Reckless Pair: Why Boehner’s Invitation To Netanyahu Is Threat To Global Peace

John Boehner — Played like a doll

[Speaking Truth To Power]

John Boehner’s Breach of Protocol and The Politics of Prejudice

House Speaker John Boehner’’s decision to announce he had invited belligerent Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu —right after the recent State of the Union— is yet another attempt at undermining President Barack Obama.

Netanyahu wants to address Congress so he can directly appeal to Americans to ignore Obama’s delicate talks with Iran over its nuclear program and back Israel if it launches a pre-emptive military strike.

The shrewed Israeli leader would leverage Republicans’ bigotry to advance his own government’s foreign policy agenda.

In any case, while the U.S. is indeed negotiating with Iran, President Obama has made it clear that all options, including military, remains on the table. So why would Boehner be a part of any attempt to derail talks when the U.S. has overwhelming military superiority?

Ever since President Obama was sworn into the White House, the Republicans have repeatedly done everything in their power to debase America’’s first African-American president to satisfy political objectives— and the regressive racists anchoring the Republican base.

Do Republicans think they can engage in this kind of despicably disrespectful conduct and still attract African-Americans and Latinos into their Party? For the record Obama won 93% of the Black vote and 71% of the Latino vote in 2012.

Last Wednesday, after the State of the Union address, House Speaker Boehner announced he had invited Netanyahu to speak to the Congress regarding “grave threats of “radical Islam and Iran.”

Mr. Netanyahu’’s speaking engagement, which was first scheduled for February 11, has been rescheduled for March 3 —just before the March 17 Israeli Elections.

Reportedly, a significant portion of Israeli voters are getting fed-up with Mr. Netanyahu. In December The Wall Street Journal reported that his approval rating had collapsed to 38% from 77% last August.

Netanyahu certainly welcomes using Boehner as a campaign manager and being the focus of media attention from the floor of the U.S. Congress, which he will manipulate to make it appear as an endorsement by the American people.

Speaker Boehner well knows President Obama is involved in ground-breaking diplomatic talks with Iran on limiting Iran’’s nuclear program —so that Iran uses nuclear power solely for energy purposes. He also knows that Netanyahu wants to derail these sensitive talks as if the whole world revolves around him and his ego.

Obama was elected by American voters.

It has been many years since any American leader seems so close to de-escalating the nuclear conflict between Iran and America. But some people never give peace a chance —and, the behavior of Benjamin Netanyahu— with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian issue— makes him the wrong person to listen to when it comes to leadership in the pursuit of peace.

Presumably, Mr. Netanyahu is being invited because he supposedly has some deep insight on terrorism that Americans can learn from. Indeed, we can learn from Mr. Netanyahu. The first thing we can learn is how those who refuse to honestly seek peace make war unavoidable.

The fact is: Mr. Netanyahu has made attacks  within Israel more likely —because the settlements building, and land grabbing, by his Israeli government, in Palestine continues unabated in defiance of international law and UN resolutions.

Unfortunately, Washington has not been an authentic peace-broker in the Palestinian- Israeli conflict and Israel is allowed to continually violate United Nations’ resolutions regarding the cessation of settlement-building. Moreover, the Israeli military forces occupy and control every aspect of Palestinian life; to pretend that it has nothing to do with the Palestinians’ increasing militancy is absurd.

As a result Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party has become more and more irrelevant.

Why would Speaker Boehner invite Mr. Netanyahu at such an important time when American diplomats are engaged with Iranian diplomats in an effort that may reduce the bellicosity and lower the specter of a war with Iran?

Unfortunately, petty partisanship and the politics of prejudice are at play here. Firstly, the Republicans have done everything in their power to cripple the agenda of President Obama and delegitimize him.

Republicans are doing this for mainly three reasons: to destroy President Obama’’s achievements and legacy as a Democrat; to call into question his leadership skills —as a non-White president, in spite of what he’s accomplished including the economic recovery; to assuage their base, which sees an America that is far less White than what it’s comfortable with; and, to chill peaceful diplomacy— which, in the final analysis, doesn’t make money; wars do.

There’’s no doubt Republicans want to weaken President Obama so they can claim Democrats are ruining America —which, they have basically argued since 2008; unsuccessfully, as Obama reminded them during SOTU that he won two elections.

Republicans are counting on American amnesia to forget that the ills in the American economy, since the Wall Street crash of 2007-2008, were underwritten by trillion dollar war-for-profit misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan and the friendly tax-breaks for the rich fostered during the Presidency of George W. Bush.

Has the nation really forgotten how the Republicans squandered the surplus President Bill Clinton left America? How else can the GOP expect thinking Americans to elect another Republican president —especially another Bush, since Jeb Bush is now on the 2016 ticket?

Yet in the Republican Party facts don’t count for much; the politics of prejudice and race is always a primary motivator and instigator of many things they do. The Republican Party base is full of backward bigots still mired in a Jim Crow segregationist mindset.

