Our World: Obama’s rhetorical storm

Obama was “shocked” by the veto of Russia and China. As Glick points out, he should know that countries vote in accordance with their interests. Maybe he thought that everybody abandons allies like he did with Mubarak and Israel, expecting Russia and China to do the same. But there is more. What goes around comes around. Obama and NATO attacked Libya amid protestations from Russia and China. Bill Clinton attacked Serbia and ignored Russia’s strong objections.

Did anything good come out of Obama’s reset with Russia?Ted Belman

By CAROLINE B. GLICK, JPOST

If you take the Obama administration’s statements at face value you are left scratching your head in wonder.

The Obama administration is absolutely furious at Russia and China. The two UN Security Council permanent members’ move on Saturday to veto a resolution on Syria utterly infuriated the US’s President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UN Ambassador Susan Rice. And they want us all to know just how piping mad they really are.

Rice called the vetoes “unforgivable,” and said that “any further blood that flows will be on their hands.” She said the US was “disgusted.”

Clinton called the move by Moscow and Beijing a “travesty.” She then said that the US will take action outside the UN, “with those allies and partners who support the Syrian people’s right to have a better future.”

The rhetoric employed by Obama’s top officials is striking for what it reveals about how the Obama administration perceives the purpose of rhetoric in foreign policy.

Most US leaders have used rhetoric to explain their policies. But if you take the Obama administration’s statements at face value you are left scratching your head in wonder. Specifically on Syria, if you take these statements literally, you are left wondering if Obama and his advisers are simply clueless. Because if they are serious, their indignation bespeaks a remarkable ignorance about how decisions are made at the Security Council.

Is it possible that Obama believed that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin would betray Bashar Assad, his most important strategic ally in the Middle East? Is it possible that he believed that the same Chinese regime that systematically tramples the human rights of its people would agree to intervene in another country’s domestic affairs? Outside the intellectual universe of the Obama administration – where stalwart US allies such as Hosni Mubarak are discarded like garbage and foes such as Hugo Chavez are wooed like Hollywood celebrities – national governments tend to base their foreign policies on their national interests.

In light of this basic reality, Security Council actions generally reflect the national interests of its member states. This is how it has always been.

This is how it will always be. And it is hard to believe that the Obama administration was unaware of this basic fact.

In fact, it is impossible to believe that the administration was unaware that its plan to pass a Security Council resolution opposing Assad’s massacre of his people – and so jeopardize Russian and Chinese interests – had no chance of success. The fact that they had to know the resolution would never pass leads to the conclusion that Obama and his advisers weren’t trying to pass a resolution on Syria at all.

Rather they were trying to pass the buck on Syria.

We have two pieces of evidence to support the view that the Obama administration has no intention of doing anything even vaguely effective to end Assad’s reign of terror that has so far taken the lives of between five and ten thousand of his countrymen.

First, for the past 10 months, as Assad’s killing machine kicked into gear, Obama and his advisers have been happy to sit on their hands. They supported Turkey’s feckless diplomatic engagement with Assad. They sat back as Turkish Prime Minister Recip Tayep Erdogan employed the IHH, his regime-allied terror group, to oversee the organization of a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Syrian opposition.

Second, the administration supported the Arab League’s farcical inspectors’ mission to Syria. That mission was led by Sudanese Gen. Muhammad al- Dabi. Dabi reportedly was one of the architects of the genocide in Darfur. Clearly, a mission under his leadership had no chance of accomplishing anything useful. And indeed, it didn’t.

AND SO, after nearly a year, the issue of Assad’s butchery of his citizens finally found its way to the Security Council last month. Many in the US expected Obama to use the opportunity to finally do something to stop the killing, just as he and his NATO allies did something to prevent the killing in Libya last year.

Ten months ago Obama, Rice, Clinton and National Security Council member Samantha Power decided that the US and its allies had to militarily intervene in Libya to ensure that Muammar Gaddafi didn’t have the opportunity to kill his people as Assad is now doing. That is, to prevent the type of human rights calamity that the Syrian people are now experiencing, Obama used the UN as a staging ground to overthrow Gaddafi through force.

Sadly for the people of Syria, who are being shot dead even as they try to bury their families who were shot dead the day before, unlike the situation in Libya, Obama has never had the slightest intention of using his influence to take action against Assad. And faced with the rapidly rising public expectation that he would take action at the Security Council to stop the killing, Obama opted for diplomatic Kabuki.

