MR. PRESIDENT, ARE YOU ABSOLUTELY SURE YOU’VE GOT THIS RIGHT?
DOESN’T IT TROUBLE YOU, JUST A TOUCH, MR. PRESIDENT, THAT YOU
MIGHT HAVE THIS ALL WRONG?
BY DAVID HOROVITZ March 30, 2015, 4:53 pm 71David Horovitz is
the founding editor of The Times of Israel. He previously edited The Jerusalem
Post (2004-2011) Follow or contact:FacebookTwitterEmailRSSWebsiteNEWSROOM
Isn’t there a nagging little voice, somewhere right at the
back of your mind, warning you that, maybe, just maybe, you ought to be
listening seriously to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei when he calls out “Death to
America,” rather than insistently tuning him out?
Do you not have the slightest fear that, when history comes
to judge you, it will bracket you alongside Neville Chamberlain? “The
settlement of the Czechoslovakian problem, which has now been achieved is, in
my view, only the prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find
peace,” the British prime minister declared on September 30, 1938 — precisely
76 and a half years ago. “This morning I had another talk with the German
Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as
well as mine… We regard the agreement signed last night… as symbolic of the
desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again… I believe
it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Go home
and get a nice quiet sleep.”
Does that inane rhetoric, that tragic rhetoric, not chill you
as you read it all these decades later, knowing what happened next, and as your
dutiful secretary of state seeks desperately to finalize the agreement you have
sought with Iran — an agreement with a regime that makes no secret of its
desire to see the elimination of Israel, an agreement with a regime that is
expanding its hold on country after country in our region, an agreement that
falls far, far short of dismantling Iran’s nuclear program? 
Do you not hear a grim historical echo, and ask yourself
whether you are not risking the abandonment of another small, embattled democracy,
and the emboldening of another ruthless would-be superpower, motivated by
another hideous ideology?
Do you not worry, not even for a moment before you close your
eyes at night, that your irritation with that impossibly arrogant prime
minister of Israel has skewed your judgment? Can you easily shrug off his
warnings that the Iranians are tricking you? Can you dismiss his charge that
you could have done better, held firmer, set the bar higher? “One of the
failures, I think, of our approach in the past has been to use a lot of strong
rhetoric but not follow through with the kinds of both carrots and sticks that
might change the calculus of the Iranian regime,” you told this writer when we
spoke in Jerusalem in 2008, before you became president.
.jpg)
PATRIOT vs LEFTIE-COMMIE
Have you not offered too many carrots, and failed to brandish
a terrifying stick? Can you ignore Benjamin Netanyahu’s concerns that the
Iranians will inevitably violate this agreement, and that even if those
violations are detected, you, Mr. President, are now the leader of an
international community that lacks the will to prevent a subsequent Iranian
breakout to the bomb? Do you not ask yourself whether you might have acted
differently in 2009, when the Iranian public mustered the beginnings of an
attempt to oust the ayatollahs? You failed to
offer concrete assistance, and
their nascent uprising was brutally suppressed. Are you not even mildly
disturbed by the notion that this accord, this deal you so determinedly seek,
will cement in power this ideologically and territorially rapacious regime,
this regime that so bitterly represses its own people?
.jpg)
Mr. President, I think you are troubled, and worried, and
disturbed. I think, deep down, you do hear that nagging voice. I think the
dispassionate, ultra-confident manner you affect masks the doubts. I fear you
have surrounded yourself with people who dare not question you with sufficient
intellectual vigor. I fear that you are willfully blinding yourself to the
tragedy you are about to inflict upon us all. I hope I’m wrong. I’m not
certain. But we are plainly at a historical crossroads, and I worry — how could
I not? — that a grave mistake is in the offing, with profound historical
consequences, for Israel, the region, the free world. And it is the certainty
with which you are pursuing what seems an unfathomable course of appeasement —
of an enemy that reminds us all every day, in word and deed, that it is the
enemy of the free world — it is that certainty of yours that worries me most of
all.
Read more: Peace for our time | The Times of
Israel http://www.timesofisrael.com/peace-for-our-time/#ixzz3Vt8ACsCl Follow us:
@timesofisrael on Twitter | timesofisrael on Facebook
MR. PRESIDENT, ARE YOU ABSOLUTELY SURE YOU’VE GOT THIS RIGHT?
