March 23, 2009

Allies no longer against this
By Melanie Phillips, The Spectator

The awesome scale of Obama’s ineptitude over his ruinous ‘fiscal stimulus’ package and in particular the bail-out and bonus debacle over AIG has provoked a weeping and a wailing and a rending of garments among the faithful, yea even unto the New York Times, as they witness The One not walking on water but risking pulling out the plug on America Inc. altogether.

What has been all but overlooked in the pandemonium is the catastrophic damage he is doing abroad to the prospects for the defence of the free world. His recklessly misjudged televised appeal to Iran – in which he didn’t even distinguish between the regime and the oppressed people of Iran, whom he effectively threw under the bus by pointedly recognising ‘the Islamic Republic’, ie the regime – brought a swift response from that regime of contemptuous disdain:

In an unusually swift reaction to Mr Obama’s overture, Aliakbar Javanfekr, an aide to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said Iran welcomed ‘the interest of the American government to settle differences’. But he said that the US government ‘should realise its previous mistakes and make an effort to amend them’. In an almost simultaneous announcement, from Iran’s energy minister, Parviz Fattah, said that the country would ‘finish and operate’ its controversial Russian-built Bushehr nuclear plant by the end of the year.

To ram the point home, Ahmadinejad added:

‘The huge political and security crises have become deeper and deeper. Today, the pervasive and huge economic crisis indicates the failure of the materialistic powers in their thoughts, policies and expansionist goals. These mean that the Western Liberalism and materialistic school of thought have come to the end of the road while facing a dead-end’.

While the supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamanei twisted the knife yet further:

“The world has been convinced that it is not possible to block the Iranian nation’s nuclear progress,” Ayatollah Khamenei noted, reminding pre-commissioning of Iran’s first nuclear plant in Bushehr as among joyful developments in the last year… Stressing the uselessness and futility of the current sanctions on Iran, the Leader added, ‘Iran’s progresses in different scientific and non-scientific fields indicate ineffectiveness of the sanctions…’

While giving Iran its most important asset — time — to enable it to reach the finishing line and develop the nuclear weapons with which it intends to destroy Israel, Obama’s policy towards Israel is also undermining Israel’s ability to defend itself against that genocidal goal. More and more people are now coming to realise what I have been saying throughout: that he is an enemy of America’s only true ally in the Middle East.

This is obvious through the Israel-bashers and Jew-haters with whom he has surrounded himself, aided and abetted by new realist appeasers and (often Jewish) useful idiots on the left within his administration, all of whom are intent upon pursuing with far greater ferocity the change in strategy towards Israel that was already apparent when George W Bush became fatally weakened — forcing Israel to sacrifice its security, all for the illusory goal of a Palestine state that would almost certainly become yet another proxy for Iran and which, far from helping defang the Middle East, would result instead in regional instability and a yet more terrible war.

If anyone was in any doubt that Washington had now turned against Jerusalem and was intent on appeasing Iran, they were disabused in the starkest terms by the fact that when Israel’s Chief of the Defence Staff Gabi Ashkenazi went last week to brief the US government on Iran’s nuclear programme, he failed to gain access to any US Cabinet member including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, while his counterpart, Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also found he had a pressing prior engagement.

This is what an unnamed former US intelligence official has said about the new US relationship with Israel:

‘I have every reason to believe, based on what I’ve seen at my level of [security] clearance especially over the last several years, that Israel will soon be completely on their own… or worse.’ When asked what could be worse than losing the support of the United States, he stated: ‘when our administration provides more support to Arab countries [with] financial and military aid, undercutting Israel’s defense efforts all while pushing Israel to succumb to the pressure of unreasonable demands designed to end with their political annihilation as a nation.’

“When an intelligence work product that has been thoroughly and properly vetted is submitted to those in Washington, and I see a completely different and entirely inaccurate product intentionally submitted and aired in the media, only to be told ‘that is the way it must be,’ then I know it’s time for me to leave. It is obvious to me that most Americans don’t understand or don’t care what is actually happening in the Middle East relative to Israel. People don’t understand history, or have been subjected to revisionist history based on lies and more lies. Add to that a media that fails to provide an accurate assessment of what is taking place in Israel, in Gaza, and you end up with a very bad situation for Israel.’

That was published last December; the new hostility towards Israel was already apparent in the fag-end of the Bush administration. As I have said before, Obama cleverly took on board a number of ‘new realist’ officials who had been driving this agenda. What many in the west – including those who wish Israel would just vanish off the face of the earth — fail to grasp is that this in turn would produce a very bad situation for America and the west. If Obama succeeds in throwing Israel under the bus, the west will be next. For now, however, if Israel has any sense of self-preservation it should surely think three times before sharing any of its intelligence with America at all.