Knowing full well that Putin – who is still selling Assad weapons – would veto any resolution, rather than accept that the Security Council is a dead end, Obama had Rice negotiate fecklessly with her Russian counterparts. The resolution that ended up being called to a vote on Saturday was so weak that US Rep.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, issued a statement on Friday calling for the administration to veto it.

As Ros-Lehtinen put it, the draft resolution “contains no sanctions, no restrictions on weapons transfers, and no calls for Assad to go, but supports the failed Arab League observer mission,” and so isn’t “worth the paper it’s printed on.”

She continued, “The Obama administration should not support this weak, counterproductive resolution, and should also reconsider the legitimacy that it provides to the Arab League – an organization that continues to boycott Israel – when it comes to the regime in Damascus.”

But instead of vetoing it, the administration backed it to the tilt and then expressed disgust and moral outrage when Russia and China vetoed it.

The lesson of this spectacle is that it we must recognize that the Obama administration’s rhetoric hides more than it reveals about the president’s actual policies.

THE FIRST place that we should apply this lesson is to the hemorrhage of administration rhetoric about Iran.

For the past several weeks we have been treated to massive doses of verbiage from Obama and his senior advisers about Iran. The most notable of these recent statements was Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s conversation with The Washington Post’s David Ignatius last week.

Panetta used Ignatius to communicate two basic messages. First, he wanted to make clear that the administration adamantly opposes an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear installations. And second, he wanted to make clear that if Iran strikes Israeli population centers, the US will come to Israel’s defense.

The purpose of the first message is clear enough.

Panetta wished to increase pressure on Israel not to take preemptive action against Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

The purpose of the second message is also clear.

Panetta spoke of the US’s obligation to Israel’s defense in order to remove the justification for an Israeli attack.

After all, if the US is obliged to defend it, then Israel mustn’t risk harming US interests by defending itself.

When taken together, Panetta’s message sounds balanced and responsible. But when examined carefully, it is clear that it is not. First of all, it is far from responsible for the US government to tell its chief ally that it should be willing to absorb an attack on its population centers from Iran. No government can be expected to sit back and wait to be attacked with nuclear weapons because if it is, the Americans will retaliate against its attacker. Panetta’s message was not just irresponsible.

It was obnoxious.

And this leaves the first message. Since Obama was elected the US has devoted most of its energies not to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, but to pressuring Israel not to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. And Panetta’s remarks to Ignatius were consistent with this mission.

Some have argued that the US’s stepped-up naval presence in the Persian Gulf is evidence that the US is itself gearing up to attack Iran. But as retired US naval analyst J.E. Dyer explained in an essay last month at the Optimistic Conservative blog, the US posture in the Persian Gulf is defensive, not offensive.

The US has not deployed anywhere near the firepower it would need to conduct a successful military campaign against Iran’s nuclear installations. The only thing the US deployment may serve to accomplish is to deter Israel from launching a preemptive air strike against Iran’s nuclear installations.

It is true that to a certain extent, Israel has brought this escalating American rhetorical storm on itself with its own flood of rhetoric about Iran. Over the past week nearly every senior Israeli military and political official has had something to say about Iran’s nuclear program.

But this stream of words does not reflect a change in Israel’s strategic timetable. Rather it is a function of the rather mundane calendar of Israel’s annual conference circuit. It just so happened that the annual Herzliya Conference took place last week. It is standard fare for Israel’s security and political leadership to bloviate about Iran’s nuclear program at Herzliya. They do it every year. They did it this year.

And in truth, no one said anything at the conference that we didn’t already know. We learned nothing new about Iran’s program or Israel’s intentions. Had there been no conference last week, there would likely have been no flood of Israeli statements.

We only know three things for certain about Iran. It is getting very late in the game for anyone to take any military actions to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Iran will not stop its nuclear weapons program voluntarily. And Obama will not order US forces to take action to stop Iran’s nuclear project.

What remains uncertain still is how Israel plans to respond to these three certainties. The fact that Israel has waited this long to strike presents the disturbing prospect that our leaders may have been confused by the Obama administration’s rhetoric. Perhaps they have been persuaded that the US is on our side on this issue and that we don’t have to rely only on ourselves to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

But as the foregoing analysis of the administration’s very angry words on Syria and very sober words on Iran demonstrates, Obama and his deputies use rhetoric not to clarify their intentions, but to obfuscate them. Just as they will do nothing to prevent Assad from continuing his campaign of murder and terror, so they will do nothing to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

February 7, 2012 | 13 Comments »

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  1. British and Qatari special operations units are operating with rebel forces under cover in the Syrian city of Homs just 162 kilometers from Damascus, according to debkafile’s exclusive military and intelligence sources. The foreign troops are not engaged in direct combat with the Syrian forces bombarding different parts of Syria’s third largest city of 1.2 million. They are tactical advisers, manage rebel communications lines and relay their requests for arms, ammo, fighters and logistical aid to outside suppliers, mostly in Turkey.

    http://www.debka.com/article/21718/

    Is glick in support of this?

