Netanyahu and Congress

I feel about Netanyahu's speech to Congress more or less the way I feel about Pete Carroll's decision to throw the ball: I think it's a dumb decision but I think it's being overrated.

Granted it's foolish to go behind Obama's back, at least without a heads up.   But is it really that unprecedented for foreign leaders to appeal directly to Congress?   All sorts of people have done this and everyone knows that they're trying to put pressure on the President by doing so.

I'm also concerned about the implicit stereotypes in Netanyahu's portrayal.   He pushed to the head of the line in Paris.   He's rude to Obama.   You don't have to be paranoid to see a certain cultural archetype being presented there, or in the whole "good Israeli/bad Israeli" way in which the country's politicians are depicted.

I don't like Netanyahu because I think he's an ineffective leader.   But any Israeli prime minister would be frustrated with a dysfunctional American political system and the weak, quasi-isolationist foreign policy that goes with it.   I don't think he's really disrespecting Obama any more than Putin, the Chinese leadership, or for that matter our European allies.    If the US continues to vacillate between periods of excessive intervention and periods of retrenchment, driven by domestic politics rather than foreign realities, it is going to lose people's respect and they are going to act accordingly.  Israel is just one example.