Wednesday, June 24, 2009

"BECAUSE I SAID SO. THAT'S WHY"




He Who Must Be Obeyed is starting to remind me of a lady -- and I use the word advisedly – who was my nemesis when I was working in the Department of Interior.

Her name was Jean -- I’ll skip her last name, but anyone who remembers the frazzled, jumpy, weepy, weary and defeated human being I became during the months of Jean’s reign will remember it. And her -- all too well, maybe.

I won’t go into the darn-near infinite variety of ways Jean found to torment people and make life miserable for everyone around her, except for this one thing. In her US government office, she hung a sign on the wall: “Arbitrary and capricious are the best management practices.”

It was supposed to be a joke, I guess. But every minute of every day, she honed her skills in arbitrary and capricious. And yes, she eventually was recalled, in a manner of speaking. She decided to “return to the private sector” because she “wanted to spend more time with her family.”

You bet.

Jean’s specialty lay in barking totally non-sensical orders and issuing humiliating demands that had no rational purpose. Why would someone do something like that? I guess it must have felt good to be able to demand any damn thing that occurred to her. To have that kind of control and power over people must do wonderful things for a fragile ego.

With every passing day, the Community Organizer seems to be getting more and more like Jean.

The interesting thing is, feisty little Israel isn’t putting up with it.

Finally, finally, we’ve got a Prime Minister who’s not only fully capable of saying, “Thank you, Mr. President, we appreciate your advice, but we’ll handle these matters as we see fit.” But Bibi goes beyond. When the Community Organizer still doesn’t get it, and issues yet more orders to our government, Bibi blithely dismisses it all as irrelevant and counterproductive.

Amazing. Under Bibi – so far – Israel is no longer is playing the role of a tattered rug, just waiting for the world to wipe its collective feet.

It’s about time. It’s been a very long time since I lived in a country where I respected the elected leadership – not since the Reagan days, come to think of it. But Bibi is making me proud every time he opens his mouth.

So what happened recently?

The Community Organizer informed Israel he wants all construction halted in Judea and Samaria. To make it perfectly clear, the State Department dupe ordered to convey the message said “the President doesn’t want to see a single cement mixer in the territories.(sic)“

(In the first place, it’s called ‘concrete’, not ‘cement’. And in the second place, Judea and Samaria are called “Israel”, not “the territories”. Whatever. The message was understood.)

Bibi’s first response was to say something to the effect that Israel will continue to allow Jewish families to build in existing Jewish communities.

Did the Community Organizer take a hint and back off? No. He’s not used to being disobeyed. He’s the ruler of the world, after all – heck -- megalomaniac that he is, he probably thinks he controls the heavens, too.

So through his designated pit bull, Missus Bubba, the Community Organizer upped the ante. Missus Bubba announced not only that there would be no construction allowed in Judea and Samaria, but also none in Jerusalem.

What??

The areas of Jerusalem that are causing the Community Organizer to froth at the mouth are home to 250,000 people. Just one of them – Modi’in – is the size of Annapolis, Maryland, just to give you some idea of what kind of “communities” we’re talking about.

The Community Organizer also thinks that with his dictate, he can wipe out forty years of recorded history.

In 1967, after the Arabs attacked and Israel summarily beat them back in a conflict known as the Six Day War, the entire city of Jerusalem was restored – after 3000 years – to Jewish sovereignty. This part of Jerusalem was officially -- and legally -- annexed to the city 30 years ago.

Now, the Community Organizer issues his fiat: This part of the world must be Judenrein. Not a single Jew will be allowed to live in this part of Jerusalem.

Now honestly, my fellow Americans. Is this what you want? Are you proud of this guy? Does he speak for you?

It blows my mind. For the Acorn-elected President of the US – which for 200+ years was a bastion of freedom, of tolerance, of respect for all religions – to now try to force a foreign country to expel its Jews is sounding an awful lot like another dictator many of us remember all too well.

The fact that a US President is ordering a Jewish country to expel its Jews is even more astonishing. Now we’re wading into totally bizarre behavior.

But Bibi took the high road. He simply dismissed the Community Organizers demands as a waste of time. "I think that the more we spend time arguing about this, the more we waste time instead of moving towards peace," Bibi said, adding that Jerusalem would remain the undivided capital of the Jewish nation forever.

Maybe he harbored an impish grin when he added, "So a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes the Jewish State of Israel I think is the winning formula of peace. I cannot understand why anybody who wants peace should reject it."

HA! Good one -- the operative words are, of course, “anyone who wants peace.” The problem is, the Arabs don’t want peace with Israel. They want Israel.

Too bad I didn’t have Bibi as a role model back in the days when Jean was issuing idiotic orders right and left.

I should have done what Bibi did – tell her that she’s wasting time, and then walk away.

1 comment:

  1. I didn't get a chance to respond to the Dry Bones cartoon you posted earlier, but there are so many things wrong with this scenario its daunting just to list them. It was probably for lack of space that you omitted the call for "confidence building measures" by Israel, which is just another ridiculous and redundant demand.
    Overwhelmed just in trying to comment point blank, I'll relate another story:
    Growing up at home we had a little black mutt. When the family sat down to eat supper every evening the mutt would have its bowl filled and set next to my mother. But it refused to eat from its bowl. It wanted what we were having. My mother would give in and offer morsels from her own plate. But the mutt wasn't satisfied with that either! She insisted on being fed the very same pieces that my mother had put into her own mouth. Gross!
    Some people, and dogs it seems, will never be satisfied with what you offer them. They insist on having exactly what you have.

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