Ari Flesicher, former Bush aide and current Bush sycophant, board member of Freedom’s watch, McCain supporter, and all-around scumbag was on Larry King Live last night, prattling on endlessly about… instincts. Got it? The guy who help prop up George Bush for all these years is now worried about Obama’s instincts. At any rate, at a debate a year and a half ago, apparently Obama did not immediately list Israel as an ally, and thus, he has bad instincts. I am serious:
ROSEN: Well, it’s — Ari said something before that must not go unanswered when he said that Barack Obama cannot be trusted to be a friend to Israel. I was in Florida last week, and that is the underground campaign that Republicans are trying to use against Barack Obama. They’re subtly trying to affect the Jewish vote, not so subtly affect the Jewish vote by saying he’s not going to be a friend to Israel, and that is just not true. The United States has always been a friend to Israel.
FLEISCHER: Then why didn’t he identify Israel as one of our three friends?
ROSEN: Barack Obama has committed over and over again that protecting Israel is a top priority for him, and these kinds of smear tactics and rhetorical nonsense…
FLEISCHER: I’m just quoting him from the first debate.
ROSEN: … that’s just trying to address people out of fear, and that doesn’t help American Jews and it doesn’t help Israeli Jews.
FLEISCHER: Hilary, it’s his lack of words. He’s the one who didn’t cite Israel…
ROSEN: You’re wrong, Ari.
FLEISCHER: … when asked.
ROSEN: You’re taking words out of context from two years ago.
FLEISCHER: No, it was a question from Brian Williams at the first debate.
ROSEN: And you’re not listening to everything he has said over the past year and a half. Directly in support of (INAUDIBLE).
KING: Well, all right, let’s ask you simply. Ari, do you think he’s opposed to Israel?
FLEISCHER: No, but I really do worry about his instincts when it comes to Israel. I think that Barack Obama wants so badly to be an accommodationist in the center when it comes to foreign policy.
I do so much love the Jew-baiting every four years. Later, Fleischer tries to spuin this to make Obama look not only anti-Israel, but stupid:
L. KING: Which of the three that he mentioned would you eliminate?
FLEISCHER: I think what I would have said is Great Britain, Israel and Japan. And I don’t think…
L. KING: You would eliminate NATO?
FLEISCHER: NATO’s not a country. He was asked which three countries.
Did he, Ari? To the tape:
Williams: Senator Obama, what are America’s three most important allies around the world?
Obama: Well, I think the European Union as a whole has been a long-standing ally of ours, and through NATO we’ve been able to make some significant progress. Afghanistan, in particular, is an area where we should be focusing. NATO has made real contributions there.
Unfortunately, because of the distraction of Iraq, we have not finished the job in terms of making certain that we are driving back the Taliban, stabilizing the Karzai government, capturing bin Laden and making sure that we’ve rooted out terrorism in that region.
We also have to look east, because increasingly, the center of gravity in this world is shifting to Asia. Japan has been an outstanding ally of ours for many years.
But, obviously, China is rising and it’s not going away.
They’re neither our enemy nor our friend. They’re competitors. But we have to make sure that we have enough military-to-military contact, and forge enough of a relationship with them that we can stabilize the region.
That’s something I’d like to do as president.
Why is Ari Fleischer not in jail or, at the very least, banned from television?
Mr Furious
Throw whoever booked him on the show in jail with him.
Mr Furious
Fuck it. Throw them ALL in jail for engaging him on the air.
Tom
Saw W. over the weekend and Rob Corddry steals every scene he’s in playing Fleischer.
linda
why the hell is stephen hayes collecting paychecks from both msnbc and cnn? he still pimps the saddam-9/11 connection, ferchrissakes; not to mention his highly mocked hagiography of dick cheney.
KXB
We are now reaching the absurdity where not mentioning Israel is considered anti-Israel? That’s flag-pin logic.
Mr Furious
Rob Corddry steals every scene he’s in playing Fleischer.
THAT is some good casting.
Radon Chong
You know who ought to be in jail? That Scott McClellan. For treason.
/wingnut
liberal
@KXB:
Some commentator (can’t recall who) posed a pretty reasonable question recently: in what other country are candidates for high office required to pledge their fealty to a different country?
Ugh
can we just fucking make Israel the 51st state and get it over with?
jesusMoses.steve
wow, such tolerance!
cleek
fuck Israel
there. i said it.
dslak
@cleek: Why do you hate America?
The Grand Panjandrum
It seems to me its kitchen sink time for the Republicans. With a week to go and a party about to be engulfed in a beat down by Democrats they won’t soon forget they have not learned the lessons of the near past. Almost everyone one of these phony arguments have been raised before and I guarantee you the Obama campaign has a counter punch for it.
Here is exhibit #1: The Obama campaign counter punches directly back at McCain’s closing arguments about who is best for the economy AND the who is ready to be CINC. They, as Ambinder puts it, play the Palin Card.
Ari is pathetic, WATB neocon. BTW aren’t Republicans against socialism? Israel is about as socialist, or more so, than many northern European countries. But let us not become confused by the facts.
josephdietrich
Ari Fleischer’s chief skill is lying smoothly with a straight face. Why does anyone take anything he says seriously?
dslak
@The Grand Panjandrum: Can we please stop referring to the president as "Commander-in-Chief." I’m not in the military. Are you?
