THE SHIRELLES in 1962 when they sang “you say hop and I’ll hop.”
In all fairness, even politicians sometimes deserve a break. To whit it behooves us to admit that:
- Barack Obama didn’t always lie about his Iranian fixation.
- Binyamin Netanyahu couldn’t have ever stopped Obama.
- Hillary Clinton is the only one who can stop Obama (despite her knee-jerk endorsement for his grand betrayal).
Let’s start at the top. Obama may have willfully led all and sundry astray as he pursued his courtship of the Iranian ayatollahs. He did fib prodigiously while allowing himself to be outmaneuvered by them at every turn. He couldn’t have been more disingenuous than when he denied his capitulation on every point and when extolled a deal that is far more laughable than the travesty which Bill Clinton concluded in 1994.
Like a dilettante neophyte at a Tehran bazaar, Obama haggled with the Iranians without ever threatening them, while openly evincing a rush to meet artificial deadlines of his own making and oozing eagerness to strike the bargain at any price. He blundered spectacularly.
The outcome was a foregone conclusion, although Obama did definitely pledge guarantees that he never insisted on and which dissipated into thin air. He promised a nuke-free Iran and ended up giving his seal of approval to a nuclear Iran. He promised heaps that he didn’t even make a semi-credible effort to attain.
But that was all on the tactical plane. His tactical lies were essential to facilitate the big strategic plan about which he never lied.
Anyone not mesmerized by his initial star-status couldn’t avoid noting Obama’s continual flirtation with Iran. It was evident to those who paid heed to what Obama said from the time he launched his first race for the presidency. In his favor, it must be acknowledged that Obama never concealed his major agenda.
However, he was popular and those who carped on the sidelines of his triumphant march to the White House were decidedly unpopular, if not altogether despised.
America was seduced by Obama’s undertaking to cure all that ails humanity by making nice. Hence the Mideast’s most inhumane despots were tolerated and coddled. The lessons of history (even one as recent as Bill Clinton’s North Korean folly) don’t much inconvenience the cheery kitsch-addicts who prefer syrupy illusion to bitter reality. Anyone who attempted to detract from the Obamaesque bliss was plainly beyond the pale of decency and way worse than just an ordinary spoilsport.
But as early as in 2007, sensitive ears could pick up the leitmotif of Obama’s serenade to Tehran. It became unmissable in 2009 when, following Iran’s rigged election, thousands took to the streets in defiance of the ruling theocracy.
As pro-democracy demonstrators were killed in Tehran, and as its ayatollahs furthered their designs to arm themselves with nukes, the supercilious leader of the free world spared no effort to stress the need to downplay the fuss. That was in stark contrast to his enthusiasm for the misnamed Arab Spring, especially the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
The pseudo-neutral observer installed as America’s Commander-in-Chief then gave his own people a lesson in moral relativism: “It’s important to understand that, although there is amazing ferment taking place in Iran, the difference… in terms of their actual policies may not be as great advertised.” Not unpredictably, Obama informed the unenlightened masses that he won’t take sides: “I take a wait-and-see approach…. It’s not productive, given the history of US-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling in Iranian elections.”
Obama’s stand-alone tolerance for ayatollah-brand repression was simultaneously accompanied by a scandalous squandering of invaluable time. He thereby enabled Tehran to appreciably advance its nuclear aspirations.
It doesn’t take a paranoid conspiracy-theory promoter to speculate that Obama never really intended to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. He certainly didn’t want Israel to preempt that probability either. Throughout he preferred a feeble, threatened and frightened Israel. In his perception, this was sure to earn him the undying gratitude of the Arab/Muslim world.
It went hand in glove with the pressure Obama harshly exerted on Israel on any and all issues – great and small. It’s no conjecture to argue that Obama’s animosity had nothing to do with underpinning the cause of peace. If anything, it blatantly contradicted that very cause. Indeed, it had everything to do with attempting to diminish Israel, shoving it into a corner, intensifying the ostracism to which it was subjected and turning it into more of an international pariah than it already was.
Rather than engage in dialogue, Obama spoiled for a fight from the outset of his first presidential term – all the while professing to be our unswerving ally. And some among us – with political axes to grind – expediently hype his pose and use it as cogent rationalization for why no Israeli higher-up must ever dare to displease Obama. Who can afford to upset a devoted bosom bud (especially when allies are so scarce)?
And this takes us to Netanyahu. His life could have been outstandingly easier had he only subscribed to the relentlessly resonated dogmas hammered into us by his embittered rivals and homegrown ideological critics on the Left. Curiously, while pro-forma rejecting the Iran deal, they rigorously hone the notion that Netanyahu should never have said ‘no’ to Obama. Their version of Jewish self-determination is that Jerusalem must unquestioningly do Washington’s bidding.