  2. THERE IT IS THE US AND NATO BLUEPRINT FOR WIPING ISRAEL OFF THE MAP

    On Wednesday, the head of the United Nations Human Rights Commission, Navi Pillay, called on the international community to “take effective action” to stop the killing in Syria.
    Pillay said there is no statute of limitations for serious international crimes. There is an “extreme urgency for the international community to cut through the politics and take effective action to protect the Syrian population,” she added.

    http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/152573#.TzNgP8UzDnQ

    The US, NATO and the West manufactured Fatah, Hamas and the “Palestinians”

    The “Palestinians were in every way a product of the British in that it was the British who created and protected the mass (Holocaust) killer of Jews in the Holocaust, Hajj Amin el Husseini.

    This role of protecting these Arab Nazis was taken over by the US post 1945 when the US became the main protector and promoter of the “Palestinians”.

    They were joined in this by Nazi heads of the UN, the most prominent being Kurt Waldheim (http://www.hirhome.com/israel/ford.htm) who was proved to be a member of the SS and who carried out war crimes in Yugoslavia.

    Now head of the UN Navi Pillay is calling for the casting aside of the legal niceties of the UN, their own organization, and for the direct going to war without UN sanction.

    This is a sign of the desperation of these ruling class circles.

    What then if their baby the “Palestinians” rise up in Intifada against the Jews and the Jews retaliate in defence.

    Then the precedent has been set, in Yugoslavia, in Libya and now in Syria.

    Any Israeli Jew who does not oppose NATO and the UN in Syria needs to have his or her head examined. The dagger of the UN and of world anti-Semitism is pointing straight at the Jews (once more)

  3. Cynically blaming Assad, America’s responsible for thousands of Syrian deaths and atrocities. Its bloodstained hands are infamous. Its crimes of war and against humanity touch dozens of countries globally. Syria’s now target one, then Iran.

    Similar to what preceded America’s 2003 Iraq war, Washington, Britain and France now call for a “coalition of the willing” against Assad. If formed, expect Turkey, other rogue NATO partners, regional despots, and Israel (at least covertly) to be included.

    http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/

    Lendman is part of the Fascist Left. He is correct (in a shallow way correct but nevertheless correct) in how he characterises NATO and the US in their alliance with Turkey.

    But he is also a liar. The alliance of NATO led by Obama and Rice is clearly with Sharia (as a basic means of dictatorial, rule over impoverished millions)

    He is also a liar on the issue of the relation between NATO and Iran. NATO worked closely with Iran in the war against the Serbs on the side of the extreme Islamist Izetbegovic. NATO came in on support for Al Qaeda in Libya. The CIA trained up Al Qaeda Fascists in Ireland and as a matter of record large sections of the Irish Fascist Left worked with the CIA IN IRELAND.

    So Lendman lies. It is not Syria today Iran tomorrow. NATO has no intention whatsoever to attack the Iranian Mullahs, who are the offspring of NATO. It is Israel the NATO Nazis are after following in the footsteps of the German Nazis.

    NATO will protect the Iranian Mullahs. After all they protected Izetbegovic and they have been protecting extreme Sharia everywhere since (Ben Ali, Gaghbo, Mubarak, Gadhafi, now Assad)

    No NATO is the enemy of above all the Jews and the enemy of Israel. NATO after all is the continuation of the German Nazis and the CIA was made up of the German Nazi Party, the Nazis becoming very central in the formation of the CIA, which directs NATO to this day.

    NATO will protect the Iranian Sharia and will destroy Israel.

    But not many Jews actually understand this. Like many other peoples they have been bought over by trash propaganda.

  4. This is where they come together, the Fascist Left of Indymedia ireland and others, and the close connection between Israeli leaders and NATO. Despite appearances they are both in the same camp on these issues from Yugoslavia through Libya to now Syria.

    NATO is a 3rd Reich spawn, a very good description, and if Jews do not waken up to this sharpish then they are once again in a Holocaust type situation, which can take a number of forms, one of which is that the same kind of world ganging up on Israel will follow the world ganging up on Assad.

