Hillary insults Canada over abortion

If the biggest story of March is health care reform, the second biggest is how the Obama Administration has taken a wrecking ball to diplomatic relations with our allies. Yesterday, Hillary Clinton knocked Canada by demanding that they invite several other countries and "indigenous peoples" to a conference of Arctic nations. This is despite the fact that Canada was hosting the conference. It's also despite the fact that Canadian troops are fighting and dying in our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Today she took the snub to a whole new level.

At issue is the decision by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who is promoting better maternal mortality as its signature initiative at the upcoming G8 summit Canada is hosting in June.

Harper was initially reluctant to include contraception in the centerpiece plan Canada is advocating, but he has ruled out including abortion.

That met with opposition from Clinton, a longtime abortion advocate and the top international official in the administration of pro-abortion President Barack Obama.

"You cannot have maternal health without reproductive health," Clinton said at a Tuesday news conference. "And reproductive health includes contraception and family planning and access to legal, safe abortion."

The Toronto Star described the incident as "a grenade in the lap of her shell-shocked Canadian hosts." It's certainly rare for America to be more progressive on the abortion issue than other western powers. For an American secretary of state to lecture other nations on the need to provide abortions is almost unheard of. It's also diplomatically insulting. Harper may very well agree with Clinton; under his leadership in 2005, Canadian Conservatives dropped opposition to abortion from their party platform. He's likely putting abortion off-limits so as to not offend the sensibilities of others, something Hillary Clinton apparently doesn't understand.

Notice that Clinton said that abortion should be "legal" and "safe". Bill Clinton famously said that abortion in America should be "safe, legal, and rare." His wife tellingly left out the "rare" part. Then again this is the same Hillary Clinton who gave a speech commemorating the founding of the UN Population Fund, which has been accused of aiding and abetting forced abortions in China.

The Obama Administration has already outraged Britain and Israel this month. Looks like we can add Canada to the list too.

House condemns Obama on Israel

Last week, Barack Obama kicked American-Israeli relations to their lowest point in decades by abandoning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House. An Israeli aide later said Netayahu had been treated in a way usually reserved for the president of Equatorial Guinea. Obama's actions were so offensive that a heavy majority in the House of Representatives condemned the president over the weekend.

Meanwhile, in Washington, 337 congressmen – three-quarters of the House of Representatives – signed a bipartisan letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressing solid support for Israel and the expectation that differences between Jerusalem and Washington will be smoothed over quickly and in private.

“We are writing to reaffirm our commitment to the unbreakable bond that exists between our country and the State of Israel and to express to you our deep concern over recent tension,” the letter read. “A strong Israel is an asset to the national security of the United States and brings stability to the Middle East.

“We are concerned that the highly publicized tensions in the relationship will not advance the interests the US and Israel share. Above all, we must remain focused on the threat posed by the Iranian nuclear weapons program to Middle East peace and stability.”

The letter stated that the US’s unswerving commitment to Israel’s security has been essential in forging previous Israeli-Arab peace agreements, “both because it convinced those who sought Israel’s destruction to abandon any such hope and because it gave successive Israeli governments the confidence to take calculated risks for peace.”

"Deep concern" is fighting words in Capitol Hill's hyper-polite culture. Condemnation of his policy on Israel might be Obama's first, real, bipartisan achievement. The highest signatories were House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor. Blue Dog Democrats also signed en masse.

All this led to some spectacular backtracking by David Axelrod. The president's advisor had previously called Netanyahu's decision to build apartments in East Jerusalem "destructive" to peace and "an insult." Yesterday on CNN, he moderated his rhetoric, insisting that there had been "no snub intended" by the United States and that Israel is a "close, dear and valued friend of the United States, a great ally, and that is an unshakeable bond." All this should serve as a message to moderate Democrat congressmen: If you band together and stand firm, the president will be forced to listen.

Meanwhile, Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, has kept his lips sealed. He can't be happy about the administration's snub though. Emanuel is a former civilian volunteer with the Israeli Defense Forces and has strong connections to Israel. He's also a close friend of Axelrod's, with whom he's likely spoken since Netanyahu's visit.

Clash between two of Obama's czars

One of the downsides about appointing unelected and unaccountable officials is there's usually no one to reign them in. As Obama's treatment of Israel creates tremors throughout his administration, Central Region Czar Dennis Ross and Mideast Peace Czar George Mitchell are having at it.

