Fruit

Yesterday began with something that can best be characterized as a "don't believe your eyes and ears, trust me on this" moment. Israeli Premier Bibi Netanyahu requested a meeting with Barack Obama later this month. The agenda, undoubtedly, was Iranian nuclear weapons development (the day was still young).

Netanyahu was informed that there was no time in the President's schedule for a meeting. Later, it was determined that on the proposed day of the meeting, Obama was scheduled to appear on David Letterman's TV show, but after all, softball interviews on TV are sooo much easier that a face-to-face with the leader of a our only true ally in the Middle East. An ally that is surrounded by hostile governments.

The political atmospherics were awful. It appeared to be still another snub of Israel's leader. Obama's supporters leaped into action, telling anyone in the media who would listen (without asking penetrating questions) that the President is Israel's best friend ever. Forget the early DNC platform (ultimately revised), forget the fact that Obama never visited Israel although he was sure to visit Cairo (more on that in a moment), forget that Obama suggested a return to the 1967 borders, thereby killing even a tenuous chance of progress in Israeli-Palestinian negotiation, forget ... well you get the idea. According to Obama supporters,"don't believe your eyes and ears, trust me on this."

On the afternoon of 9-11, the Arab spring harvested poisonous fruit. You remember the Arab spring—the event that the President lauded as a triumph for liberal thought in the Islamic world (not to mention a triumph for Facebook and Twitter). Egyptian Islamists attacked the American embassy over an offensive movie about Islam that was released months ago. Like the Mohammed cartoons, the Islamist response to words is violence, but no worries, the Obama administration was on the case. Our embassey was invaded, our flag was burned, and Islamists provided us with an eerie flash back to Iran in 1979.

The first communique for DoS was, in effect an apology (with a condemnation of violence thrown in a the end) to Islam for the movie, even though the US government had absolutely nothing to do with the movie. Again, the political atmospherics were awful, so the President's people began walking the original statement back, sounding tougher as the morning dawned. They've been doing quite a bit of walk-back lately.

This morning, we awoke to news that the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other American's had been killed in Bengazi. You remember Libya. That's the place where a coalition of NATO countries somehow forced Barack Obama to support a "kinetic action" to overthrow Gaddafi. Again, we were told by the President that Liberals would prevail, that the Arab spring was in full blossom. Instead, more poisonous fruit.

Events are still developing in Libya. It appears that a contingent of U.S. Marines has been dispatched to protect our Embassy (the right move), but four people are dead, including a senior government official.

What we're seeing is still another kind of fruit, harvested from the President's feckless and ineffective approach to foreign policy. Yeah, I know, "GM is alive and Osama bin Laden is dead." So is the U.S. Ambassador to Libya.