| Column One: Obama’s power and its limitations | ||
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US President Barack Obama’s rapidly changing positions on Syria have produced many odd spectacles.
One of odder ones was the sight of hundreds of lobbyists from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee fanning out on Capitol Hill to lobby members of the House and Senate to support Obama’s plan to launch what Secretary of State John Kerry called “unbelievably small” air strikes against empty regime controlled buildings in Syria.
AIPAC officials claimed they were doing this because the air strikes would help Israel.
But this claim was easily undone. Obama and Kerry insisted nothing the US would do would have any impact on the outcome of the Syrian civil war. This was supposed to be the strikes’ selling point. But by launching worthless strikes, Obama was poised to wreck America’s deterrent posture, transforming the world’s superpower into an international joke.
In harming America’s deterrent capabilities by speaking loudly and carrying an “unbelievably small” stick, Kerry and Obama also harmed Israel’s deterrent posture.
Israel’s deterrence relies in no small measure on its strategic alliance with the US.
Once the US is no longer feared, a key part of Israeli deterrence is removed.
Obama did not announce his intention to bomb empty buildings in Syria in order to impact the deterrent posture of either the US or Israel. He probably gave them little thought. The only one who stood to gain from those strikes – aside from Syrian President Bashar Assad who would earn bragging rights for standing down the US military – was Obama himself.
Obama wanted to launch the unbelievably small strikes to prove that he wasn’t lying when he said that Syria would cross a red line if it used chemical weapons.
So if the strikes were going to harm the US and Israel, why did AIPAC dispatch its lobbyists to Capitol Hill to lobby in favor of them? Because Obama made them.
Obama ordered AIPAC to go to Capitol Hill to lobby for the Syria strikes. He did so knowing that its involvement would weaken public support for AIPAC and Israel. Both would be widely perceived as pushing the US to send military forces into harm’s way to defend Israel.
Then, with hundreds of AIPAC lobbyist racing from one Congressional office to the next, Obama left them in a lurch. He announced he was cutting a deal with Russia and had decided not to attack Syria after all.
What did AIPAC get for its self-defeating efforts on Obama’s behalf? Obama is now courting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in the hopes of making a deal that Iran will use as cover for completing its nuclear weapons program.
Such a deal may well involve ending sanctions on Iran’s oil exports and its central bank – sanctions that AIPAC expended years of effort getting Congress to pass.
And that’s not all. Monday, as Obama meets with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the UN General Assembly in New York, Vice President Joe Biden will become the highest ranking administration official to date to address the J Street conference.
J Street was formed in order to weaken AIPAC, and force it to the left.
Sending Biden to headline at the J Street conference is an act of aggression against AIPAC. It also signals that Obama remains committed to strengthening the anti-Israel voices at the margins of the American Jewish community at the expense of the pro- Israel majority.
The question is why is AIPAC cooperating with Obama as he abuses it? Why didn’t they just say no? Because they couldn’t.
AIPAC is not strong enough to stand up to the president of the United States, particularly one as hostile as Obama.
Not only would it have suffered direct retaliation for its refusal, Obama would have also punished Israel for its friend’s recalcitrance.
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