This writer finally registered at the New Haven Register website, to leave a comment on Bill O’Reilly’s Op-Ed piece Benjamin Netanyahu the antithesis of Barack Obama, published March 7, 2015. Here is the gist of my comment: This piece on Netanyahu is actually one of the best things Bill O’Reilly has written in a long time, even though it is still demagogic in several places. Merriam-Webster.com defines demagogue as: “a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power.”
There are numerous problems with O’Reilly’s analysis. Let’s start with the fact that President Obama has not refused to tell the public what he wants or is thinking over Iran. It is not wise to print such falsehoods, and it is sad that people get away with it, unchallenged by the press. The New Haven Register will lose discerning customers by supporting such ideologically biased and unscrupulous writers.
O’Reilly also wrote, “Iran is led by some of the world’s most dangerous villains.” He makes such grandiose statements without supporting them. It has recently been written in the New York Times that it is the troops of Iran, with US air support, that are enabling the Iraqi Army to push back ISIS. There is an old saying, that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Back in the 1950’s, the US helped overthrow a democratically elected leader in Iran to put the Shah in power, just to give one example of greater complexity regarding villainy. From Wikipedia, “In 1951 Mohammad Mosaddegh was elected prime minister. He became enormously popular in Iran after he nationalized Iran’s petroleum industry and oil reserves. He was deposed in the 1953 Iranian coup d’état, an Anglo-American covert operation that marked the first time the US had overthrown a foreign government during the Cold War.[92] After the coup, the Shah became increasingly autocratic and Sultanistic. Arbitrary arrests and torture by his secret police, SAVAK, were used to crush all forms of political opposition.” American exceptional interest in oil apparently was greater than our exceptional interest in democratic procedures in Iran.
Today, a nuclear pact with Iran to keep it from making a nuclear bomb, would make the region safer, because a war with Iran over such issues would guarantee that they develop nuclear weapons, and then so would the rest of the neighborhood want and develop nuclear weapons. Then there could be hell to pay. A nuclear arms race in the middle east would make the United States and the world less secure. It is absurd to suggest that Obama has been hiding such thinking. There have been numerous speeches, statements and articles.
O’Reilly rants and raves at President Obama, while ignoring that Netanyahu is building illegal settlements on Palestinian lands, making peace with the Palestinians impossible, and galvanizing the Arab world, helping ISIS recruit, and hurting US interests. These missing points are examples of how O’Reilly simplifies complicated issues, reducing them to a series of chest beatings, and unsupported claims. He leaves out critical parts of the puzzle.
O’Reilly scores points when he criticizes Netanyahu, and Senator Mitch McConnell, but doesn’t mention that Netanyahu and the Republican congress insulted President Obama and the American people by presenting Netanyahu to address congress to speak against our own President, and our country’s foreign policy, without notifying the State Department or requesting permission, which protocol demanded. It is the President’s right by the constitution to run U.S. foreign policy.
It is a pity that the New Haven Register supports the rants of such ideologues as Bill O’Reilly. The Register should be helping their readers discern fact from fiction. It is confusing as to why they support or even put up with the demagoguery displayed in this latest O’Reilly op-ed.
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