[COMMENTARYMAGAZINE] After State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf dismissed Henry Kissinger and George Shultz's critique of the Iran framework deal as "a lot of big words and big thoughts," David Brooks responded by asking, "Are we in nursery school?" The evidence for answering that question in the affirmative continued to mount yesterday. Following on last month's Twitter trolling of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (broadly criticized as mortifyingly undignified), the B.O. regime did it again, proving once again the administration's embarrassing immaturity and the fact that it is Obama who is keeping the public feud with Israel alive.This time the White House tweeted out a picture that was expressly intended to mock Netanyahu's famous bomb diagram at the UN in September 2012. At that time, Netanyahu used the picture to illustrate Iran's progress toward a nuclear weapon. The cartoon bomb appeared to backfire because it looked like something out of a Warner Bros. cartoon, no doubt leading the White House to hope an Acme anvil would drop out of the sky and onto the podium at that moment. But the illustration did at least draw attention to Netanyahu's message, and succeeded in driving the conversation in the media.
The “facts” in the diagram are mostly spin, though I don’t think anyone expects anything accurate out of the Obama administration’s press shop. The point of the diagram–the only point, since the picture isn’t actually informative and the president could have put out this information any number of ways–was to mock the Israeli prime minister on Twitter for something that happened in 2012.
Obama is essentially George Castanza finally coming up with what he believes is a great, though hilariously delayed, response to an earlier insult. Obama’s message to Bibi is: “The jerk store called, they’re running out of you!”
On a more serious note–though at this part we’ll surely lose the president and his spokespersons–does the Obama administration consider how this looks to the world? I doubt it. For example, the Russians just loved it–not because it was funny, but because the Kremlin-directed media expressed what appears to be Vladimir Putin’s uncontainable glee at watching the supposed leader of the free world (or at least Stephen Harper’s deputy leader of the free world, at this point) throw food at the Israeli prime minister in public.
If you’re an American adversary, you don’t even really have to do anything at this point. You can just sit and watch the Obama administration melt down under the weight of its own childish ignorance.