Judging by liberal reaction to Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to Congress on Tuesday, the Israeli Prime minister scored a direct hit at Obama's Arab-first policy. At least amongst the Arab-first crowd that Obama supports.
"Given how much buildup the speech received," writes Matthew Duss in Slate, "and how much of America’s time has been wasted with the controversy surrounding it—it’s simply amazing that Netanyahu didn’t use the chance to offer any new or interesting ideas."
And that's the best Duss has to offer in the Slate piece titled Netanyahu Just Did Obama a Big Favor.
He never really gets to the big favor Netanyahu did Obama.
Duss’ point is that doing what Obama wants by abandoning a key ally in Israel to make friends with Iran is much better than that old-fashioned strategy of supporting the one free country in the Middle East.
You might remember Duss from his previous work as an anti-Semitic point man for the Orwellian-named Center for American Progress or CAP. No less an authority than the White House backed away from blog posts by Duss his friends on a CAP site after he and affiliated writers skirted too close to anti-Semitic rhetoric in scolding Israel for not consenting to its own rape.
From the Free Beacon:
Duss earned notoriety in 2011 when he and several other ThinkProgress bloggers were engulfed in a scandal surrounding their writing on Israel and Jews, with some critics saying the language was borderline anti-Semitic. That prompted a rare rebuke by the Obama administration of the think tank, which has close ties to the White House.
Duss was also a member of the famed Journolist hit team put together by that peon to ethics Ezra Klein to provide covert editorial support for Obama, the most unready president in history who still remains unready.
Duss bills himself now as a "national security" expert.
I guess that would be true in the same way an alcoholic knows beer, wines and spirits. Actually Duss expertise in national security comes directly from a degree in international relations --yes! a master’s degree!
From the masters he went to CAP as a policy analyst and is now a national security expert.
Raise your hands if you’d like Duss to debate Allen West—or even Sarah Palin – on national security issues.
Duss uses his "expertise" to argue policies that are BAD for national security. Thus is is at least expert in that.
Duss says that the U.S. should negotiate with Iran over nuclear weapons because we have no ability to stop them from getting nuclear weapons.
We have no ability to stop murders either, but that doesn’t mean we negotiate with them.
But what his rhetoric really disguises – along with Obama foreign policy—is that Duss and Obama are deliberately advocating for a strong and robust Iran, an Iran that will be a regional power and that will disproportionately influence events in the Middle East.
Iran’s growing influence isn’t just nuclear either.
We have invited Iran into Iraq to fight ISIS-- which is like battling alcohol addiction with painkillers-- because Obama thinks that the sooner Islamic states band together the better it will be for them.
Neither Obama nor Duss will come out and say that flat out. But these are the policies that the White House is pursuing for all intents and purposes.
Terror helping terror.
“This is an organization which has engaged in spreading sectarian terror in Iraq. And now, this is the force that the Iraqi government has turned to for help in order to liberate Tikrit from Islamic State terrorists,” Ali Alfoneh, an Iranian-born scholar at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies told Fox News. “In other words, we have one terrorist organization which is helping the Iraqi government get rid of another terrorist organization.”
The Netanyahu speech didn’t do Obama a big favor. In fact it only served to highlight Obama’s big error in worldview.
Again.