The 0% Doctrine: Obama Breaks New Ground When It Comes To War With Iran

By Tom Engelhardt, cross-posted from Tom Dispatch

When I was young, the Philadelphia Bulletin ran cartoon ads that usually featured a man in trouble -- dangling by his fingers, say, from an outdoor clock.  There would always be people all around him, but far too engrossed in the daily paper to notice.  The tagline was: “In Philadelphia, nearly everybody reads the Bulletin.”

Those ads came to mind recently when President Obama commented forcefully on war, American-style, in ways that were remarkably radical.  Although he was trying to ward off a threatened Israeli preemptive air strike against Iran, his comments should have shocked Americans -- but just about nobody noticed.

I don’t mean, of course, that nobody noticed the president’s statements.  Quite the contrary: they were headlined, chewed over in the press and by pundits.  Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich attacked them.  Fox News highlighted their restraint.  (“Obama calls for containing Iran, says ‘too much loose talk of war.’”)  The Huffington Post highlighted the support for Israel they represented. (“Obama Defends Policies Toward Israel, Fends Off Partisan Critiques.”)  Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu pushed back against them in a potentially deadly U.S.-Israeli dance that might bring new chaos to the Middle East.  But somehow, amid all the headlines, commentary, and analysis, few seemed to notice just what had really changed in our world.

The president had offered a new definition of “aggression” against this country and a new war doctrine to go with it.  He would, he insisted, take the U.S. to war not to stop another nation from attacking us or even threatening to do so, but simply to stop it from building a nuclear weapon -- and he would act even if that country were incapable of targeting the United States.  That should have been news.


Consider the most startling of his statements: just before the arrival of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, the president gave a 45-minute Oval Office interview to the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg.  A prominent pro-Israeli writer, Goldberg had produced an article in the September issue of that magazine headlined “The Point of No Return.” In it, based on interviews with "roughly 40 current and past Israeli decision makers about a military strike," he had given an Israeli air attack on Iran a 50% chance of happening by this July.  From the recent interview, here are Obama’s key lines:

“I think that the Israeli government recognizes that, as president of the United States, I don't bluff. I also don't, as a matter of sound policy, go around advertising exactly what our intentions are. But I think both the Iranian and the Israeli governments recognize that when the United States says it is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, we mean what we say.”

Later, he added this chilling note: “I think it's fair to say that the last three years, I've shown myself pretty clearly willing, when I believe it is in the core national interest of the United States, to direct military actions, even when they entail enormous risks.”

The next day, in a speech meant to stop “loose talk about war” in front of a powerful pro-Israeli lobbying outfit, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the president offered an even stronger formula, worth quoting at length.  Speaking of seeing the consequences of his decisions to use force “in the eyes of those I meet who’ve come back gravely wounded,” he said:

“And for this reason, as part of my solemn obligation to the American people, I will only use force when the time and circumstances demand it... We all prefer to resolve this issue diplomatically. Having said that, Iran’s leaders should have no doubt about the resolve of the United States -- just as they should not doubt Israel’s sovereign right to make its own decisions about what is required to meet its security needs. I have said that when it comes to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, I will take no options off the table, and I mean what I say. That includes all elements of American power... and, yes, a military effort to be prepared for any contingency.
“Iran’s leaders should understand that I do not have a policy of containment; I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And as I have made clear time and again during the course of my presidency, I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests.”

An American president couldn’t come closer to saying that, should American intelligence conclude the Iranians were building a nuclear weapon, we would attack. The next day, again addressing an AIPAC audience, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta set the president’s commitment in stone: “No greater threat exists to Israel, to the entire region, and indeed to the United States, than a nuclear-armed Iran... Military action is the last alternative if all else fails, but make no mistake: When all else fails, we will act.”

The Power of Precedents 

To understand what’s truly new here, it’s necessary to back up a few years.  After all, precedent is a powerful thing and these statements do have a single precedent in the atomic age (though not one the president would profess to admire): the Bush administration’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.  After all, one clearly stated reason for the invasion was Saddam Hussein’s supposed nuclear program as well as one to produce biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

In a series of speeches starting in August 2002, President George W. Bush publicly accused the Iraqi dictator of having an active nuclear program.  His vice president hit the news and public affairs talk show circuit with a set of similar accusations, and his secretary of state spoke of the danger of mushroom clouds rising over American cities. (“We do know that [Saddam] is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon... [W]e don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”)

At the same time, the Bush administration made an effort -- now long forgotten -- to convince Congress that the United States was in actual danger of an Iraqi WMD attack, possibly from anthrax, in the immediate future.  President Bush suggested publicly that, with unmanned aerial vehicles (drones), Saddam might have the ability to spray East Coast cities with chemical or biological weapons.  And Congress was given fear-inducing classified private briefings on this.

Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, for example, claimed that he voted for the administration's resolution authorizing force in Iraq because "I was told not only that [Saddam had weapons of mass destruction] and that he had the means to deliver them through unmanned aerial vehicles, but that he had the capability of transporting those UAVs outside of Iraq and threatening the homeland here in America, specifically by putting them on ships off the eastern seaboard."

