Mr. Kristol is among the dumbest motherfuckers on earth, which shouldn't surprise anyone, since he became famous as the guy whose only government job was making Dan Quayle look smart. Notice how well that worked out?
After being kicked out of government in 1992, Kristol established The Weekly Standard, mostly as a forum for demanding that the United States go to war with everyone and insisting that it would go just fine. You can see him being similarly (and smugly) wrong every week on Fox News Sunday. Oh, and he was also the first person to bring Sarah Palin to national prominence, so we can thank him for that, too.
Matthew Continetti was an associate editor at the Standard until he established the Free Beacon this past February.
Kristol is also on the board of, and appears to be the main spokesman for, the Emergency Committee for Israel, a 501(c)(4) that seems to exist for the sole purpose of flacking for Israel's Likud Party and it's policies in the United States. It is only because of massive loopholes in the law that the Emergency Committee and groups like it manage to avoid having to register as agents of foreign governments under American lobbying laws. If Mike Deaver was that smart when he was illegally lobbying for Canada, he could've made his life a lot easier.
Anyhow, the Emergency Committee created this ad, which the Free Beacon dutifully posted and the Drudge Report linked to it under the headline "OBAMA BLASTED FOR FAILURE TO VISIT ISRAEL."
ECI also ran this print ad in a bunch of Jewish newspapers.
At this point, some recent history necessary to explain what's going on. And that history shows that Barack Obama is far more tolerant of Israel than other presidents with actual balls have been.
In March of 2010, Vice President Biden visited Jerusalem and reaffirmed America's "unyielding support" for Israel's security, which was sort of important, given the question of Iran's nuclear program. Within hours - and with Biden still in the country - the Israeli Interior Ministry announced an expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem.
That's been sort of a thing with the U.S since the occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967. Building settlements on occupied territory is kind of illegal under international law. And everyone recognizes East Jerusalem as occupied territory. Worse still for the Americans, they provide loan guarantees to Israel for the settlements, which itself is of questionable legality when Israel actually brings in immigrants to populate them.
If any other country - and especially an ally dependent on U.S foreign aid - did something like this, I have no doubt that the United States would use every diplomatic resource at its disposal to retaliate. It's difficult to underscore what an insult that announcement by the Interior Ministry was, let alone how it complicated American relations with Israel's Arab neighbors, who rely on the United States to be an "honest broker."
Actually, no it isn't. That's because something similar happened during the first Bush administration in the fall of 1990. Former secretary of state James Baker told the story in his 1995 memoir, The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War & Peace, 1989-1992 on pages 543-44.
In the months leading up to the first Gulf War, Israel's then-foreign minister, David Levy, assured Baker that his country wouldn't move recent Soviet immigrants into planned East Jerusalem settlements for which American loan guarantees had been extended. Five weeks later, Yitzak Shamir's government reneged on that pledge.
Secretary Baker then very publicly cancelled the loan guarantees and told the world why. After the war, when the Bush administration was trying to bring the Arabs to the Madrid Peace Conference (one of the diplomatic promises Baker and Bush made to ensure Arab participation in the war on Iraq,) Shamir yet again made the settlements an issue. Baker yet again publicly slapped Israel down.
Oh, cute fact. You know who was a fairly prominent member of the Bush administration in 1990-'91? Bill Kristol, that's who! Did Kristol have anything negative to say about that at the same or thereafter? Certainly not that I'm aware of.
If anything, Israel's current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been an even greater thorn in the side of American foreign policy than even Shamir was. And, by the way, it is the duly elected president of the United States that decides U.S foreign policy, not the prime minister of Israel.
Compared to the reaction of Secretary Baker and the first President Bush to Israeli intransigence, President Obama has been downright tepid, given the humiliation that Netanyahu brought upon the administration when Biden was visiting. In fact, Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have given Israel a de facto nuclear guarantee against an Iranian attack.
If the worst thing that Obama has done is simply not visit Israel, where God knows what else Netanyahu will do to embarrass him or further complicate American policy, Israel has done well, indeed.
And you know who knows that? Bill Kristol. Just don't expect him to tell you the truth about that. It isn't his strong suit.
Extra Special Update: The good folks at Mediate were kind enough to compile a listing of the travels to Israel of recent presidents. As it turns out, Democrats fare pretty well in their sojourns to the Holy Land. Republicans, not so much.
As it happens, no Republican president went to Israel at all between June of 1974 and January of 2008. That means that Presidents Gerald R, Ford, Ronald Reagan and George H.W Bush never made an official state visit there over the course of some thirty-three years and six months.
After I published this post, I remembered the rather hostile relationship that President Reagan had with Israel, which I intially wrote about here.
During Israel's 1982 siege of Beriut, Reagan twice described the military offensive to Menachem Begin as a "Holocaust" and said that if it continued "our entire future relationship (meaning America and Israel's) was endangered (see The Reagan Diaries, page 98.) It was perhaps the most controversial and confrontational communication between an American president and an Israeli prime minister. It was also one that Reagan was deeply proud of, highlighting it in his memoir, An American Life.Can you imagine how people like Kristol or Liz Cheney would react if Barack Obama used rhetoric toward Israel that came anywhere close to Reagan's?
You probably can't, but I can.
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