Posted on 05/21/2011 5:11:34 PM PDT by Hojczyk
I don’t think I’ve ever seen an international issue clarified in as little time as the 26 hours or so it took to get from “1967 lines” to “No way.” And we have President Obama to thank for it.
In all the discussion of how he was schooled and taken to the woodshed by Prime Minister Netanyahu, there has been little recognition of the fact that Bibi had no choice but to say what he did in the press conference on Friday.
Obama isn’t the first American president to give short shrift to the fundamentals of negotiation; most of our presidents know little about it. As a superpower, we are essentially a continent-size island with only two land borders, and our chief executive is his own separate branch of government, intended to counterbalance the legislature rather than emerging from it after years of parliamentary sausage-making. It is rare for our presidents to enter the office with any meaningful experience in negotiation, and even rarer for them to appreciate it as a political discipline and be good at it.
But I don’t know that we’ve ever had a president who seemed, as much as Obama does, to live in a galaxy far, far away from “negotiation,” the human concept. It’s not that he appears to dismiss the ramifications of his actions for ongoing negotiations; it’s that they don’t even seem to occur to him. In one of the most counterintuitive episodes in a long time, it took an attitude this blunderingly dysfunctional to corner the consummate statesman Benjamin Netanyahu and induce him to say, bluntly and unequivocally, what had to be said about Israel’s irreducible requirements for survival.
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
Zer0 flunked the ME fact and history test.
Depends on how well she can take a punch...
The jug-eared moron destroyed it all in one blundering speech.
Why beat around the Bush.
Either Obama is working for the Muslims, or he hasn’t got a clue. Maybe both.
This man and his idiot botoxed cohort, shoved a health care plan down our throats that will either be found unConstitutional and thrown out, or will bankrupt us, if his economic mistakes don’t do it first.
He just turned over Egypt to the Muslims, and probably Libya will end up worse than it was under Daffy.
Pissed off the British so bad they ignored him at the wedding,and is allowing Chavez to build Iranian missile complex’s in Venzuela.
If all this doesn’t frighten anyone, they are brain dead my friend.
Normally one would simply laugh at a clown. But that tendency is somewhat tempered when they possess the nuclear football.
When it comes to negotiations, I'm the Bad Cop.
Those who bless Israel will be blessed. Those who do Israel harm will not.
But what's worse is that it's not just him. We know he's so vain and egotistical that he can't imagine that one of his august pronouncements will not be welcomed by all as pearls of the sagest wisdom.
It's that the entire WH seems to be either as ignorant as he is, or so fawning and subservient that no one was able to tell the anointed 0ne that the Israelis were going to have some problems with what he was proposing, and that maybe, under the current circumstances it might be better not to say it.
Even odder, the entire week leading up to the speech there were numerous contradictory leaks about what it would contain: some stories claimed that he was going to come out with new Israeli/Palestinian peace proposals, and others, often the very next day, would say that he wasn't going to address the Israeli/Palestinian problem at all. This can only point to the fact that the drafting of the speech was highly political with lots of jockeying, and handled the way this WH usually handles things, that is to say ineptly.
I'm guessing that no one at the State Dept., or even Hillary, actually knew what the boy wonder was going to say until a few hours before the speech. Otherwise, someone would have pointed out to him that there was going to be some huge political fallout. And of course, he didn't run it by the Israeli ambassador either, judging by the stories of Bibi's furious talk with Hillary (and who probably told Bibi that she was just as surprised as he was).
No, this fiasco has all the hallmarks of an 0bama solo project, entirely befitting the most brilliant mind ever to occupy the WH.
i’m not laughing. i agree with Venturer. Obama is doing -exactly- what he sets out to.
He met with Muslim Brotherhood, months before Mubarak fell. Exactly according to plan. Just as with Obamacare, Chavez, Boeing, and much more.
I admire and support Bibi, but Obama wasn’t “schooled” by him. ...Obama didn’t bother to tell Bibi in advance, because he has no respect for him or Israel, and didn’t want, need, or care about getting Israeli support.
AND, he knew exactly how Bibi would respond. All according to plan.
Now, when the “Arab Spring” descends on “evil undemocratic occupier” Israel, over the next few months, he can blame it all on them. there WILL be a Palestinian state before year’s end. And if Israel gets in the way, as Obama EXPECTS, then Obama will have to stop them from killing “innocent civilians”, exactly as he did to Quadaffi. ...i weep for Israel and America.
Yeah, you’re probably right.
Of course, as usual, they’ll run smack into the wall of reality.
It was deliberate. When are people going to finally admit that he is a MUSLIM and has been deceiving us all along because he has been practicing Al Takia as required by Muslim custom and law..
And good for you. For the both of you.
The feministas are prolly sharpening their axes over the “well-schooled” part.
But a successful marriage is something they could never understand anyways.
I think so too which makes him the most dangerous man on the planet to every person on the planet.
very true ! overconfidence is always the undoing of the villain. he will eventually overreach.
...and Paperdoll in post 9, is comforting.
but in the meantime, taking this actions at face value when they seem stupid... Sun Tzu would remind us not to underestimate them... And Obama has audacity worthy of Napoleon. (...as witnessed by his latest flaunting of law regarding the War Powers Act. and even McCain rolls over and says it’s “not important”. unbelievable!)
Best post I’ve read in a long time.
The timing of Zer0’s speech seems totally designed to attempt to further embarrass Israel, in addition to being grandiosely amateurish for those who claimed to be able to perform miracles through “Smart Diplomacy”.
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