And the Israeli right, initially so happy to have President Trump elected, are now finding out what it’s like to singe their fingertips as President Trump impulsively follows his instincts, as Ben Caspit reports in AL Monitor:
It took Netanyahu three long days to release his feeble condemnation of the Turkish attack [on the Syrian Kurds]. They were three very difficult days, as befits the difficult process of waking up about President Donald Trump. The president’s surprising announcement that the United States would immediately withdraw from Syria, followed by the no less sudden Turkish invasion of the Kurdish region, dealt the death blow to Israel’s hopes and expectations regarding its northern front.
“We’ve been left all alone now,” a high-ranking defense official admitted to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. “The strategic balance of power is shifting right before our eyes. The bad guys won, and the good guys are abandoning us. Now, Israel is left almost on its own to deal with the powerful Turkish-Russian-Iranian axis.” …
Israel is finally waking up, and it is a painful process. It took no time at all for Trump, once deemed a fervent lover of Zion if not the Messiah himself, to be recast as someone who is distancing himself from Israel. It is sadly amusing to listen to the Likud’s spokespersons cringe and talk in circles when asked about the sudden American withdrawal from Syria, the abandonment of the Kurds and the president’s desperate efforts to court Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
Perhaps a trifle of schadenfreude on Caspit’s part, but quite understandable. It’s also not surprising to see his description of Likud apologists as speaking in circles, because the intersection between reality and ideologies inconsistent with reality often leads to nonsense, an intellectual stutter and collapse as the mind seeks to reconcile two fundamentally incompatible concepts. We’ve seen this from our own band of extremists of late with regards to President Trump’s solicitation for assistance from the Chinese in finding dirt on the Biden family:
Sen. Marco Rubio said last Friday that President Trump was not being serious when he said the Chinese government should open an investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in connection with a 2013 trip to the country.
The Florida senator, speaking with reporters the day after Trump made his pitch to the Chinese, suggested the press should do a better job of determining when the president is playing the role of a joker. [South Florida Sun-Sentinel]
Anyone who saw President Trump’s performance is well aware that Trump was desperate and not engaged in humorous street theater. Yet, here’s Senator Rubio (R-FL), burdened with the ideological task of proclaiming the essential correctness of his President because, well, he’s Party leader, making himself into a laughingstock because he hasn’t the spine to stand up and say, Enough.
Treating people as mere tools, whether they’re named Trump or Doe, is a dangerous vocation because, unlike that hammer, people are agents, and whether they have a hidden agenda or just problems with impulse control, you may get something other than planned.
And that’s the a big problem for the Israeli right.
