Time for Thorns

Tell me again what a foreign policy genius His Oneness is.  Of course,  if I were an Israeli official,  I wouldn’t promise to tell  Obama about my country’s military plans,  either.

His Oneness has  been caught saying  what he actually thinks of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin  Netanyahu.  I’m not surprised,  and I imagine a tough old bird like Netanyahu is much amused that His Smartness was too stupid to check his microphone.

Why did the U.S.   give bunker-buster bombs  to the Israelis,  quietly,  and then leak it?  President Bush began the program in 2005,  but His Oneness had it leaked to the New York Times front section to curry favor with the Jewish voters,  and the large Jewish donors,   who have been turned off by his abuse of Israel.  One can only pray that this time they won’t be fooled.

How would you cope if you lived in a country surrounded by enemies who have sworn to kill you?  I doubt I’d be very productive while worrying about Hezbollah lobbing rockets in my living room.

But Israel has managed to do much,  much more,   while the Palestinians have created nothing but death and destruction.   Choosing sides in this conflict should be a no-brainer,  unless you’re a progressive or His Oneness.

Caroline Glick paints an  ugly truth.

KISS rocker Gene Simmons,  who was born in Israel,  says His Oneness is clueless  about the world.

I’m working on my tractor,  so I’m in and out,  but the TV had a caption under His Oneness speaking live:  Egypt’s democracy shouldn’t be burdened by debt.

So he’s proposing to saddle OUR democracy with Egypt’s debts and give it a whole bunch  more money  that we don’t have.   AllahPundit has  a tweet  which says it all on this point.

I’ll update later when I’ve had a chance to hear the speech.   A transcript of it is  here.   What jumped out when I skimmed it was this sentence:   “The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps,  so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.”    Will someone get His Oneness a topographic map and a book on military tactics?   The 1967 borders  are NOT SECURE  FOR ISRAEL!!!

UPDATE:   John Tabin  sees the speech  in a far more benign light than I do,  though he did  post this.    He was completely taken in by Obama’s sleight of word  move on  the ’67 borders.    I thought Quin Hillyer had a  much better  take on it all.

Tevi Troy pointed out the  major flaws  in the speech which may concern Jewish voters,  making the  AIPAC reminder  about politeness timely.   Paul Marshall focuses on what  was not mentioned.   Investors Business Daily noted the biggest unmentionable –  the  nuclear genie,  and called it wishful diplomacy.   James Jay Carafano found it much  too dreamy.

I disagree with Victor Davis  Hanson about  Obama’s position on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.   Obama is like every other progressive,  seeing Israel as some sort of colonial power,  and far more interested in the  “peace process”   than an actual solution.

There is  plenty  of  reaction  from   all over,  including Israel.   A rabbi is supremely  displeased,  while liberal media is already making excuses  for the speech.

This is old,  but given that the entire Middle East is going up in flames,  it is timely.  American media is missing the story,  as usual.   How do I know?   I checked the headlines and stories of major media on the  shooting of U.S. servicemen in Frankfurt.  ABC News finally got around to putting that the gunman may have shouted  ‘Allahu Akbar’ , unlike many other outlets,  but no one is willing to state this was an act of terrorism.

Caroline Glick and friends in the creative troupe at Latma have created an absolutely  spot-on parody of  “We Are the World”  on the activist flotilla which tried to breach the Gaza blockade.   To me the best thing of all is that they are using some of the flotilla’s own video footage to tell the story,  which is vastly different from the publicly presented narrative.

h/t  Lucianne.com,  though it’s everywhere now.

Are you surprised that so little of the unrest  in the Middle East is aimed at Israel by the people in the streets?   I’m not,  as Israel has never been the actual problem.

Anne Bayefsky and Benjamin Weinthal have an excellent piece on Israel being the  sole topic of the resumptions of the 10th emergency session of the UN since 1997.   It matters because His Oneness made the UN the cornerstone of his foreign policy,  and I’m surprised only that the predictable outcomes of such folly have taken this long to appear.

A lot about the riots in Egypt.  Start  with Philip Klein’s piece,  which has a link to a live feed.   John Tabin  reports that the government has blocked the Internet,  against Hillary’s wishes.

I don’t think His Oneness finally getting around to making a live statement makes moot the points  raised here by Charlie Szrom.

The Wall Street Journal has  a good view of the importance of the military,  which has largely avoided day-to-day politics,   something even more important now  that Mubarak has asked his Cabinet to resign so that he can appoint a new one this weekend.   Not to worry,  because VP Joe  Biden doesn’t think Mubarak is a dictator.   Never mind that people have already died.    TIME thinks the U.S. is paralyzed by the fear of Islamists.

I want to know if the “people” are rising up in Egypt and Tunisia,  or whether the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical groups,  who have now come out on the fourth day,  are going to take over.

The Telegraph is  now reporting that the American government has connections to some of the dissidents,  and makes a WikiLeaks connection.  The Sydney Morning Herald  says we’re just addicted to tyrants,  and events are moving too fast for His Oneness to cope with.    I don’t imagine anyone will find the answers from the Davos participants.   Concerns about the Suez Canal are sending oil prices up,  and that will affect us.

And you can now  add Jordan and  Albania to the volatile mix.

UPDATE:  And now Saudi Arabia.   Isn’t it odd that no one is claiming that Israel and the Jews are at fault because of their “occupation” of Palestine?