Why Israel Matters, And Why Obama Has No Clue

Most people assume that problems in the Middle East — such as Iran, and Israel — are about religion and oil. Actually, the main issue involves freedom and individual rights.

No nation on earth, at present, consistently upholds individual rights. The closest humankind ever came was the American Constitution and Bill of Rights. Those documents introduced the notion of individual rights to the world. That Constitution is increasingly ignored or violated, with the will of the American people in many cases.

However, it’s still reasonable to look at individual rights as being upheld in varying degrees, in one society versus another. The only nation in the Middle East that comes remotely close to upholding individual rights is Israel. That’s what makes it important.

Obama, like all his predecessors, has gone back and forth about supporting Israel. Unlike most of his predecessors, he mostly leans away from Israel. Some are now claiming that he’d launch a strike against Iran, if necessary, in order to prevent Israel from being the victim of a nuclear attack. I’d believe that only if I saw it. The reason for my skepticism is Obama’s treatment of individual rights at home.

More than most Presidents, even in recent history, Obama has been willing to sacrifice the principle of individual rights for the sake of any agenda to increase his power or redistribute wealth. I’d venture a guess that if he ever did strike Iran, it would be more as an affirmation of his power as President than it would be of any desire to uphold individual rights.

If Obama ever did strike Iran, he’d be met with howls of protest from his core leftist constituency. That’s because the leftist point-of-view is the multiculturalist one. The multiculturist view is that one individual behavior is as good or right as another. Nobody has any business judging one system of government as better than others, by this perspective. Israel partially respects individual rights; Iran slaughters anyone who goes against the state, and enforces outrageous assaults on the individual rights of women and gays, to name only two examples. “So what?” ask the multiculturalists. No one system is better than another, and how dare Obama take a stand against Iran, much less attack their government on the premise that Israel’s system of government is superior?

I don’t believe Obama will ever go against his leftist/multiculturalist constituency. Why? Because he actually agrees with them. Unlike most of his predecessors, Obama is truly an ideologue, not a pragmatist—and his ideas are entirely the wrong ones.

The proof of this fact is that he continues to maintain the fiction that, ‘Iran may yet come to the bargaining table.’ Iran’s dictators publicly laugh at this idea, and continue to openly state their intentions to create nuclear weapons and use them however they see fit. As evil and irrational as the Iranian mullahs are, they actually are more logically coherent than the compromising, appeasing and self-effacing Obama. If the stakes were not so mortally high, the absurdity of Obama’s attitude would be humorous.

Obama knows full well that the Iranians have no intention of ever compromising or bargaining about anything. Why should they? Even their experiences with administrations prior to Obama have shown them the United States will never take action against them. We did nothing to them after the hostage crisis of 1979-81. After 9/11, we attacked Iraq, not Iran. This only made Iran stronger, by taking away its most threatening enemy in the region while leaving Iran intact.

Obama knows Iran will not change. Yet he continues to engage in the pretense that there may be successful negotiations if we just give the Iranians what they want. He knows full well they want a totalitarian religious dictatorship to rule that part of the world—indeed, the whole world if possible. How do you negotiate with that?

The Middle East certainly matters. Without the supply of oil we depend on from that part of the world, civilization as we know it would flounder and possibly even collapse. Gas prices would skyrocket and shortages would affect every aspect of our daily lives. Environmentalists, including Obama, will never let us drill for oil anywhere near the United States. A majority of Americans let this happen, by not demanding their politicians ignore the anti-capitalist, anti-human life environmentalist lobbies.

Obama knows what he’s doing. He may be a fool, but he’s not stupid. The tragic thing is: Most Americans don’t take the time to ask themselves why he keeps making life easier for the Iranians—and harder for the Israelis—while knowing everything he does?

 

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