Betrayed

I really had intended to disregard Barack Obama during his final month in office, focusing instead on the new President and national affairs. Obama's has been a failed presidency. My posts over the past eight years have made every attempt to provide a fair appraisal of the man and his policies. Nothing more needed to be said.

But this president's actions at the UN last week were too much—an act of betrayal couched in the typical leftist "quest for peace" language that was not only monstrously hypocritical, not only obviously anti-Israel, but also destructive to any legitimate effort to resolve a conflict that is damn close to irreconcilable. Obama's action was disgusting.

I'm not the only person who feels that way. Bret Stevens comments:

Barack Obama’s decision to abstain from, and therefore allow, last week’s vote to censure Israel at the U.N. Security Council is a fitting capstone for what’s left of his foreign policy. Strategic half-measures, underhanded tactics and moralizing gestures have been the president’s style from the beginning. Israelis aren’t the only people to feel betrayed by the results.

Also betrayed: Iranians, whose 2009 Green Revolution in heroic protest of a stolen election Mr. Obama conspicuously failed to endorse for fear of offending the ruling theocracy.

Iraqis, who were assured of a diplomatic surge to consolidate the gains of the military surge, but who ceased to be of any interest to Mr. Obama the moment U.S. troops were withdrawn, and only concerned him again when ISIS neared the gates of Baghdad.

Syrians, whose initially peaceful uprising against anti-American dictator Bashar Assad Mr. Obama refused to embrace, and whose initially moderate-led uprising Mr. Obama failed to support, and whose sarin- and chlorine-gassed children Mr. Obama refused to rescue, his own red lines notwithstanding.

Ukrainians, who gave up their nuclear weapons in 1994 with formal U.S. assurances that their “existing borders” would be guaranteed, only to see Mr. Obama refuse to supply them with defensive weapons when Vladimir Putin invaded their territory 20 years later.

Pro-American Arab leaders, who expected better than to be given ultimatums from Washington to step down, and who didn’t anticipate the administration’s tilt toward the Muslim Brotherhood as a legitimate political opposition, and toward Tehran as a responsible negotiating partner.

Most betrayed: Americans.

In a way, Obama acted like a spoiled child who was angry at an older brother (Bibi Netanyahu), who is smarter, braver, and a far better leader that he is. The child waited until everyone had taken a seat at the Holiday table, and then threw a tantrum in the vain attempt to show that he was the boss.

Like most tantrums, all this despicable action showed was the kind on man Barack Obama is—a dishonest and duplicitious ("I have Israel's back") empty suit without the character to support an ally that has far more in common with America that half of the security council members who voted in favor of the resolution. Then again, my take is that Obama doesn't like America very much, so the fact that he doesn't like Israel follows rather comfortably.

UPDATE:
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Today left-wing columnists have circled the wagons in defense of Obama. Here's an example (my fisking is italicized) from Ryan Cooper in The Week:

... Israel has become an abusive drunk of a nation that enforces an apartheid regime over the Palestinian lands of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Ahhh, the left always relies on name-calling when it has no facts and no rational argument. Ryan thinks that slurs like "apartheid" will end the conversation because who likes apartheid? Israel is no more apartheid than Hamas is a peace-loving, gentle organization that would welcome Jews and Christians into their midst with open arms. Since Ryan likes to name-call, let me try—his disgusting slur is flat-out anti-Semitic.

It controls both places absolutely and barely anyone — including Netanyahu himself — even bothers to pretend that permanent control of Palestinian lands, and permanent disenfranchisement of the human beings who live there, is Israeli policy.

Really? I guess that's why Israel gave Gaza back to the Palestinians unilaterally in August 2005. Since that time, the palestinians have elected a terror organization, Hamas, that does control Gaza. Odd, isn't it, that Israel "controls both places absolutely" but somehow missed a beat and allowed free elections that resulted in the election of an Islamic thug government that controls the place to this day?

The West Bank is shot through with ever-growing Israeli settlements, its citizens are subjected to endless harassment from occupying Israeli troops, and its government is totally in thrall to Israel.

The West Bank is NOT palestinian territory. Sure, an anti-Israel UN says otherwise, but it's really odd that they only proclaim this when Israel is involved. There are dozens and dozens of historical precedents for annexation of land won as a consequence of a defensive war. That's the case here but somehow, according to the left, the rules are different.

Gaza is basically an open-air prison camp, its citizens trapped in grueling poverty, its economy and infrastructure shattered by routine Israeli bombardment.

Gosh, I wonder why? Could it be because Hamas does everything possible to kill Israel citizens including tunneling under the border and launching rockets at population centers. And the poverty? The palestinians have received more international aid per capita than just about any other people. Corruption and incompetence have squandered it all, leaving the people to suffer. And that's Israel fault, how?

The thinking espoused by Cooper is nothing if not tedious. It's Obama's mindset, only more honest. Too bad both men are dead wrong offering intellectually feeble arguments that border on the delusional.