The Obama White House is in full war mode against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of our best ally in the Middle East, for accepting House Speaker John Boehner's invitation to speak before Congress, while it mollycoddles that region's most dangerous nation, Iran.
No one crosses Obama without facing his wrath. No one dares. He is the president.
All the administration's long knives are out. National security adviser Susan Rice is front and center. You would think she would be more circumspect after embarrassing herself on the Sunday talk show circuit peddling the administration's lie that the terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was prompted by an anti-Islam Internet video. But you would be wrong.
Rice told Charlie Rose on PBS that Netanyahu's speech before Congress will be "destructive of the fabric of the relationship" between the United States and Israel — as if the Obama administration hasn't been damaging that special relationship for years.
Secretary of State John Kerry weighed in on the subject on ABC's "This Week." Kerry said he doesn't want Netanyahu's speech to become "some great political football. Obviously, it was odd, if not unique, that we learned of it from the speaker of the House and that an administration (official) was not included in this process. But the administration is not seeking to politicize this." Kerry also said, "We have a closer relationship with Israel right now in terms of security than at any time in history."
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said, "The president has said the relationship between the U.S. and Israel can't just be reduced to a relationship between the Republican Party and the Likud Party."
Do these people hear themselves? They are like windup toys, always on message, always in sync and always the ones politicizing everything.
Obama is refusing to meet with Netanyahu while he is in Washington, bogusly citing his policy against meeting with foreign leaders close to their elections. This is absurd. Obama intervenes in foreign elections anytime he pleases, and he is doing so overtly and covertly in the Israeli elections.
But the howler is Kerry's claim that we have a closer relationship with Israel than ever before on security. If that were true, Netanyahu surely wouldn't have accepted Boehner's invitation to address Congress. Netanyahu is deeply worried that Obama's furtive negotiations with Iran are enabling, rather than impeding, its effort to acquire nuclear weapons. What could be more important to preserving Israel's national security (and ours) than keeping nuclear weapons out of Iran's hands?
The White House has been livid that Boehner invited Netanyahu to speak, citing an egregious breach of protocol and rank partisanship on Boehner's part. Some Democrats and liberal commentators have even argued it is unconstitutional for Congress to take this step.
This would almost be amusing coming from this White House if it weren't so serious. If Obama had his way, he'd probably dissolve Congress as an inconvenient nuisance and obstacle to his iron rule. He usurps its authority at every turn. So even if this is a departure from protocol, it's not unconstitutional by any stretch, and Obama and his defenders have no standing to complain.
More importantly, let's remember what's at stake here and why Boehner chose to act. Boehner correctly noted that Obama spent only a few seconds discussing the terrorist threat during his State of the Union speech. It was actually worse than that. Obama portrayed the global threat as being greatly diminished when it is rapidly proliferating. Obama is either the most naive president concerning threats to our security in recent memory (including Jimmy Carter) or willfully blind to the threats — a matter that has many scratching their heads in disbelief.
Boehner said he wants Netanyahu to speak because "there's nobody in the world who can talk about the threat of radical terrorism — nobody (who) can talk about the threat that the Iranians pose, not just to the Middle East and to Israel ... but to the entire world — (better than) Bibi Netanyahu."
Exactly so. When Congress witnesses Obama doing nothing but playing footsy with Iran while it feverishly pursues nuclear weapons, it has an obligation to act.
Let me ask you: If you were John Boehner and you believed that Obama's approach is facilitating Iran's nuclear pursuits and you had an opportunity to do something about it — within your constitutional power — would you take it?
Instead of focusing on the petty question of whether Obama has his nose out of joint over Netanyahu's speech or analyzing the alleged partisanship involved, the media ought to be highlighting the growing threat Iran represents and President Obama's reckless disregard for it. Can these people ever inhabit the adult world and look at substance instead of "optics"? Can they ever call our attention to real issues instead of sizing everything up in terms of which American political party benefits or suffers? We are talking about thermonuclear capability in the hands of a radical Islamic theocracy that might well be impervious to any threat of mutually assured destruction and thus far likelier to use these weapons offensively.
We can be sure of one thing. Neither the mainstream media nor Barack Obama is going to call the world's attention to this impending nuclear nightmare. As such, true peace lovers will welcome Netanyahu and are looking forward to his opportunity to take the stage, with the world in rapt attention, and articulate, unfiltered, the gravity of this threat.
David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His latest book is "Jesus on Trial: A Lawyer Affirms the Truth of the Gospel." Follow him on Twitter @davidlimbaugh and his website at www.davidlimbaugh.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