Sources say within the inter-agency process, White House Middle East strategist Dennis Ross is staking out a position that Washington needs to be sensitive to Netanyahu’s domestic political constraints including over the issue of building in East Jerusalem in order to not raise new Arab demands, while other officials including some aligned with Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell are arguing Washington needs to hold firm in pressing Netanyahu for written commitments to avoid provocations that imperil Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and to preserve the Obama administration's credibility.

Ross is perhaps Obama's sanest czar. A product of the president's "team of rivals" thinking at the beginning of his term, Ross fervently supported the Iraq War and worked as a Fox News contributor. Mitchell is a former Democratic Senate Majority Leader and is widely respected throughout the Middle East. Nevertheless, his comment about staying tough on Israel so Obama doesn't lose "credibility" is very telling. In other words, the president has hurt feelings because Netanyahu announced the apartments' construction in East Jerusalem while Biden was in the country. But it's difficult to see how snubbing the leader of one of America's strongest allies in the White House boosts their credibility.

Either way, Ross will now have to be destroyed by the more radical elements of the Obama Administration. An unnamed official is leading the charge.

“He [Ross] seems to be far more sensitive to Netanyahu's coalition politics than to U.S. interests,” one U.S. official told POLITICO Saturday. “And he doesn't seem to understand that this has become bigger than Jerusalem but is rather about the credibility of this Administration."

So American-Israeli relations are in shambles, the president doesn't care, and the one czar who expresses concern is practically accused of treason.

Relations with America's two strongest allies in shambles

Barack Obama campaigned for president promising to "restore our standing in the world" after eight years of the war on terrorism under George W. Bush. Two years later, the fighting is still raging in Iraq and Afghanistan. But worst of all, Obama has continually snubbed Britain and Israel, our strongest allies in the world. Last week, Joe Biden scolded the Israeli government after they announced the construction of apartments in a contested area of East Jerusalem while he was there. Today Obama made the situation much worse.

For a head of government to visit the White House and not pose for photographers is rare. For a key ally to be left to his own devices while the President withdraws to have dinner in private was, until this week, unheard of. Yet that is how Benjamin Netanyahu was treated by President Obama on Tuesday night, according to Israeli reports on a trip viewed in Jerusalem as a humiliation.

After failing to extract a written promise of concessions on settlements, Obama walked out of his meeting with Netanyahu but invited him to stay at the White House, consult with advisers and “let me know if there is anything new”, a U.S. congressman, who spoke to the Prime Minister, said.

“It was awful,” the congressman said. One Israeli newspaper called the meeting “a hazing in stages”, poisoned by such mistrust that the Israeli delegation eventually left rather than risk being eavesdropped on a White House telephone line. Another said that the Prime Minister had received “the treatment reserved for the President of Equatorial Guinea”.

In the ultra-sensitive world of diplomatic relations, this is an absolute cataclysm. It will affect American-Israeli relations for a long time. Prior to Obama's presidency, Israel and America viewed themselves as natural partners in a fight against a common enemy. George W. Bush supported a Palestinian state and occasionally clashed with the Israelis, but never so arrogantly as this.

It also sheds some light onto why Rahm Emanuel has been dropping lines he might leave the administration. Rahm fought for the Israeli army and is widely known to be a firm supporter of Israel. He must be hopping mad over Obama's deplorable treatment of Israeli diplomats.

America's other closest ally is Great Britain, a country for which Obama has shown disdain from day one. The president insulted the British Prime Minister by giving him a collection of American DVDs, sent back a bust of Winston Churchill in the Oval Office, and sent Hillary Clinton to Argentina to support diplomacy over the Falkland Islands, among many other offenses. The Brits are atwitter over their "special relationship" with America being over.

Obama is a product of the same radical thinking that haunted the 1960s and produced men like Bill Ayers. Through this lens, western white nations like American and the U.K. are the true practitioners of evil in the world. True virtue lies in third-world peoples of color. This is why Obama gave a speech in Cairo sucking up to the Muslim world. It's why he stood alone among western nations in supporting a Marxist coup in Honduras. If this thinking persists, it could harm our diplomacy for a long time.

Biden honors death of Irish PM's mother who's still alive

Saints preserve us.

Vice President Biden added to his lengthy list of gaffes Wednesday when he took a moment to honor the memory of the Irish prime minister's mother -- a woman who's very much alive.

"God rest her soul," Biden said as he introduced Brian Cowen and President Obama at a St. Patrick's Day celebration at the White House Wednesday.

The vice president was quick to correct the mistake, noting that it's Cowen's father who is no longer living.

