Netanyahu’s moment

The coming deal with Iran represents folly of a Chamberlainite proportion. One can easily see it in the administration’s prebuttal of Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech, reported in today’s New York Times story by David Sanger and Michael Gordon. I hear the voice of Susan Rice in the unnamed administration official quoted by the Times. Whoever it is speaks out of the love that dare not be identified with his or her own name.

Now we too can know how Churchill felt when Chamberlain proclaimed that he had achieved “peace for our time” with Hitler at Munich. It’s not a good feeling.

What is to be done? The Senate has unanimously passed a resolution welcoming Benjamin Netanyahu to the United States for his speech before a joint session of Congress. Adam Kredo reports on the resolution here. I take it the resolution passed on a voice vote so that Democrats would not be identified with it by name. They can welcome Netanyahu and still protest his speech by skipping it.

Vice President Biden and Secretary Kerry will of course be pursuing other interests when Netanyahu speaks before Congress.

Netanyahu is of course speaking out before Congress on Tuesday against the coming deal with Iran. I haven’t read a better backgrounder than the BESA paper by Brig. Gen. Yossi Kupperwasser (res.) titled “The struggle over the Iranian nuclear program.” Like the Munich Agreement, the coming deal entails consequences which will travel far with us along our road.

In her current column Caroline Glick sets the moment of Netanyahu’s speech in the context of the past six years of the Age of Obama. Glick notes how far Netanyahu has bent to accommodate the wishes of President Obama. Glick’s conclusion is addressed to her Israeli readers, but it hits home here as well:

Netanyahu is not coming to Washington next Tuesday to warn Congress against Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, because he seeks a fight with Obama. Netanyahu has devoted the last six years to avoiding a fight with Obama, often at great cost to Israel’s national security and to his own political position.

Netanyahu is coming to Washington next week because Obama has left him no choice. And all decent people of good will should support him, and those who do not, and those who are silent, should be called out for their treachery and cowardice.

The genocidal mania of Iran has been the focus of Netanyahu’s concerns for at least the past 20 years. Bill Kristol rightly calls this “Netanyahu’s moment.” Netanyahu can and will lay out the argument — no one can do it better — but he can’t give us the will to do something about it. For that we’re on our own.

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