EVEN THE WAPO IS AGHAST AT OBAMA’S PARTING FUCK-YOU TO ISRAEL: The Obama administration fires a dangerous parting shot. “Israeli officials charged that the abstention represented a vindictive parting shot by Mr. Obama at Mr. Netanyahu, with whom he has feuded more bitterly than he did with most U.S. adversaries.”
Related: Obama’s Anti-Israel Tantrum: The U.N. resolution is a defining act of Obama’s Presidency. “It defines this President’s extraordinary ability to transform matters of public policy into personal pique at adversaries. And it defines the reality of the international left’s implacable opposition to the Israeli state.”
Meanwhile we’re supposed to worry about Trump. Plus: “For Donald Trump, meet your State Department. This is what State’s permanent bureaucrats believe, this is what they want, and Barack Obama delivered it to them.”
And look at the pic of Samantha Power accompanying the Post piece. The failure, and resulting bitterness, of the last eight years are written all over her.
UPDATE: Richard Fernandez on Facebook:
The most instructive thing about Obama’s Security Council abstention is he didn’t have the guts to do it earlier, when he stood to lose something by doing it. Only after he calculated there was nothing more to squeeze from that particular quarter did he run up the Jolly Roger. Had it cost him it would have meant something, even as a gesture.
But even more interesting was his willingness to damage the Democratic party who he’s leaving with political bill, not to mention the fact that the policy his abstention represents makes little sense.
Israel is likely to emerge as a linchpin in the region, after Obama’s power vacuum bomb reduces the nearby countries to waste. If Turkey and Iran fall apart, which is not inconceivable, then Obama will have antagonized the last man standing.
It was bad timing and pointless, like a punch thrown by a fighter lying on the canvas — at the referee. That would leave his legacy a consistently dysfunctional whole: conceived in delusion, executed in incompetence.
Yeah, that’ pretty much covers it. Though “executed in incompetence and spite” would be more accurate still.
MORE: Andrew McCarthy: Barack Obama’s Betrayal of Israel is a Black Day for American Diplomacy. “It is a disgraceful legacy of Barack Obama that his obsession over settlements and antipathy toward Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu — traits he shares with his old radical comrade, Rashid Khalidi — have made the already dim prospects for peace far more remote. . . . Israel did not set out to conquer the disputed territory. The Jewish state took it fair and square when they won the defensive war against enemies that sought Israel’s destruction. Thus the unending pattern that the United States and Western European powers cravenly refuse to address: Islamic factions and nations are free to reserve the right to eradicate Israel, but Israel must pretend the aggression never happened and the continuing threat does not exist.”
Plus: “That, alas, is Obama’s real legacy: There are no good-faith disputes with him; you either agree with him or you are an outlaw.”
And that’s the irony. Trump, who’s about making deals, is cast as the authoritarian. Obama, who demands submission, is not.