Heaven forefend that we vassals displease our masters. The reverberating left-of-center refrain was that Netanyahu’s duty was to obsequiously own up that Israel is helpless, that Obama unerringly knew best and Israel had to submit to his decrees.
In a remarkable pre-election interview to William Booth of the Washington Post, Labor’s Isaac Herzog said: “I trust Obama to get a good deal.”
In short, our in-house Left echoed what the Shirelles sang back in 1962:
You say hop and I’ll hop.
You say stop and I’ll stop.
You say come and I come.
Oh, anything you say I’m like a hunk of clay…
With one wave of your hand
I’m your slave to command…
You can stretch me until I’m ten feet tall
Or cut me down to the size of a rubber bal.
You can use me, abuse me but never remove me.
Without your love I ain’t nothing at all, oh, well ah
They say I’m a fool
‘Cause you treat me so cruel.
But I’ll go on this way
Oh, anything you say I’m like a hunk of clay
Nonetheless, instead of singing the recommended lyrics, Netanyahu had the colossal gall to decry the deal Obama had been concocting. Netanyahu even brazenly took Israel’s existential case to the US Congress. Thereupon, say his castigators, he irresponsibly soured our otherwise sweet relations with the Obama Administration.
Ergo, by this line of thinking, the deal with Iran is Bibi’s fault and his personal failure. That’s why Ya’ir Lapid clamors for Bibi’s instant resignation. The opposition relishes Netanyahu’s downfall more than it desires the defeat of Obama’s nightmare transaction.
It’s not Obama’s ill-will that’s attacked but Netanyahu’s protests against it. Of course, if any Israeli government had kept deferentially mum, it wouldn’t have deflected Obama’s antagonism either. Only the American Senate can and this is where we get to Hillary Clinton, much of a stretch as that seems to be.
For Obama’s ill-will to be stymied, a two-thirds Senate majority is needed to override the inevitable presidential veto. That means getting some 13 Democratic Senators to vote against their party’s headliner.
Considering that he is essentially a lame duck and that there is a single Democratic presidential frontrunner right now, that shouldn’t be mission impossible (even though the Democratic Party has lurched into unprecedented leftwing radicalism). That frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, is strong enough to call her own tune – assuming she is forthright and willing.
So far she seems to be neither. However, nothing is irrevocable and it’s not too late for a change of heart. For better or worse, the ball is in Hillary’s court.
Terror-sponsoring Iran is the single greatest threat to global peace and the western way of life – not just to Israel’s survival. Hillary can make an indelible mark on the world by signaling to fellow Democrats that they don’t have to follow the Shirelles’ dictum and be a slave to whatever their man (in the White House) commands.
True, during Obama’s first term, when she was his Secretary of State, Clinton was his avid accomplice in more than one shady episode. She was in charge of and remains liable for the first phase of the illusory nuclear negotiations with the ayatollahs. That makes her likely too tendentious to count on.
But this may also be her single greatest chance to redeem herself. She can show backbone and independence. She can distance herself from Obama and this can only help her win more support in Middle America. She should also distance herself from her husband and indicate that she wouldn’t fall for meaningless verbiage as he had when he did his disastrous deal with Pyongyang.
If she doesn’t soon rise above her primary partisan response, she will have exposed all her high-minded declarations as nothing but cheap political soft soap.
It’s in Hillary’s power to show that she is better than all the men around her. Despite her auto-pilot inclinations, she has to summon the fortitude to tell Obama that she won’t hop or stop or come if he says so – that she won’t be his hunk of clay.Otherwise, as Obama’s ever-obedient lackey, she is even inferior to him.
She has to inspire Democratic senators to do the moral thing and not allow the president to stretch them, cut them down to size or abuse them at his whim.
Hillary and hypothetically independent-minded Democrats in the Senate are hardly our ideal allies, certainly not the sort we can comfortably rely upon.
Still, we can challenge Hillary. We can challenge the Senate’s Democrats. We can call them out. We can rattle their smugness.
The fight is by no means over. We can warn that if push comes to shove we can help ourselves because the danger we face is as real and as awful as it gets. What we cannot countenance is the advice (to paraphrase the Shirelles) that we
Keep on playing the fool
Even though Obama treats us so cruel.
Bucking the Trend ... 
It seems to me that our biggest problem with the USA is that we’ve tied much of our weapons systems to them. They can blackmail us by threatening to not rearm us as needed (as they did briefly last summer.) Our intelligence sharing with them has, on occasion, led to dangerous leaks on their part. I think they truly don’t understand that each casualty here is for us the loss of a treasure, not just a statistic, and that our land is not just borders and real estate. I pray that HaShem will help us to find a good solution to this whole mess, and to have the courage to implement it.
