed the deal for years? Why point to the Prime Minister of the Jewish state as the puppetmaster pulling the United State’s strings? The question answers itself.
I should say, by the way, that I think the President’s announcement was a mistake.
jconway says
Equating any criticism of Netanyahu or Israel with anti-semitism only emboldens the hard right turn his government has taken and makes the Israeli center left further and further irrelevant politically. The Saudis were against the deal before, but have not been nearly as vocal about it as Netenyahu. A leader who took the unprecedented step of denouncing a sitting President before a joint session of Congress and hiring a former Republican lobbyist to be his ambassador to DC to jettison the deal congressionally. The Saudi lobby holds almost no sway with Democrats while AIPAC got Schumer and other Democrats in Jewish districts to oppose their own President on this deal.
The Saudis did not leak intelligence last week or give her another major speech urging the President to back out of the deal. The Saudis were not on the phone for hours after Trump met with Macron. Netanyahu did all of those things. The Saudi leaders are not under investigation from their own government, something Trump and Netenyahu also have in common.
Netenyahu is the worst leader the Jewish state has ever had. A venal, corrupt, short sighted charlatan just like Trump. Both of these idiots are going to drag their respective states into an unwinnable and entirely avoidable war with Tehran.
tedf says
It’s okay to be critical of Netanyahu–of course. But to single him out from among all those who wanted Trump to do what he did because of some supposed power he has to determine the United States’s policy is just a 2018 riff on classic anti-Semitic themes. Especially when there’s no reason to think that he had some kind of covert and malign influence, as the comment suggested.
bob-gardner says
“. . . no reason to think . . . “I
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that maybe Trump could be corrupt and subject to foreign influence. And the New Yorker has reported on the activities of Black Cube, an organization which has ties to the Israeli government.
jconway says
Frankly, the activity of Black Cube is just as disturbing as the Russian campaign to interfere with our elections. Key Obama aides had their privacy violated and were personally targeted by a shady firm with direct connection to Israeli intelligence.
Until his final year in office, President Obama treated the Israeli government the exact same way he treated Republican leadership in Congress. With deference and good faith they did nothing to deserve. Despite a half a trillion in weapons aid, freeing the traitor Pollard, and doing next to nothing to stop settlement construction or aid the Palestinian Authority, the Obama administration was still tarred and feathered as the most anti-Israel President in history.
Despite the fact that both Bushes, particularly the first one, imposed far more restrictions on settlement construction and were more even handed in their treatment of Palestinian concerns. Despite the fact that Ike and Johnson actually passed sanctions against Israel over Suez and the 67′ war. Despite that Nixon and Kissinger openly debated taking out their nuclear capability. Despite the fact that Reagan saved Arafat and forced Israel to stop its war in Lebanon.
Just like McConnell wanted to make him a one term President, Bibi could never look Obama in the eye and not see a shvartze. He openly campaigned for Romney and Trump. They deserve each other and one hopes they both end their tenure in politics in a jail cell.
SomervilleTom says
I downrated your “flip” answer because of its knee-jerk hostility to a long-time participant of BMG.
bob-gardner says
“Why not the governments of Saudi Arabia or the other Arab states that have supported the President’s move?”
No reason not to include them. We need a special prosecutor to investigate all the ties between American politicians and all these countries. In the meantime, maybe a moratorium on American aid to these countries, all of them. And possibly sanctions on the individuals who have interfered in our political process. For all these countries, I agree.
jconway says
Absolutely agree. No foreign government should be able to lobby a sitting member of Congress, but it happens all the time. Our founders and even politicians from a generation ago would be appalled at how frequently this happens and how the typical member of Congress will sell out American interests to chase a cheap buck.
jconway says
The current relationship with the Saudi and Israeli government is entirely one sided. We are subsidizing actors that are actually doing harm to our long term national security in the region and beyond.
jconway says
The irony is this decision is not in the long term interest of the United States or her neediest client state in the region. Funny how the America First agenda often puts America last behind second rate powers from Russia to China to Israel. The right loved to accuse Obama of presiding over an American decline, it is hard to argue the incumbent is not accelerating trends that will do just that.
SomervilleTom says
Today’s action reversing the Iran deal is, in my opinion, even more damaging than Mr. Bush’s catastrophic blunder in invading Iraq in 2003.
