The War of the Chickenshit

Image via Canadian Thinker.

Danielle Pletka for the American Enterprise Institute:

Let’s get this straight: Bibi et al, who have what most would agree is a legitimate and existential fear of an Iranian nuclear weapon, are “good” because they’re, er “chickenshit” about launching a strike on Iran; oh, and Bibi is also labeled a “coward” for having been “chickenshit” in that regard. But he’s “bad” because he won’t cave to a Palestinian Authority and Hamas so riven by terrorism, corruption and incompetence that they won’t “accommodate” with each other.

No, I don't think you have it straight yet.

1. Jean-Paul Sartre wants his adjective back: what is Prime Minister Netanyahu doing with an "existential fear"?

2. Not sure a what a "legitimate fear" is (hope it's not something like a "legitimate rape") but I think most would agree that being afraid of something that does not exist and shows no sign of ever existing and if it did exist could never be activated is not quite rational, and US and Israeli intelligence officials have long agreed that

1) Iran does not have a nuclear weapon-it only has a civilian nuclear program at this point 
2) Iran is not building a nuclear weapon 
3) Iran has not made the decision of whether or not to build a nuclear weapon in the future

3. It would have been a very bad thing for Prime Minister Netanyahu to launch a serious air attack on Iran and we all have to be grateful he didn't, but it would have been a lot better still if he had not wasted so much time threatening to do it and convincing the Obama administration that he really meant it, setting back US policy in the Middle East for years in the effort to prevent him from doing it (it's hard to estimate how much better the current situation in Iran and Syria would be if the US and Iran had able to work together openly over the past four or five years, but I think it's quite possible that Isis wouldn't exist and Assad would be out of office—to say nothing of the suffering of ordinary Iranians under sanctions that could easily have been avoided). Since it's fear, not rationality, that held him back from making that terrible decision, I'm not praising him for it. I'm praising Obama and Biden for working so hard to stop him, even though, in the end, it probably wasn't necessary, since he was bluffing all along.

4. To call a man a coward and a bully is not to wish he should do the thing he's afraid to do. It's to encourage other people not to be afraid of him. Netanyahu is a coward and a bully: he makes violent threats but carries them out only on the weak, like the citizens of Gaza who have nothing to defend them but stupid Hamas and their stupid, ineffectual rockets.

5. Nor is it right to characterize Prime Minister Netanyahu's rejection of the peace process as a refusal to "cave" to Palestinians (and the fact that the main Palestinian political parties can't agree on a lot of things is relevant how?). He's not being asked to cave, but to negotiate.

He's afraid to negotiate because if any Israeli gets hurt during the negotiating process he'll be blamed for it and his political position will be endangered. That's all he really cares about, as the Goldberg piece effectively noted:

Another manifestation of his chicken-shittedness, in the view of Obama administration officials, is his near-pathological desire for career-preservation. Netanyahu’s government has in recent days gone out of its way to a) let the world know that it will quicken the pace of apartment-building in disputed areas of East Jerusalem; and b) let everyone know of its contempt for the Obama administration and its understanding of the Middle East. Settlement expansion, and the insertion of right-wing Jewish settlers into Arab areas of East Jerusalem, are clear signals by Netanyahu to his political base, in advance of possible elections next year, that he is still with them, despite his rhetorical commitment to a two-state solution. The public criticism of Obama policies is simultaneously heartfelt, and also designed to mobilize the base.

Whereas when Israelis get hurt while he adopts a truculent, bellicose attitude he can say it's not his fault, even though to some extent it obviously is. He was being "tough". Instead of what Rabin called the "peace of the brave" he offers the war of the chickenshit.

Existential Fear Questions. Jonathan McBurney.

Of course, maybe it really is existential fear:

II.  HOW EXISTENTIAL ANXIETY SHOWS ITSELF

     Our anxiety usually hides behind ordinary fears and worries.
And we can detect anxiety by the ways it distorts and exaggerates
what would otherwise be psychological problems we could deal with:

     Whatever reasonable fears and worries we might have
can be exaggerated by our existential anxiety.
Whenever we are terrified beyond what is explained by actual dangers,
we might be projecting our angst onto external threats.

     Our existential anxiety can also create phantom fears:
Are we pursued in the dark by impossible monsters?
Or do we have dreams of horror, danger, menace, threat?
Even in our waking hours, we might sometimes dream up
unlikely dangers to explain our anxiety to ourselves.

     Our existential anxiety might also appear as fear of the future.
Perhaps we do not focus on any particular danger in the future,
but the very openness of the future might feel threatening.

James Park, University of Minnesota

Robert Farley at LGM reminds us how Goldberg was telling us back in 2010 how totally tough determined Netanyahu was to strike Iran in those days. Hahaha. I wasn't blogging back then, but I did manage to disbelieve reports in March 2012 about how Netanyahu's brilliant diplomacy was going to trick Obama into doing the bombing instead.