Dear Sarah,
I think you could be indulging in wishful thinking if you think the murderous Wicked Witch of the West is going to stand up to the will-be dictator, one Hussein Obama just to bail Israel out of a tough jam.
Bibi had the chance to pull the trigger on a military option a number of years ago, but lacked the intestinal fortitude to get the job done, and now we all have to pay for it.
Reblogged this on Winning the War against Islamic Fascism.
RE: “Like a Hunk of Clay”
As always- Powerful, Powerful, Powerful insights from Sarah Honig regarding Obama.
But what was one to expect from a person who for years sat in his favorite Church every single Sunday listening to the demonic ramblings of a rabid anti-Semite who once stated to his “flock”: “God Damn America”.
The wheels that ever turneth in the head of the POTUS were well lubricated with the ideas he took in long ago, from the lips of his “good Reverend”.
“As the bough is bent, so grows the tree.”
All throughout history demagogues have arisen from out of nowhere, possessing the gift of a silver tongue with which to hypnotize and tell the people what they most wanted to hear. And who had the ability to convince them as to who their best friends were, who constituted their worst enemies and who were the source of ALL their problems.
And now the icing on the cake is that we must turn in desperation, as a pitiable last resort and seek the help of someone whose entire life has been (like that of most Washington, D.C. lifetime career politicians), a daily exercise in staring up at that famous invisible weather vane on top of the White House, to check which way the wind is blowing.
If such an individual represents our last hope, then G-d save us all.
And we need not look at next week’s newspapers to know what one of Hillary Clinton’s biggest campaign platform promises will be all about. She will not even have to ponder what words to use. The current POTUS already has done it for her and long ago.
“I have Israel’s back !” Sound familiar ?
Finally, this “great deal” orchestrated by the American President and his ever eager and willing stooges, lapdogs and sorry excuses for “Advisors”, has now made it a foregone conclusion that there will now follow an Arms Race to acquire “the Bomb”, the likes of which the world has never known.
The Middle East will soon become one huge nuclear powder keg filled with millions of “loyal followers” all wanting to be the first suicide bomber to deliver and detonate a portable nuclear bomb, in the back of a car or truck, into the heart of Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.
It will require every ounce of Israel’s well known ingenuity and intellectual and scientific genius to prevent the unthinkable from coming to pass. I must believe that they will and are well up to the challenge.
I used to be able to see the two World Trade Center towers from my living room windows.
The idea that this truly amazing panoramic view would, or possibly could, ever change seemed so totally out of the realm of possibility that such a thought appeared virtually laughable.
But no one is laughing now.
Hillary’s not as bad as Obama, she’s worse.
AIPAC and J-Street lobbyists are taking their pro- and anti-Israel fight to Congress.
The large majority of American Jews adore Obama.
A Netanyahu-Herzog alliance re Iran may in practice amount to surrender.
“Never Again” is our solemn Jewish vow.
To keep it, we will have to be tougher and meaner than ever before now.
Talk about history repeating itself, 77 years after “The Deal”in Munich.
Bottom line, Sarah! Hillery Clinton is the ‘worst that can happen’ if she is elected president in 2016. She is the epitome of a human Chameleon. She is hell-bent on becoming the first woman president, and will lie and cheat her way to gain her goal. Hillery is anything but smart. If you follow her past all the way through her ‘Dossier of Credits of being a state senator…secretary of state and her total failure of any ‘accomplishments’, which she surmises, is her way of now ‘claiming credit’ because of her vast experience in knowing how to run the government of the USA, all is lost for America for the upcoming 4 to 8 years of a presidency. Hillery has never been ‘smart’ and continuously exposes her ‘brainless comments’ about any current events of the day. Again, the lefty Jews and their one-sided votes for anything Democratic will ‘Spoil’ the day for both America and their most loyal ally Israel. God Help America, Israel, and the Jews!
Obama is Israels enemy and the enemy of America, he acts as an Iranian AGENT, Hillary can now prove that she isn’t his companion and that she is willing to stand up for the security of America.
