Benjamin Netanyahu: To Meet or Not to Meet?

As you might expect, President Obama certainly anticipated that he would take a drubbing from Fox News and the Romney Campaign for choosing not to meet with Benjamin Netanyahu this week. The easiest thing to do politically would have been to meet with him so why did he take the more difficult road? Most likely because - as has been his usual approach - when the choice is good policy or good politics the President chooses Good Policy and hopes that the American people will appreciate being treated as grownups and can see his reasoning when it is presented.

So why not meet with Netanyahu?

The middle east is a complex place with many competing interests. Layered on top of this cake of diversity are a myriad of problems some of them long-standing and some more temporal related to an issue that has either just arisen or in some way is constrained by time and the urgency of now. The Palestinian/ Israeli dispute over a homeland is one example of a long-standing problem; the concerns about Iran’s nuclear program as one of the most pressing temporal problems. Often the alignment of countries shifts with respect to the different problems based on the self interest of the individual countries or religious groups. So for example, on the Palestinian questions Israel finds itself isolated but when it comes to the questions of a nuclear Iran most of the nations in the middle east would find themselves aligned with Israel and the U.S.. Few countries are willing to tip the balance of power in the Middle East in the direction of Iran – a Persian nation and away from the largely Arab nations. Peace between the Israelis and Palestinians will only come when there is a party perceived to be an honest broker that can not only bring everyone to the table but be able to push both parties to make concessions that they know must be made but demand a level of selflessness inconsistent with the urge for a politician to position himself for the next election (or herself someday I hope).

Given the number of countries who are stakeholders in the struggle for a Palestinian homeland (or who consider themselves to be stakeholders) President Obama would either have to suspend his campaign to meet with all of the leaders or choose between nations, diminishing the credibility of the US role as broker for peace.

 The question of Iran is a much more immediate and dangerous one calling for cool heads and thoughtful negotiations.

The last six weeks of a US presidential campaign is hardly the time or place for that. President Obama knows this and so too do Netanyahu and Mitt Romney but their agenda are different. In the case of Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Obama both are doing what they should do. Netanyahu wants to use the elections as an opportunity to leverage assurances from the US President that we will support any decision made by the Prime Minister – including direct military action at any time. He believes that with American’s distracted by the campaign for President that this may be the best possible time for an attack and that such an attack would force the two candidates to prove their bona fides with Israel by competing to show who was the most supportive of Israel in the wake of an attack. In doing this Netanyahu is in fact serving his own county’s best interests – but not ours. The climax of a fiercely contested presidential campaign is no time for taking action that requires cool heads.

 In choosing not to meet with Netanyahu, President Obama is doing just what he should do. Choosing wise diplomacy and policy over politics of the moment that risk not only the reputation of the US but risk inflaming the region and perhaps drawing the nations across the globe into a world wide cataclysm.

So if both Netanyahu and Presient Obama are doing just what they should be doing to represent the best interests of their own countries, how does one explain the actions of Mitt Romney? In theory at least, he should be supporting the President’s decision to keep Israel on a short leash until after the campaign is over. Yet he is not. He is advocating for the most dangerous approach – the one that may advantage him politically but puts the United States in a gravely dangerous position. This is not merely the result of inexperience on the part of Romney and his staff. It is much more serious than that.

 In taking the position he has taken Mitt Romney has shown that he would not hesitate to place the country in jeopardy if it meant that he could draw a partisan or personal advantage from it.

 It is often said that in politics the narrative that one campaign constructs about its opponent is only effective insofar as the opponents actions prove it to be true. The Narrative that Romney’s opponents have created that he is without a moral core and prone to choosing personal and partisan gain over the nation’s best interests on matters of critical importance gains credibility with each passing day and each such test of Mr. Romney’s judgment and loyalty.

 Each of these three world leaders is tested in this scenario. When faced with a choice between their own best interests and those of the nation they lead, or wish to lead, Netanyahu chooses Israel, President Obama chooses the United States and Mitt Romney chooses . . . Mitt Romney.