    I thought that that was obvious but it is not to writers like Caroline Glick who is actually urging NATO on.

    Until there is a Jewish leadership which can act on principle and not on expedience (which is opportunism) then the Jews are lost (lost for leadership). Literally the lives of millions in Syria depend on Assad remaining in power and defeating the rebels so called. I thought that too was obvious with the merest reading on the issue.

  5. I think that Felix’s take is correct and I too have noticed on various forums how insistent some people are when it comes to US meddling and ‘refraining’ from meddling (we must ‘refrain’ when the US government is already using jihadist proxies to attack local leaders, Christians, professors, etc.).

    NATO has been peddling for years the big-lie that it’s on the same side as the Jews. It’s not and never has been. It’s a 3rd Reich spawn.

    Is Glick deliberately shilling for NATO? or are she and others just in denial about the fact that anyone that supports human rights should consistently oppose NATO’s pro-Islamist imperialism?

  6. Lenny

    Israel prefers Assad in place, anyway, So, yet again, another moronic column by this stringy-haired fool, this shallow enemy of Israel.

    Not sure about her hair, but she is a fool, is shallow in the extreme and IS an enemy of Israel.

    Which editor Ted manages to steer clear of. What is your real position on Assad Ted?

    “GLICK WILL GO DOWN IN HISTORY FOR HER TREACHERY TO THE JEWS

    The present position of Caroline Glick on Syria is one which will go down in Jewish history for its sheer opportunism and treachery towards the interests of the Jewish people.

    Literally for Jews everything depends on Assad not being overthrown by the forces of Sharia.

    The position of Assad against those “Oppositionists” is really the position of a man who is fighting against the Sharia.

    This is exactly the same as Gaghbo against the Sharia, Ben Ali against the Sharia, Mubarak against the Sharia and Gadhafi against the Sharia.

    ON SYRIA GLICK IS LINING UP WITH THE SHARIA

    Who then does Caroline Glick line up with on the Syrian Assad issue. Glick without any shadow of a doubt lines up with the Sharia.

    4international is calling Glick on this issue.

    4international is alone in all of the world in exposing Glick on this issue. GLICK IS AN ASSISTER OF THE SHARIA. GLICK SPELLS THE DEATH OF MILLIONS OF JEWS IN THE MIDDLE EAST AT THE HANDS OF THE SHARIA.

    It IS as serious as that.

    4international is being attacked right, left and centre for taking this position towards Glick. We will not give up because 4international stands for the truth. We on 4international are not tied up with any vested interests.

    Glick is an AGENT OF US IMPERIALISM AND AN AGENT OF NATO and is a clear danger to the Jews of Israel as NATO gathers its arms to dispose of Assad, install Sharia and soon move against Israel.

    This about Glick is the only conclusion to reach from her latest most dangerous article yet. These are critical paragraphs:

    “We have two pieces of evidence to support the view that the Obama administration has no intention of doing anything even vaguely effective to end Assad’s reign of terror that has so far taken the lives of between five and ten thousand of his countrymen.

    First, for the past 10 months, as Assad’s killing machine kicked into gear, Obama and his advisers have been happy to sit on their hands. They supported Turkey’s feckless diplomatic engagement with Assad. They sat back as Turkish Prime Minister Recip Tayep Erdogan employed the IHH, his regime-allied terror group, to oversee the organization of a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Syrian opposition.

    Second, the administration supported the Arab League’s farcical inspectors’ mission to Syria. That mission was led by Sudanese Gen. Muhammad al- Dabi. Dabi reportedly was one of the architects of the genocide in Darfur. Clearly, a mission under his leadership had no chance of accomplishing anything useful. And indeed, it didn’t.

    AND SO, after nearly a year, the issue of Assad’s butchery of his citizens finally found its way to the Security Council last month. Many in the US expected Obama to use the opportunity to finally do something to stop the killing, just as he and his NATO allies did something to prevent the killing in Libya last year.”

    I do not think actually we need to go any further with that.

    Glick expects Obama to “stop the killing” just as did the NATO intervention against Gadhafi.

    There is thus NOT A SHADOW OF A DOUBT GLICK IS AN AGENT OF SHARIA IMPERIALISM (NATO) inside the Jewish movement.”

    http://4international.me/2012/02/08/israeli-leaders-betray-the-jews-over-syria/

  7. What is your beef? No-one in their right mind, either friend or foe, would say Caroline is anything other than ultra bright.