DOESN’T IT TROUBLE YOU, JUST A TOUCH, MR. PRESIDENT, THAT YOU
MIGHT HAVE THIS ALL WRONG?
BY DAVID HOROVITZ March 30, 2015, 4:53 pm 71David Horovitz is
the founding editor of The Times of Israel. He previously edited The Jerusalem
Post (2004-2011) Follow or contact:FacebookTwitterEmailRSSWebsiteNEWSROOM
Isn’t there a nagging little voice, somewhere right at the
back of your mind, warning you that, maybe, just maybe, you ought to be
listening seriously to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei when he calls out “Death to
America,” rather than insistently tuning him out?
Do you not have the slightest fear that, when history comes
to judge you, it will bracket you alongside Neville Chamberlain? “The
settlement of the Czechoslovakian problem, which has now been achieved is, in
my view, only the prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find
peace,” the British prime minister declared on September 30, 1938 — precisely
76 and a half years ago. “This morning I had another talk with the German
Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as
well as mine… We regard the agreement signed last night… as symbolic of the
desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again… I believe
it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Go home
and get a nice quiet sleep.”
Does that inane rhetoric, that tragic rhetoric, not chill you
as you read it all these decades later, knowing what happened next, and as your
dutiful secretary of state seeks desperately to finalize the agreement you have
sought with Iran — an agreement with a regime that makes no secret of its
desire to see the elimination of Israel, an agreement with a regime that is
expanding its hold on country after country in our region, an agreement that
falls far, far short of dismantling Iran’s nuclear program?
Do you not hear a grim historical echo, and ask yourself
whether you are not risking the abandonment of another small, embattled democracy,
and the emboldening of another ruthless would-be superpower, motivated by
another hideous ideology?
Do you not worry, not even for a moment before you close your
eyes at night, that your irritation with that impossibly arrogant prime
minister of Israel has skewed your judgment? Can you easily shrug off his
warnings that the Iranians are tricking you? Can you dismiss his charge that
you could have done better, held firmer, set the bar higher? “One of the
failures, I think, of our approach in the past has been to use a lot of strong
rhetoric but not follow through with the kinds of both carrots and sticks that
might change the calculus of the Iranian regime,” you told this writer when we
spoke in Jerusalem in 2008, before you became president.
|
| PATRIOT vs LEFTIE-COMMIE |
Have you not offered too many carrots, and failed to brandish
a terrifying stick? Can you ignore Benjamin Netanyahu’s concerns that the
Iranians will inevitably violate this agreement, and that even if those
violations are detected, you, Mr. President, are now the leader of an
international community that lacks the will to prevent a subsequent Iranian
breakout to the bomb? Do you not ask yourself whether you might have acted
differently in 2009, when the Iranian public mustered the beginnings of an
attempt to oust the ayatollahs? You failed to
offer concrete assistance, and their nascent uprising was brutally suppressed. Are you not even mildly disturbed by the notion that this accord, this deal you so determinedly seek, will cement in power this ideologically and territorially rapacious regime, this regime that so bitterly represses its own people?
offer concrete assistance, and their nascent uprising was brutally suppressed. Are you not even mildly disturbed by the notion that this accord, this deal you so determinedly seek, will cement in power this ideologically and territorially rapacious regime, this regime that so bitterly represses its own people?
Mr. President, I think you are troubled, and worried, and
disturbed. I think, deep down, you do hear that nagging voice. I think the
dispassionate, ultra-confident manner you affect masks the doubts. I fear you
have surrounded yourself with people who dare not question you with sufficient
intellectual vigor. I fear that you are willfully blinding yourself to the
tragedy you are about to inflict upon us all. I hope I’m wrong. I’m not
certain. But we are plainly at a historical crossroads, and I worry — how could
I not? — that a grave mistake is in the offing, with profound historical
consequences, for Israel, the region, the free world. And it is the certainty
with which you are pursuing what seems an unfathomable course of appeasement —
of an enemy that reminds us all every day, in word and deed, that it is the
enemy of the free world — it is that certainty of yours that worries me most of
all. Read more: Peace for our time | The Times of Israel http://www.timesofisrael.com/peace-for-our-time/#ixzz3Vt8ACsCl Follow us: @timesofisrael on Twitter | timesofisrael on Facebook
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