Marco Rubio: on Israel, he is not right for America ... by gimleteye

My connections to Israel run deep, and Marco Rubio will never get my vote on foreign policy. I lost my grandparents at Auschwitz. My father survived Nazi work camps in World War II. After the war, he worked for two years relocating Jewish refugees to Palestine before emigrating, himself, to the United States and working through college to eventually achieve the American Dream that Marco Rubio, among other candidates, invokes in his own story.

For the New York Times, opinion page editor Andrew Rosenthal recently blogged about Rubio and Israel, in a way that resonates for me. At Eye On Miami we've followed Rubio's improbable rise through the Florida legislature, helping to shepherd anti-environmental and anti-citizen legislation that few news outlets have followed.

The politics in Israel are even more fractious than in the United States. The pro-Israel far right, represented by AIPAC and billionaire donors like Sheldon Adelson, is still organized by the same war hawks who dominated the George W. Bush White House. They wrote off Barack Obama in 2008 and Hillary Clinton even earlier. The pro-Israel far right want a president who stands toe-to-toe with Israel on threats to international security -- which every candidate for president whether Republican or Democrat has pledged to do -- but that's not all. They want a president who promises to see the world through Israel's eyes and will not freelance on issues of nuance. The pro-Israel far right want another George W. Bush in other words --, and that someone on the Republican side increasingly looks like Marco Rubio.

Rosenthal: "... what’s really wrong with Mr. Rubio’s commercial, and his candidacy, is that he offers not the slightest idea of what he would do as president to combat terrorism — other than to further undermine Americans’ civil liberties under the guise of counter-terrorism and to turn away legitimate refugees because they happen to be Middle Eastern Muslims."

In recent weeks, investigative journalists have started scrutinizing Rubio's raw ambition, reflected through his very first action after his single victory to the US Senate from Florida. The next day Rubio flew on Norman Braman's private jet to Israel. Rubio, in other words, put his marker down with the far right in Israel as soon as he was elected to the US Senate by Floridians. It made the impression he wanted to make.

Here is what Rosenthal wrote for the Times:

Marco Rubio’s Empty Rhetoric on Terrorism
By ANDREW ROSENTHAL NOVEMBER 23, 2015 1:17 PM November 23, 2015 1:17 pm 81 Comments

At first glance, Marco Rubio’s first television ad as a presidential candidate seems unassailable. He says the world is facing a “civilizational struggle between the values of freedom and liberty, and radical Islamic terror.”

“What happened in Paris could happen here,” Mr. Rubio says, looking slightly less bewildered than usual. The Florida senator goes on to say:
“These aren’t disgruntled or disempowered people. These are radical terrorists who want to kill us.”

So far, so good.

Then he said that “they” want to kill us “because we let women drive, because we let girls go to school.”

While it’s true that radical Islam rejects women’s rights, Mr. Rubio’s analysis is just as shallow as the argument that European nations’ colonialism or more recent acts of American stupidity, committed primarily by President George W. Bush, excuse acts of sociopathic mass murder.

But what’s really wrong with Mr. Rubio’s commercial, and his candidacy, is that he offers not the slightest idea of what he would do as president to combat terrorism — other than to further undermine Americans’ civil liberties under the guise of counter-terrorism and to turn away legitimate refugees because they happen to be Middle Eastern Muslims.

Mr. Rubio talks about the assault on “Western values” by Muslim terrorist groups, but he supports proposals to freeze the entry of some 10,000 U.N.-designated refugees from the Middle East, based on a series of lies he and other Republicans like to tell about President Obama’s refugee policy.

“The president and Hillary Clinton are completely out of touch with reality,” he said on Fox News last Thursday. “What needs to happen here is you can’t let people in unless they complete a background check.”

Sounds good, except that the refugees in question have completed background checks and will have to complete many more before they set foot on American soil.

Richard Clarke, a counter-terrorism adviser to President George W. Bush, pointed out on ABC News last week that refugees must go through a long process to enter this country. “If there’s any doubt at all, they’re not allowed in,” he said. “It takes 18 months, 24 months, while these people sit in wretched refugee camps in Turkey, in Jordan, in Lebanon and if there’s any doubt, they’re not allowed in. Marco Rubio doesn’t know what the process is. There is a process, and it’s worked.”

Mr. Rubio also seems confused about the right way to discuss things like terrorism and national security in a presidential campaign. On Fox News on Sunday, Chris Wallace rather hilariously asked Mr. Rubio if he thought his “foreign policy credentials” (which are nonexistent) were giving him a “boost with voters” after the terror attacks in Paris and other places.

“I obviously am not happy about the events,” he said, to everyone’s great relief, “but I think it’s a positive development that it suddenly has forced Americans to confront more carefully the issue of national security.”

Mr. Rubio said: “I hope that we focus on that more, not just for political advantage, but because the world has become a very dangerous place.”

Maybe Mr. Rubio can start with himself. Instead of just seeking political advantage after the horrors in Sinai, Lebanon, Paris, Mali and elsewhere, perhaps he could come up with something useful to tell voters about why they should entrust him with the job of president.