Yet another episode of quotable Daniel Larison:
One of the most irritating memes in conservative commentary these days is the idea that Obama subverts allies and aids rivals. They have been pushing this one right from the beginning. This is a pretty blatant accusation of treachery and/or naivete, and it isn’t true. Naturally, this latest quarrel with Israel has become another entry on the indictment against Obama for the supposed “squeeze” he puts on allies. The only trouble with this argument is that there is no real squeeze. There is a lot of talk that I assume everyone involved knows will lead to nothing. It’s as if all of the parties know that the entire quarrel is a charade, but now that it has started it has to be played out.
Incredibly, despite the absence of any meaningful consequences for Netanyahu’s government from Washington, the administration is supposedly being very “hard” on Israel while it is being equally “soft” on Iran. There is an Iran gasoline embargo bill pending in Congress, where it has overwhelming support, and it seems unlikely that Obama would veto it if the bill came to his desk. On the other hand, the administration is throwing a public fit over the treatment of the Vice President during his visit to Israel and not doing much more than that. No honest person could conclude from this that it is Israel that has been getting the squeeze.
One thing that I have been noticing over the last few days is how readily foreign policy hawks have been adopting arguments that are normally made by opponents of Iran sanctions but have been applying them to the U.S.-Israel relationship instead. All of a sudden, the hawks have realized that public condemnation and political pressure might backfire and cause the population of another country to rally around the government Washington is trying to pressure. At last they have discovered that hectoring rhetoric and attempts to push a government into doing something it believes it has every right to do are counterproductive! Of course, this insight disappears the minute it might actually be useful in improving our Iran policy.
There are also a few crucial things that the hawks are missing that make these arguments a poor fit for Israel policy. Israeli settlement policy really does violate international law, Israel really is “flouting the will of the world” (to the extent that such a thing exists), and Israel really is more isolated today than it has been in decades. All of the things that the administration has falsely claimed about Iran’s nuclear program and its diplomatic and economic position in the world are far more true of Israel’s international position in the wake of Lebanon, Gaza, Dubai, the latest settlement announcement, and the serial incompetence of Lieberman’s Foreign Ministry. Unlike in Iran, the U.S. actually has leverage and influence in Israel, but while Washington strives mightily to conjure up some way to punish Iran it refuses to use the means available to it to try to make Israel stop doing what Washington has called on it to stop doing for decades.
It’s quite possible that the “pressure track” wouldn’t work on Israel any better than it would work on any other state, but it isn’t even part of the discussion.
CNN’s Ed Henry tried to brush off criticism of the Erick Erickson hiringg by arguing that the left would object to any conservative that they hired. Perhaps, but there’s something to be said about the volume and validity of the complaints. Erickson’s critics have a lot of ammunition courtesy of Erickson, and that repertoire alone should have given CNN pause.
I, for one, would not have objected to the hiring of either Larison or Conor Friedersdorf, for example (even if the latter would bristle at the attempt to affix a label). Heck, I even put in a kind word for Ross Douthat when he got the Times gig (Douthat being considerably better than Erickson, though I would have, again, preferred Larison or Friedersdorf).
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