Jay C
Well, to be (reasonably) fair – just a bit – Sen. Obama didn’t actually answer the "allies" question in the normal manner, i.e. "Countries X, Y and Z" or "Country P, Alliance Q" or whatever.
But for Ari Fleischer to deduce "anti-Israel" sentiments from Obama’s answer is lame douchbaggery even by Fleischer’s lame-douchebag standards.
Whatta putz.
cleter
Every time Ari–or indeed, any former Bush official–says ANYTHING on any of those yap shows, whoever the other guest is should interrupt, and say "look, Ari, you have no credibility whatsoever. Where are the WMDs, Ari? You were spectacularly wrong about the key foreign policy decision of your lifetime. Why should we believe anything you say ever again?"
Actually, you could just shorten this to "Why should we believe anything you say ever again?"
Comrade Rick Massimo
That was Glenn Greenwald, I believe.
As for why these guys are still allowed on TV, it is because they believe that all international problems can be solved by bombing brown people. This makes you Very Serious, and when you are Very Serious you always have something valuable to add to the national conversation, even when everyone in the goddamn country knows exactly what you are about to say before you open your mouth because they heard those RNC talking points from the guy on the last show.
PeakVT
Some commentator (can’t recall who) posed a pretty reasonable question recently: in what other country are candidates for high office required to pledge their fealty to a different country?
It really is bizarre, and hurts both countries. And my wallet.
KXB
"wow, such tolerance!"
Steve – what exactly is intolerant about pointing out that Americans have no obligation to hold a uniform opinion on Israel? Hell, Israelis disagree among themselves to a far greater degree than we seem to allow ourselves in the U.S.
John Cole
It is worth remembering that most of the craziest people about the Israel issue live in NY and Florida.
People who actually live in Israel can not afford to be as absolutist and crazy, because they are not safely tucked away in a condo on the outskirts of Boca Raton or in an apt on the upper east side.
Tom65
Because FOX, CNN, MSNBC and the others have 24 hours of programming to fill, and they can’t put obvious assholes like Mike Savage on all the time.
Brian J
I don’t think being an asshole is grounds for jail time. If it was, we’d see large factions of the Republican party locked up for good. I’m much more interested in hearing about Karl Rove’s involvement in the U.S. Attorney scandal, if any, and sending his fat ass to jail if he did anything wrong.
liberal
@John Cole:
Yes, but given the electoral strength of Likud, ISTM that a big chunk of them are.
Though I agree with KXB that there’s a much greater diversity of opinion about this stuff in Israel itself than in the US.
liberal
@KXB:
Well, it might not be intolerant, but it certainly violates the neocon’s Stalinist mode of operation.
cynic
Ari: watch what you do and what you say …
liberal
@The Grand Panjandrum:
They’re not nearly as socialist as they used to be, but your point still stands.
Speaking of distributing wealth…I assume you saw that Shas decided not to join in a coalition because the handouts weren’t big enough.
cynic
Ari: watch what you do and what you say …
kommrade jakevich
Well you have to do something to distract people from the fact that the ReThugs want to elect a whackjob who thinks nukes falling on the Holy Land is the prelude to Jesus the Sequel.
What’s that you say, Jewish Americans aren’t uniformly pro-Israel, anyway? No, no, no. They are! It’s right here in the big book of ReFucklican Talking Points. Right after "They’re all going to hell but we’ll pretend to be friends in case Jesus comes -" Whoops! Not supposed to read that one to the uninitiated.
@The Grand Panjandrum: And they let women AND teh ghey into their military!!
Notorious P.A.T.
Wow, that’s deep. Way to stupidly go along with the premise of a stupid question, Ari.
I’m serious: how is Israel more important to us than NATO? I want a reason. It doesn’t have to be a good reason, the reason wingnuts have is fine. Myself, I just don’t see the importance.
Jeff
@John Cole: Sorry John, the craziest people about Israel live in Alabama, Mississippi and the rest of the bible belt. They want us Jews to all move there and not give a stitch of land to the Arabs so the Rapture can come.
Comrade javafascist
Shorter Ari:
So Obama likes Israel but does he, you know, like like them? They wanted me to ask ’cause they like like him.
demimondian
And it brought down the government — elections are scheduled for February now.
John, FWIW, I lived in a condo just outside Boca for several years, as you know. My neighbors were *not* crazy about Israel; for the most part, my Jewish neighbors had family there and valued the safety of the place, but certainly didn’t see it as a nation with no flaws and no problems.
I, for one, wish that we’d stop supporting Israel in her insane and destabilizing race to fragment the West Bank. Sadly, the Bush Administration has squandered eight years when we could have been working positively to resolve the on-going crisis there.
liberal
@demimondian:
Funniest thing is that the administration that pushed on Israel the hardest was Bush 41.
Jon
You should post the smack down by Dee Dee Myers, and especially Hillary Rosen, after Fleischer’s inane comments.
LanceThruster
I was shocked when I heard excerpts of Ari’s comment where he said essentially that Sen. Obama would be bad for Israel because he would be "neutral" regarding the I/P conflict. Ari acted as if this was the same as stabbing Israel in the back.
Neutral.
The horror!
MNPundit
I always referred to him as a "Walking Pestilence."
As in: "That walking pestilence, Ari Fleischer."
Also: Lexipro.