UPDATE NOTICE: After President Obama's Sunday speech to AIPAC, the author made considerable revisions to this article to reflect what he believes is a sincere effort by the President to warn Netanyahu that they are not in agreement on what would justify an attack on Iran. He did that at AIPAC, which the New York Times describes as a "tight rope act." See the revised article -- Netanyahu Comes To Town To Push Attack on Iran; Obama Tells AIPAC Diplomacy Is Better -- here.
Photo - Reuters
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu makes his annual state visit this week to Washington he will be surrounded by sycophants and loyal political allies prepared to respond to his every demand.
I speak not of the Prime Minister's traveling companions from Tel Aviv, but of the welcoming community of American politicians, fawning pro-Israel US media stars, and brain-washed interfaith-obsessed religious leaders, far right and mainstream, who have willingly traded their stewardship of the American Soul for a bowl of interfaith Zionist porridge.
I have to believe that US President Barack Obama knows this more than he is able to acknowledge. I could be wrong, but we won't know that until Obama receives a second term.
For the moment, however, we can only hope he will orchestrate the political game skillfully enough to avoid sanctioning an attack on Iran until after the November election.
After that, we must hope he will use his second term to halt all this "bomb Iran" nonsense.
But this is election season and President Obama is steering the large ship of state in dangerous waters. He feels he has to say things to convince the public he knows where the shoals are.
Still, it was depressing to see President Obama playing that political game in a carefully structured individual media interview with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, the current reigning Zionist media voice, having replaced Tom Friedman from that post.
Goldberg used his exclusive post-Netanyahu media interview with Obama to toss up questions which sounded uncomfortably like AIPAC's script.
He pushed Obama to reaffirm his love for Israel and, by extension, led him close to McCain-like "bomb, bomb, bomb" Iran campaign rhetoric.
Goldberg writes:
"Obama told me earlier this week that both Iran and Israel should take seriously the possibility of American action against Iran's nuclear facilities.
"'I think that the Israeli government recognizes that, as president of the United States, I don't bluff.'
"He went on, 'I also don't, as a matter of sound policy, go around advertising exactly what our intentions are. But I think both the Iranian and the Israeli governments recognize that when the United States says it is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, we mean what we say.'"
Why would Obama betray his own deep rooted principles to sing the war-talk song? He should be in no danger in November, given that his potential Republican opponents have self-destructed in what may well be the most mindless of all political nominating campaigns in modern US history.
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