Fly, little bird!
To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under Heaven — or so the Bible tells us. In nature, the Mama bird has to push that baby bird out of the nest, so that it can function on its own. Usually, though, once having done that, the Mama bird doesn’t send a message to the fox or the crow, notifying it where it can find the baby bird, and giving it the best information about how to take that little bird out.
For many decades, America has been the Mama bird, protecting Japan from from China and its satellite North Korea; protecting India from Pakistan; protecting former members of the Soviet Union from Russia’s reach; protecting both Europe and Iran’s nearer neighbors from Iran’s nuclear ambitions; and, of course, protecting Israel from the entire Arab and Muslim world. Obama, however, is making it increasingly plain the America is not going to be anyone’s Mama bird any longer.
One could say that Obama’s simply becoming an isolationist in the grand old Lindbergh tradition (and look how well that ended), but that wouldn’t be true. What makes Obama different is that he’s not just backing off from protecting old and true allies. Instead, he’s also doing his best to provide succor to the predator nations surrounding them. Thus, as Caroline Glick explains in detail in this recent article, Obama isn’t just passively retreating from our friends. Instead, he’s also actively reaching out to their (and, often, our) enemies. Here’s Glick’s swift summary:
Somewhere between apologizing for American history – both distant and recent; genuflecting before the unelected, bigoted king of Saudi Arabia; announcing that he will slash the US’s nuclear arsenal, scrap much of America’s missile defense programs and emasculate the US Navy; leaving Japan to face North Korea and China alone; telling the Czechs, Poles and their fellow former Soviet colonies, “Don’t worry, be happy,” as he leaves them to Moscow’s tender mercies; humiliating Iraq’s leaders while kowtowing to Iran; preparing for an open confrontation with Israel; and thanking Islam for its great contribution to American history, President Obama made clear to the world’s aggressors that America will not be confronting them for the foreseeable future.
Whether they are aggressors like Russia, proliferators like North Korea, terror exporters like nuclear-armed Pakistan or would-be genocidal-terror-supporting nuclear states like Iran, today, under the new administration, none of them has any reason to fear Washington.
All is not lost, though, says Glick. Although many countries are being abandoned and betrayed by the Obama administration, that doesn’t mean that they can’t join together for their mutual benefit. After all, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. We’ve seen that for some years in the fact that India, formerly extremely hostile to Israel (a legacy of Ghandi’s antisemitism and fatuous idiocy when it came to Jews and genocide), has pulled close to Israel as both countries struggle to deal with the common enemy of hostile Islamists on their borders.
Likewise, although American newspapers are assiduosly ignoring stories about Egypt’s increasingly vocal hostility to Hezbollah, Israel watchers find this trend a hopeful thing. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. If Israel and Egypt team to fight Hezbollah (and its proxy, Iran), that’s good for Israel, even if it’s only a temporary alliance.
Likewise, there’s every reason to believe that other Arab nations, even as they vilify Israel in the press and the UN, will come a’knockin’ on Israel’s back door as Iran becomes an ever greater threat to the balance of power in the region. The Arab leaders have ugly attitudes, but they’re no fools. They know that, while Israel just wants to be left alone, Iran wants to take over. Better, at least for the time being, to side, at least in the dark, with Israel.
Obama may have turned America (temporarily, one hopes) into a psychopathic Mama bird that throws her chicks from the nest and then tries to eat them (or encourages others to do so), but those birds may still surprise us all and FLY!