"Wait ... your mom’s still, your mom is still alive. It was your Dad (who) passed. God bless her soul. I gotta get this straight," Biden said.

As we've documented repeatedly, the British already feel slighted by the Obama Administration. Biden's gaffe isn't likely to help improve relations. Biden was last seen outraging the Israelis by condemning their decision to build settlements on their own land in East Jerusalem.

Biden makes things worse in Israel

Joe Biden just finished off a diplomatic trip to Israel that almost destroyed America's goodwill there.

U.S.-Israeli relations have hit a 35-year low over a contentious east Jerusalem building project that threatens to derail peacemaking efforts with the Palestinians, Israel's envoy to Washington was quoted as saying Monday.

Ambassador Michael Oren's remarks clashed with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's assurances that the political turmoil resulting from the settlement announcement, which the Obama administration slammed as "an insult," was under control.

"Israel's ties with the United States are in their worst crisis since 1975 ... a crisis of historic proportions," the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper quoted Oren as saying to Israeli diplomats in a phone briefing over the weekend.

The row started when the Israelis announced plans to build 1,600 new apartments in East Jerusalem, an area contested by Palestinians who consider it religiously sacred. Biden was in Israel when the announcement was made and immediately condemned the decision. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized for the timing but pledged that the plan for the apartments would proceed as planned. Privately, it seems, many Israelis were outraged by Biden's meddling.

Obama came in to office with ambitious plans for the Middle East and wanted to usher in a new age of peace. Instead only a year into office, he's completely botched the most important diplomatic initiative anywhere in the world. Obama's approval rating in Israel currently stands at 7% and will likely only fall after this.

Biden snubs Britain

Today Joe Biden made a serious diplomatic gaffe trying to atone for an earlier diplomatic gaffe.

Biden appears to be trying to calm a diplomatic row that erupted during his visit over Israeli settlement plans for disputed east Jerusalem.

The vice president told the audience at Tel Aviv University on Thursday the U.S. has "no better friend" than Israel. He also spoke about his long connection to Israel.

Biden had previously suggested that Israel should halt the construction of settlements in East Jerusalem, which were impeding the peace process. But in calling Israel America's best friend, Biden has made a more devastating diplomatic error. Traditionally, America has always referred to Great Britain as its greatest ally. In his address following the September 11 attacks, President George W. Bush declared, "America has no truer friend than Great Britain." At a subsequent meeting with the British prime minister, Bush said, "We've got no better friend in the world than Great Britain. We've got no better person that I like to talk to than Tony Blair."

That was then. Lately, many British commentators have speculated that their "special relationship" with America is over.

Thank goodness: Obama appoints another Islamic envoy

BHO's State Department already has its own special envoy to the Islamic world, Farah Pandith. But that didn't stop the president from reaching into his radical Justice Department and pulling out another one.

His name is Rashad Hussain. He's a former trial attorney at DOJ (naturally) and, of course, he's a die-hard left-winger. Hussain said in 2004 that terrorism sympathizer, Sami al-Arian, was the victim of "politically motivated persecutions" and was being used to "squash dissent." Actually, Al-Arian had been sentenced to four years in prison for acting as one of the leaders of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group responsible for the murder of more than 100 Israelis. Former attorney general John Ashcroft called the PIJ one of the most dangerous terrorist groups in the world. Al-Arian was also a university professor (yep, we were surprised too) as well as a PIJ terrorist.

So Barack Obama just appointed a terrorist sympathizer to represent America to the Muslim world. Then again, Hussain might fit in well. The group he's assigned to, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, is an alliance of Islamic nations that has declared "Islamophobia" to be the worst form of terrorism. Maybe Hussain can explain that to Khalid Sheik Mohammed. Or the panty bomber.

Obama throws Israel under the bus

Barack Obama has poked yet another American ally in the eye. In 1995, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act, pledging to move the American Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which the Israelis consider to be their capital. President Clinton signed this bill into law, but then established a practice of issuing a "Presidential Determination" every six months, delaying the move for another half-year out of concerns for national security. (The Palestinians consider Jerusalem to be their territory.) Nevertheless, these memos contained an important diplomatic sentence: "My Administration remains committed to beginning the process of moving our embassy to Jerusalem." This practice continued through George W. Bush's two terms up until this past June, when Barack Obama issued the first of his Presidential Determinations. In Obama's version, the sentence about being committed to an American embassy in Jerusalem was omitted.

On December 3rd, 2009, Obama issued his second of these six-month delays, again without the "committing" line, and thereby nullified a law unanimously passed by Congress fourteen years ago.