‘I cannot bear Netanyahu. He’s a liar,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy told President Obama last week. Obama seemed to agree, saying,“You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him even more often than you.”
Welcome to the High School of Catty Leaders, where the barbs at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu count as first-rate global gossip — and so much more.
For one thing, the exchange, inadvertently heard by reporters at the G-20 summit, stayed secret for several days because the reporters agreed it should.
How’s that for brave and independent journalism? Quislings with press passes is more like it.
Yet the most remarkable thing about the comments is the timing. With the growing sense that Iran is close to a “breakout” moment with its nuclear-weapons program, and that Israel may be planning a military strike to stop it, Sarkozy and Obama showed themselves to be small-minded and petty instead of focused on the world’s most important security issue.
God forbid they should have been caught saying they understand why Israel can’t let Iran get the bomb. Or that they were determined to make a strike unnecessary by keeping their promises to block an Iranian nuke. Or even that they worried about a nuclear arms race, with Saudi Arabia already saying it would get an arsenal if Iran does.
But then Obama and Sarkozy would have to be different people. You know, leaders from the front.
Instead we get a glimpse behind the imperial curtain and, like spotting the Wizard in “The Wizard of Oz,” we see there is no there there. Just two cowardly adults behaving like trash-talking teenagers.
There is no sin in what Obama and Sarkozy said. The sin lies in what they have failed to do.
Their responsibility requires them to secure regional and world peace. Both have talked a good game, but have stood by while the mad mullahs slaughtered their own people and prepared to start a nuclear winter.
Even the United Nations, which perpetuated the fiction that there was a shred of doubt of Iran’s intentions, concluded in a report yesterday that Iran’s actions make sense only in the context of trying to build weapons of mass destruction.
That would be worry enough, but Iranian leaders have made it perfectly clear they intend actually to use the bomb. They have talked for years about wiping Israel off the map.
One called the tiny Jewish state a “one-bomb country,” and another said that, if Iran is attacked, the “Iranian military will fight with the Zionist soldiers in Tel Aviv streets” and will use “maximum might and power all throughout the European and US soil.”
Given those comments and so many others, it is obvious the real danger is that Iran is telling the truth about igniting a world war. Its financing of terror groups Hezbollah and Hamas prove its bloody intent.
The reach extends to American soil, as the Justice Department said last month in charging Iranian agents with plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington. Then, Obama promised Iran would “pay a price” for the brazen plan, but nary a word has been heard since, and certainly there have been no consequences.
Iran continues to help kill our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, without punishment. Indeed, Obama is preparing to withdraw our troops in a fashion that many Mideast analysts believe will be tantamount to handing Iraq to Iran on a platter.
Perhaps Netanyahu is a liar. So what? Obama and Sarkozy are appeasers to evil. Who would you trust more with your life?
Quinn’s true colors
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn hopes to become mayor by persuading New York business leaders she is the most business-friendly Democrat in a field of tax-happy union toadies. But her comments about a Manhattan housing dispute ought to send shivers through the real-estate crowd and anybody else who values private-property rights.
The issue is a rent-law provision that lets owners evict tenants if they want to use the space for themselves or their families. That’s exactly what the owner of a West 16th Street building aims to do with its five apartments.
It’s not incidental that the current tenants reportedly pay no more than $300 a month — a fraction of the market rate. Or that Quinn wants the owner to back off.
“We’re going to do everything we can to make sure Chelsea stays economically diverse,” she told a reporter, adding that the owner “has made a decision to put his own personal desires ahead of five families.”
There is another way to see the same facts: The tenants want to do an end-run around the law so they can hold on to another man’s property at a cheap rate. In effect, they want to confiscate the owner’s property.
And the “business-friendly” Quinn wants to help them.
Cain’s ‘time’ bomb
Polls showing that Herman Cain hasn’t lost much support over allegations of sexual harassment remind me of the story of the man who jumps off a 40-story building. As he passes the 20th floor on the way down, he’s heard saying, “So far, so good.”
Be patient. It takes time, as much as two weeks, for most events to work their way through the political bloodstream. Ordinary voters don’t pay rapt attention to the daily drip of campaign drama the way pros and pundits do.
Eventually, voters do get up to speed, put the issue in context and render a verdict. My guess is that the disturbing and detailed account by Cain’s fourth female accuser, Sharon Bialek, will prove pivotal in that process.
And that as a result, Herman Cain, despite his denials, is about to hit bottom.
He who would be king
Reader Joe Boms of Brooklyn thinks I’m not cynical enough about the man he calls “Emperor Bloomberg.”
Boms writes, “You think his view of himself as a generous liberal, ecumenical and compassionate, is what shapes his policies. I think the explanation is much more prosaic. Bloomberg still hallucinates about being president.”
I would only add that the mayor was in Washington yesterday to give a speech to a liberal group about how to solve America’s financial and jobs problems. Doesn’t every mayor do that?
This bears scrutiny
The answer to one mystery creates another. A scary report that a severed child’s foot was found on a Queens lawn was wrong: The “foot” turned out be a bear’s claw.
Whew. But wait–what’s a severed bear claw doing in Queens?
Read it & sleep
So Bill Clinton wrote a 196-page book, in which he argues that presidents should be able to serve three terms. Since that was probably the main reason he wrote the book, he should have just said that and skipped the other 195 pages.