    Are you saying Obama’s and Hillary’s comments re: Syria were for “Domestic political consumption”? You are kidding me! Whatever, their reasons, I doubt that wringing their hands over Syria would gain them political traction in the States.

    And how does Libya preclude action in Syria. Can you enlighten me?

    Also. Please no more vitriol against Caroline. A little part of me died when I heard she got married [sigh].

  8. Oh, yes. Obama is really concerned about the killings by Assad. Lo, he’s not concerned about the killings in the Middle East, though, is he? He tends to like foreign assassinations, he is OK with torture, Gitmo forever, collateral damage, yes, for sure, Obama and Clinton are deeply concerned about Assad’s killing machine. Are we to be so stupid to believe that Obama cares for human lives that get in his way? Whilst Americans may be stupid, not all citizens of the world are and people are getting more adept at identifying Obama’s murderous ways. He fits right in with the elites, the monied Tarantulas. Americans that think this oaf deserves reelection are insane. He’s nearly ruined the country already, what more do we expect from him, anyway? Murder means never having to say you’re sorry.

  9. Glick isn’t bright enough to understand that Obama and Hillary’s comments were sops for domestic political consumption. And, that Libya foreclosed the possibility of military action against Syria. Israel prefers Assad in place, anyway, So, yet again, another moronic column by this stringy-haired fool, this shallow enemy of Israel.

  10. Obama was “shocked” by the veto of Russia and China. As Glick points out, he should know that countries vote in accordance with their interests. Maybe he thought that everybody abandons allies like he did with Mubarak and Israel, expecting Russia and China to do the same. But there is more. What goes around comes around. Obama and NATO attacked Libya amid protestations from Russia and China. Bill Clinton attacked Serbia and ignored Russia’s strong objections.

    Did anything good come out of Obama’s reset with Russia?Ted Belman

    The Russians are a lot of things but stupid is not one of them. You are right about them being suckered by Obama over Libya and Syria is the Russian’s only open port of call in the Med., they don’t want to lose that asset.

    What few seem to talk about is the CIA backed Russian Opposition to Putin. Call it a White Russian revolution now going on in Russia. Are Obama and Hillary so incubated and arrogantly POWER MAD, that Putin doesn’t understand what they are up to? You don’t rise to one of the highest positions in the KGB and Top of the Russian political hierarchy by being stupid and not ruthless.

    Putin and the Russians will now seek to take it to the Americans whenever and wherever they can.

    They can hurt American interests where it hurts most, if they have an opportunity, and they will have many opportunities. Syria and Iran are just two. Some forget Russia is the largest oil and gas producer in the world. The Russians are the main driver for un-linking the dollar as the worlds reserve currency. They will seriously attack the dollar wherever they can. They have already begun by De-linking the dollar in bilateral trade with China. Without the dollar maintaining it’s status as the world’s reserve currency, there will be a flight out of the dollar. America will go the way of it’s currency.

    Why are the Americans hitting on the Russians and restoring the Cold War, albeit to a weaker Russia?

  11. The American dollar collapse is imminent and there are Wall Street Factions who Seeks Closure of Hormuz to Stave Off Dollar Collapse. Wall Street is pressuring Obama to provoke wars in the Persian Gulf region in order to prevent the collapse of the US currency, the dollar. No matter the result of the war vis a vis Iranian nukes, a substantial long term spike in the price of oil will be the result. It will devastate the world economies but save the dollar and those holding the most Dollars. The Banksters and the financial oligarchy in the West along with the 1% who own most of the dollars and dollar denominated assets. If the threat of war can spike oil prices + commodity prices just imagine what a real war will do in the ME.

    Obama has set up Israel to take the fall. Oil at $500 bbl potential and if the attacks are not successful blame it on Israel. Attacks successful but a strong reaction by Iran supported by Russia or China against America and European assets, blame it too on Israel.

    What ever goes wrong militarily and economically will be blamed on Israel.

    Reagan in the Iran–Contra affair – blamed Israel who had nothing to do with it were injected into the narrative in order to protect his VP G H Bush who was up to his eyeballs behind the plot. He could have been impeached and jailed. Israel took the fall because it had no choice.

    With public sentiment against Israel fostered by the administration narrative to a compliant Press, the thinking is that we will do what they demand of us. Basically give up our nukes and sign the NPT. Which in conjunction with forcing Israel back to the pre 67 borders will make Israel totally defenseless.