It seems to me that the most likely outcome here is that Iran becomes a full-fledged nuclear power by the 2024 election.
By reneging on the deal after Iran has complied, Mr. Trump has shown the entire world that America cannot be trusted to comply with any deal it makes. I am very confident that Europe, China, and Russia (not to mention Japan and the Koreas) will do all in their power to step up and fill the resulting vacuum.
America will be paying a stiff price for elevating this madman for generations to come.
jconway says
I pray it is not. The other irony is Iraq under Saddam acted as a check on Iranian ambitions and a buffer between the Islamic Republic and the Saudis. The primary legacy of our Iraq folly, in addition to thousands of needless Iraqi and American casualties and trillions of dollars down the toilet that should have been spent here, is ISIL and the Sunni-Shia conflict. President Bush went back on our word then and refused to allow the inspectors to do their job after Saddam acquiesced to American demands, removing him anyway. President Obama went back on our word with Libya and removed that regime anyway despite their cooperation in giving up their WMD’s. Now President Trump went back on our deal with Iran. Why should North Korea trust anything this administration promises them on denuclearization after this? Why should Iran?
Christopher says
This is domestic politics at work and Netanyahu knows how to play. The Christian Zionists who make up Trump’s base are a lot more Israel, right or wrong than even many American Jews.
petr says
I do. I doubt it very much. For all his faults and failings, and they are many, Netanyahu remains a republican politician and not the Eye of Sauron. Netanyahu’s efforts to sway Trump on scrapping the Iran nuclear deal were no more, nor less, than the efforts of Merkel and Macron to get Trump to keep the deal. I doubt very much that, had Trump decided to keep the deal, anybody would be saying ‘Emmanuel Macron calls the shots at the White House.’
I think this is simply Trump being Trump: a child breaking something to get attention. If he could have gotten more attention by keeping the deal, that’s exactly what he would have done… It is, as the poet says, “As if increase of appetite had grown/By what it fed on“: the more attention he gets the more he wants and needs attention. Everything else — including the safety of the world — is comprehensively incidental.
jconway says
That is a fair assessment Petr. The fatal flaw in the controversial Mearsheimer-Walt book is that it is highly likely Bush would have gone to war in Iraq even if there had been no Israel Lobby. Also they did not mention that Sharon himself and many AIPAC members were actually convinced (correctly) that the war would strengthen Iran and Saudi Arabia and weaken Israel’s long term security concerns. AIPAC had nothing to do with a bipartisan foreign policy establishment drunk on the post-Cold War delusion that we were living in a unipolar/end of history world and could pursue any foreign policy we pleased.
Let us also not pretend that far more stable potential Republican presidents from Jeb! to Little Marco to Lyin Ted to John Kasich were all committed to scrapping this deal. Even the Republican Senators criticizing Trump today voted against the Deal to begin with, along with the Democratic Senate Minority Leader. There is a ton of pressure beyond AIPAC and Netenyahu to toe a hard line on every single front. The reality is, America cannot act with impunity on a global scale. We can only wage war on one front at a time, as the two front war we fought the last decade and a half conclusively proves. We have done a far better job using diplomacy to disarm dictators than force. The small c conservative foreign policy is one that recognizes the limits and constraints reality imposes on American might.
bob-gardner says
“. . . Trump being Trump: a child breaking something to get attention. . . ”
True enough, Petr. Would you use that same reasoning to explain away Trump’s embrace of Putin?
I agree that it’s a factor across the board with Trump. But that’s no reason to stop asking if there are other factors.
SomervilleTom says
The more we learn about the several investigations underway, the more I am convinced that it is organized crime and plain old-fashioned graft that will ultimately bring down Mr. Trump.
I strongly suspect that the world is chock-full of players — public and private — that have more than enough material to pull the already unpredictably erratic Mr. Trump from one terrible act to another.
I suggest that Mr. Putin is just one of many people pulling the strings of Mr. Trump.
bob-gardner says
During the bloodiest year of the Berlin Wall (1962) twenty-two East Germans were killed trying to cross the wall.
This morning, according to the latest total I’ve seen, 41 Gazans have been killed trying to cross the border between Israel and Gaza.
Of course, the comparison is not really fair. The East German regime was not getting any military aid from the U. S. Government.