Obama v. Netanyahu: If you paid to watch, demand a refund!

And yet some folks still think of Barack Obama as some type of brilliant political tactician, if nothing else.  This cautionary tale of how he tried to outwit, outflank, and outmaneuver Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - and failed miserably, instead alienating all sides  -should serve notice to even the last true believers that this man is not quite as smart as you think he is:

The president entered the White House intent on putting daylight between the United States and the Jewish state. He choose settlements as a wedge issue designed to split Netanyahu from the Israeli public and topple the government, in the process changing the widely understood interpretation of “settlement freeze” from “no expansion outside existing blocs” to “no Jewish construction over the Green Line even in Jerusalem.” Either Netanyahu would halt all construction and lose the Israeli right, the thinking went, or he would put himself on the wrong side of the United States president and lose the Israeli center. Satisfyingly clever.

Of course the administration’s reading of Israeli polling data was flat wrong, and even Israeli opposition chairwoman Tzipi Livni insisted that Jerusalem was a consensus issue. The Israeli public rallied behind Netanyahu, while distrust in Obama and his reliability as an ally — a precondition to Israel taking risks for peace — skyrocketed.

In retrospect, sweet jeebus - what a mismatch.  No promoter would have booked this brawl, had they known they way Barack "Glass Joe" Obama would crumble before blows thrown by China, Russia, and even - sacre bleu! - France ( the geo-political equivalent to getting beat up by a little girl).
Omri Ceren at Commentary dissects this mess and is sickened by the goo:
 
Of course it’s difficult to know from the outside where exactly things went awry, and who was making up which anti-Israel pretexts. The administration’s foreign policy is a hodgepodge of institutionalized ideology and wishful thinking, with various factions all vying for the president’s ear and trying to be unwittingly wrong in their own special way.
 
I don't know, maybe it's that church he went to:
 
....And that’s before we get to the quotidian antipathy that many in the administration harbor toward the Israelis, an antipathy that apparently makes any anti-Israel reasoning — no matter how thin — seem like the height of sophistication...