Recall the Birther attacks, the questions regarding President Obama’s citizenship, rallies with gun-toting right-wing nuts, and now the Speaker usurping the foreign policy initiatives of a sitting president. This is in fact an act of treason; to undermine an American president who defeated Republican candidates — just because he’s America’’s first African-American president.

Boehner escaped a challenge to his remaining as Speaker of the House before the new members of Congress were sworn in. Some of those Republicans, who wanted him removed, see him as being an aider and abettor of the nation’s first Black president.

From the very beginning, Republican Party base bigots didn’’t want Republicans negotiating in any way with this president, whom they consider a usurper, even though he won millions of White votes (39%) and would not be in office had it not been for those voters.

This is one of the primary reasons behind the rise of the Tea Party crackpots, in 2010 —and the total legislative gridlock occurring in Washington.

Mr. Boehner’s impertinent breach of protocol by inviting Mr. Netanyahu—without advanced notice given to the White House or State Department—is a signal to those racist elements in the Republican Party that the war to delegitimize President Obama, the Black man, will continue for the remainder of his term in office.

Mr. Netanyahu is being called to Congress so he can, essentially, do what South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson did, during a Sep. 9, 2009 presidential address, when Mr. Wilson shouted, twice, at President Obama ““You lie!””

Prime Minister Netanyahu will try to say somehow the attempt at diplomacy, with Iran, is a meaningless exercise. Republicans will applaud the speech from war-mongering Mr. Netanyahu.

Also, it is no secret that the relationship between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu has been strained. He has in the past insulted President Obama, lecturing him before cameras at the White House.

So, this is a chance for Netanyahu to snub Obama—as he looks at the upcoming Israeli Elections. It’s also a chance for him to make the case that Israel may attack Iran pre-emptively and Americans should support him.

Is there a legitimate fear of a nuclear Iran?

The fact is the world needs less nuclear weapons, not more. All nuclear weapons poses a threat to the security of the world whether it’s held by Russia, the U.S., the NATO countries and Israel itself.

But unfortunately, because many nations, like North Korea, know that if you have a nuclear weapon you won’t be attacked—like Libya was attacked and destroyed after Col. Muammar al-Quathafi gave up his nuclear weapons capability—it is not hard to see why nations without sophisticated military hardware would want these weapons to protect themselves.

However, if we’re to view who has the worst track record of using awful weapons it surely isn’t Iran.

When then U.S.-ally Iraq’s Saddam Hussein used chemical and biological weapons against Iran, during their 1980-1988 war, some of those weapons were marked “Made in the USA.” And whenever the Israeli military commits atrocities in Palestine –some of which are now under review by the International Criminal Court— or, in Lebanon, those weapons are part of the billions of dollars of yearly “aid” Washington gives to Israel.

Moreover, a conflict with Iran will not be helpful to ongoing efforts against terror groups like ISIL. With countries like Syria and Iraq now functioning as incubators for terror groups, Iran represents a country America should think long and hard about fostering peace with.

For some time now, it’s been clear that one of the reasons Western nations are losing the so-called war against terrorists is because of the unstable—and often times corrupt—nature of countries in this region.

A look at the Arab and Muslim governments America and Western powers have endorsed, including tyrannical Saudi Arabia, is very insightful in analyzing why groups like ISIL behave the way they do.

A high-level American government delegation, including President Obama, is now in Saudi Arabia to honor the memory of recently deceased Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz.

Ironically, while American officials will be schmoozing with Saudi leaders, they will be doing so in a country where the largest numbers of terrorists hail from. Let’s remember, there is no real democracy in Saudi Arabia; women can’t do simple things like drive a car, and, journalists and bloggers are routinely flogged in public or jailed.

Worse of all though is the Wahhabis’ interpretation of Islam originating from Saudi Arabia. This view of Islam—which seems to give only certain clerics sole authority of defining Islamic law—has been cited as being a critical factor in the indoctrination of extremist elements who feel compelled to kill those who they say have disrespected Islam. Keep in mind, 15 of the 19 hijackers, on 9-11, were from Saudi Arabia.

We’ have heard much about the ungodly act of beheadings that have been committed by ISIL. But how many Americans and Westerners are aware that rulers in Saudi Arabia routinely behead people?

According to Amnesty International, between November 2012 and August 2014, Saudi Arabia beheaded 113 people. Apparently, they behead about two people per week. Amnesty also reports that “At least 22 people were put to death between 4 and 22 August 2014 alone – more than one every day.”

The newly-crowned king, Salman, has already overseen his first of many beheadings to come.

Speaker John Boehner really is way above his head.

His politically crass —and underhanded race-baiting gesture —is another example of the regressive views of the Republican Party. Issues, like diplomacy with Iran, and global war and peace, are too serious to be derailed by GOP parochial Bull-Connor like bigoty and warmongering.

John Boehner should do the right thing and persuade Netanyahu to disinvite himself citing the need to focus on his own election campaign in Israel as a face-saving excuse.

 

Note: Please sign Petition Urging Speaker Boehner to Dis-invite Benjamin Netanyahu