She has left 57 days and counting…
Hillary Clinton stop Obama’s Iran deal? Nice idea(and interesting article), but it won’t happen, basically for one reason–Benghazi. Hillary is too compromised; by her feckless, traitorous actions in deposing Ghaddafi in Libya, and by her role in the illegal arms smuggling operation to Syrian rebels, that was run out of the CIA building(and US Embassy compound) in Benghazi. She’s also on the hook for trying to cover that up–by wiping her personal server clean(not to mention the fact that she violated US law by using her personal computer/email account), and redacting much of what she did submit to Trey Gowdy. If she tries to stop Obama’s deal with Iran, he’ll retaliate by exposing her coverup still further. The Hildebeast is at best, an opportunistic scoundrel, who’s highest value is the almighty dollar(as in the Clinton Foundation); and who is manifestly unfit to maintain a high level of trust. Thus I whole-heartedly concur with everyone on this post, who realizes that if HC gets into the Oval Office, we’ll go from the fire into the frying pan. And Sarah is absolutely right when she says that PM Netanyahu cannot stop
Obama; because common sense only works when the listerner is motivated to listen, and act on it.
One can understand Iran thinking God is on its side. The Great Satan himself first freed it from its Sunni prison, Pakistan on the East, Saddam on the West, and is now blessing its way into The Hegemon of the Middle East.
Since only Charlie Rose could be fooled by that self-smirking rug merchant Zarif, Obama must be playing another game. My guess is he’s fascinated with creating some Westphalian Shia-Sunni Balance of Power. Being truly democratic, he leaves out Israel’s seven millions.
This was brought home to me in his latest news conference. When asked, twice, about Iran’s support of the terrorist armies of Hezbollah and Hamas, Obama simply couldn’t bring himself to say the word, “Hamas”. He said “Houthi” and “Hezbollah” and “Isil” but he could not ignore that the only enemy of Hamas’ is Israel. He will not place America unequivocally as the enemy of the enemy of Israel – which is as much friend as you can get in the Middle East.
The only answer? Israel has to take a page from Iran. Weapon-making in secret. Like the Lavi but unknown to Israel’s Best Friend. Modern weaponry. Cybernetic nucleonics. Jewish God-given Satanic creativity. We cannot take America as postulate. What survival is for Israel is of only academic interest to America and at times, as Eisenhower’s and Nixon’s “teasings” show, America has been quite hostile to Israel. When the time comes that America is not Israel’s friend, Israel must have something to sell to China and India.
So, it’s really too bad (and a bit scary) that Israel has tied its defense systems to the USA.
While Obama didn’t want to interfere in Iran’s elections(boy, was he good to them), he sure tried to interfere in Israel’s! Keep in mind, however, that in addition to betraying Israel, America’s worst President-ever-has also betrayed the U.S. What was his response when Major Garrett asked him, if he had demanded of Iran, the return of 3 imprisoned Americans, as a quid pro quo for the nuclear agreement? Besides being caught off guard by the question(in his arrogance/smugness he doesn’t prepare for a common-sense, hardball inquiry), he angrily stammered for a bit, but recovered the narrative, when he answered that such a request would have ruined the agreement.
Garrett asked him, in effect, “Hey, what about us Americans? Don’t we get something out of this?”
Obama answered, in effect, “You don’t count–who are you? Go back to your working two jobs—
so you can pay for ObamaCare!”
The root problem remains Islam, in the case of Hillary, one Huma Abedin.
To switch from Goldwater to McCarthy shows Hillary’s valueless core with the teachings of Saul Alinsky at its soulless heart.
To put it more succinctly, the truth never matters, only the gathering of power. It’s the psychology of an insecure vacuous looser.
Just as Valarie Jarrett is Obama’s brain, so Huma Abedin is Hillary’s. These are more the people actually setting US foreign policy and influencing US domestic policy. e.g. on YouTube check out Valerie Jarrett On Behalf of Obama Calls Muslims To Service. And check out Wikipedia, such as it is, regarding Jarrett. To wit, …” After the dinner, Michelle took the job with the mayor’s office, and Valerie Jarrett reportedly took the couple under her wing and “introduced them to a wealthier and better-connected Chicago than their own.” “
Now, one interesting problem is that Abedin is Sunnie Muslim Brotherhood based where Jarrett is Shia based. Both are Muslim at heart and that also includes Obama. Hillary is pure Alinsky based, but clueless regarding Islam and guided by the Sunnie Brotherhood based Abedin. Jarrett is also like Obama, Communist at heart.
So what you really have with Hillary is the Sunnies fighting the Shia Iranian nuclear program… for now at least. When whatever Muslim countries end up with enough military arms, they will eventually be turned against Israel with ever greater potential for destroying Israel and our people.
The analog of Hillary verses Obama would be Israel giving up on the US as an ally and siding with Russia instead.
Israel is on its own and better get used to it and figure out how to deal with this reality.
“Learn about Islam. That is the most important thing for people to do. Learn who it is that you are not.” – Samuel Lurie
you go girl!
The US relationship with Israel, at least since Nixon in 73, has been to prevent Israel from giving her foes a crushing blow.