Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says his demands that the United States step up pressure on Iran's nuclear program have nothing to do with the U.S. presidential election.Oh, give me a break... Benjamin Netanyahu reminds me a great deal of George W. Bush: a mean-spirited, reckless cowboy, a small child prone to tantrums when he doesn't get his way. And why not: with tantrums, he often gets his way. Israelis may like this guy, and the US may back Israel, but the two-year-old child has no business drawing the US into a preemptive, invasive war against yet another country that poses minimal military threat to the US. If Israel is so goddamned sure Iran is about to have nukes, but doesn't have them yet, let Israel bomb those presumably secret sites... what do we provide Israel all that high-tech weaponry for, if not so they can defend themselves? Why must the US change their diapers?
"What's guiding me, contrary to what I have read in the United States, is not the American political calendar, " Netanyahu said on CNN's State of the Union. "It's the Iranian nuclear calender."
Netanyahu said "we know they (the Iranians) are working toward a (nuclear) weapon," and he wants the Obama administration to draw a "red line" that Iran cannot cross without inviting military action.
Such a red line "actually reduces the chance of a military conflict" because Iran will pull back its enrichment process rather than risk war, Netanyahu said.
Obama administration officials say economic sanctions are working in Iran, and have urged Israel not to launch any pre-emptive military action of its own.
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If Netanyahu insists on attacking Iran now, let him do it without American help. Israel is threatening a preemptive invasion, much like the one GeeDubya perpetrated against Iraq; we all saw how well that worked out for America. Now Bibi wants a second helping, and has shown clear signs of taking sides in the US presidential election in favor of Rmoney.
A word to the "wise": Bibi... keep your hands off our elections. If you meddle, you might just give us ideas about doing the same in Israel's politics. You wouldn't want that, I'm sure.
No one in the main stream media has yet to suggest that Israel is a rogue state and about to start WWIII. So enamored by the Exodus mythology Americans view any critical criticism as antisemitic. Netanyahu is a dangerous provocateur.
ReplyDeleteNetanyahu and the Likud need multiple small parties to form a government, they do not, on their own, have a majority in the Knesset.
ReplyDeleteBibi was elected leader by a majority of the Likud members, not the people of Israel. He and his party are not representative of a majority of voters in Israel, much less a majority of the people.
He needs a war to win the next election, but that assumes success, and the Israeli military and intel are very confident about the mission.
Obama is not losing any significant support from American Jews for not going along with Bibi, so there is no downside for him.
The US Jews who support Likud don't vote for Democrats and send their political contributions to Israel. The complain loudly, but like the Tea Party, their numbers don't justify their influence.
Make that "aren't very confident about the mission"
ReplyDeleteBryan, Netanyahu is for me one of the more fundamentally annoying figures on the international scene. Before Netanyahu and his version of Likud came to dominate Israel, you might have called me pro-Israel in my own way. Now, the man and the party remind me too much of GeeDubya Bush: little boys with deadly toys, pounding their chests and threatening their neighbors as if they had the full might of the US armed forces behind them no matter what they did or who they threatened or why. Whatever vestige of pro-Israel sentiment I may have has been suppressed by their bad behavior: Israel has no right to mouth off in ways that plunge the US into wars not in America's security interests.
ReplyDeleteThere; I said it. Anyone who doesn't like it and sees fit to comment here should prepare to be rewritten: trolls of any sort will be eviscerated.