President
Obama is starting to get FDR's message about only fearing fear itself.
In
last night's speech, he made it clear that he intends to govern, to the extent
he can, as if the Republicans don't exist (if only). And, be still my heart, he
stuck it to AIPAC.
Did you notice how much he seemed to enjoy telling a
room full of lobby hacks like
Schumer, Hoyer,
Gillibrand, Casey, Cardin,
Menendez,and
Booker what he will do with
AIPAC's sanctions bill if Congress dares to pass it:
"let
me be clear: if this Congress sends me a new sanctions bill now that threatens
to derail these talks, I will veto it."No, if, ands or
buts. Just "I will veto it." And then he added the words that cause the lobby to
quake in its combat boots:
"For
the sake of our national security, we must give diplomacy a chance to
succeed."
As I have written on a few hundred occasions, AIPAC is
terrified at the suggestion that it places Israel's security over America's. As
AIPAC's former executive director Tom Dine told me, any president who invokes
U.S. national security in a battle with AIPAC will win. That is because even the
hint of the "dual loyalty" canard causes the lobby to shrivel up like a night
flower exposed to the sun.
And Obama went there. He simply said that he
will block AIPAC's bill "for the sake of
our national
security." In other words: which side are you on?
That should do it.
AIPAC will surrender (for the time being), focusing on how to destroy the
chances of a nuclear agreement farther down the road if, and when, diplomacy
seems to be succeeding. (
Read the great John Judis in the
New Republic today
who calls Obama's steely message to AIPAC the "boldest" part of his speech).
But it won't succeed unless Iran messes up. AIPAC cannot stop a president who is
determined to take them on. And on Iran, Obama is.
And this brings me to
the great Pete Seeger who died this week. What an amazing career.
I was
at his 90th birthday concert at Madison Square Garden where dozens of his fellow
musicians sang in his honor and it was just wonderful. The music and the
politics. All Pete Seeger concerts were like that. You would look around you and
know that
this is my community. And not just the Jews (a sizable chunk
of any Seeger audience). Everybody.
I was reading his obituaries and, as
always, I was troubled by that early period in his career when he was a
Communist, one who followed the line from Moscow to the letter. Although that
was a short period in his career, one that ended in the 1940's, it's disturbing
to read about it. How could any American adhere to a line laid down in a foreign
capital?
And again, naturally, I thought about AIPAC because that is
precisely what it does. I'm not comparing Israel to the Soviet Union although
back in the 1930's the Soviet Union was not America's enemy and soon would be
our ally. No, I am talking about the principle.
American Communists would
change their positions on issues overnight if Moscow changed the line. So does
AIPAC. It opposed dealing with the PLO until Rabin changed the line. Then it
supported it. Then Netanyahu came in and changed the line. AIPAC went along. If
Netanyahu decides he can live with Iran enriching uranium to 5% or whatever,
AIPAC will support it too. Today AIPAC opposes negotiating with the Palestinians
on the basis of the 1967 lines. If Netanyahu decides he should do that, AIPAC
will salute and say "yes, sir."
Jerusalem is AIPAC's Moscow. And it
dictates to the American Congress whatever it is that Jerusalem wants, something
American Communists certainly couldn't do.
But it's the same thing. The
only difference is that nothing American Communists ever did had the ability to
harm their beloved USSR. AIPAC's actions in support of Netanyahu's policies do
terrible damage to Israel itself. And, obviously, they hurt America
too.
Obama knows that. He has always known that. And, at last, he seems
to be acting on that knowledge. He deserves our enthusiastic
support.
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