Driving the need to produce evidence, however fantastic or fabricated, of a possible threat to the U.S. was a radical new twist on war-making 101.  In the days after 9/11, Vice President Dick Cheney proposed that even a 1% chance of an attack on the United States, especially involving weapons of mass destruction, must be dealt with as if it were a certainty.  Journalist Ron Suskind dubbed it “the one percent doctrine.”  It may have been the rashest formula for "preventive" or "aggressive" war offered in the modern era.

Of course, the fact that Saddam’s Iraq had no nuclear program, no biological or chemical weapons, no functioning drones, and no way of reaching the East Coast of the United States proved strike three for critics of the Bush administration.  Missed was what was truly new in the invasion: not just the 1% doctrine itself, but the idea -- a first on planet Earth -- of going to war over the possibility that another country might be in possession of nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction.

Until then, such a concept hadn’t been in the strategic vocabulary.  Quite the opposite: in the Cold War years, nuclear weapons were thought of as “deterrence” or, in the case of the two massively nuclear-armed superpowers of that era, “mutually assured destruction” (with its fabulously grim acronym MAD).  Those weapons, that is, were considered guarantors, however counterintuitively, against an outbreak of war.  Their possession was a kind of grisly assurance that your opponent wouldn’t attack you, lest you both be destroyed.

In that spirit, between the dropping of atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 and the Iraqi invasion of March 2003, seven countries -- the Soviet Union, England, France, China, Israel (though its large nuclear arsenal remains unacknowledged), India, and Pakistan -- all went nuclear without anybody suggesting that they be attacked simply for possessing such weapons.  An eighth country -- white-ruled South Africa -- actually assembled six nuclear weapons, and later became the only country to de-nuclearize itself.  South Korea, Taiwan, Argentina, and Brazil all had incipient nuclear programs, though none produced weapons.  Japan is today considered to be at a point the Iranians have not yet reached: “breakout capacity,” or the ability to build a nuclear weapon relatively quickly if a decision to do so were made.  In 2006, North Korea set off its first nuclear test and, within years, had become the ninth active nuclear power.

In other words, in 2003, the idea that the possession of nuclear weapons or simply of an "active" nuclear program that might one day produce such weapons was a casus belli represented something new.  And when it became clear that Saddam had no nuclear program, no weapons of mass destruction at all, that explanation for American war-making, for what Jonathan Schell once dubbed “disarmament wars” -- so visibly fraudulent -- seemed to disappear into the dustbin of history.

War and the Presidential “I”

Until now, that is.

Whether he meant to or not, in his latest version of Iran war policy President Obama has built on the Bush precedent.  His represents, however, an even more extreme version, which should perhaps be labeled the 0% Doctrine.  In holding off an Israeli strike that may itself be nothing but a bluff, he has defined a future Iranian decision to build a nuclear weapon as a new form of aggression against the United States.  We would, as the president explained to Jeffrey Goldberg, be committing our military power against Iran not to prevent an attack on the U.S. itself, but a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

And by the way, note that he didn’t say, “We don’t bluff.”  His formulation was: “I don’t bluff.”  And that “I” should not be ignored.  The Bush administration promoted a cult of presidential power, of (as they called it at the time) a “unitary executive.” No one in the White House uses such a term these days, any more than they use the term “Global War on Terror,” but if both terms have disappeared, the phenomena they named have only intensified.

The Global War on Terror, with its burgeoning secret military, the elite special operations forces, and its growing drone air force, controlled in part by the CIA, should be thought of as the president’s private war.  In addition, as legal scholar Jonathan Turley wrote recently, when it comes to drone assassinations (or “targeted killings” as they are now more politely known), Attorney General Eric Holder has just claimed for the president the “authority to kill any American if he unilaterally determines them to be a threat to the nation.”  In doing so, added Turley, “Obama has replaced the constitutional protections afforded to citizens with a ‘trust me’ pledge.”  With terror in its crosshairs, war, in other words, is increasingly becoming the president’s private preserve and strikes on the enemy, however defined, a matter of his own private judgment.

It is no longer a matter of “we,” but of a presidential “I” when it comes to unleashing attacks in what has become a global free fire zone for those drones and special ops forces.  War, in other words, is increasingly lodged in the Oval Office and a commander-in-chief executive.  As the Libyan intervention suggested, like the American people, Congress is, at best, an afterthought -- even though this Congress would rubber-stamp a presidential act of war against Iran without a second thought.

The irony is that the president has propounded a war-making policy of unprecedented extremity at a moment when there is no evidence that the Iranians are pursuing a bomb -- not yet at least.  The “supreme leader” of their theocratic state has termed the possession of nuclear weapons “a grave sin” and U.S. national intelligence estimates have repeatedly concluded that the Iranians are not, in fact, moving to build nuclear weapons.  If, however -- and it’s a giant if -- Iran actually got the bomb, if a 10th country joined the nuclear club (with others to follow), it would be bad news, and the world would be a worse place for it, but not necessarily that greatly changed.

What could change the world in a radical way, however, is the 0% doctrine -- and the trend more generally to make war the personal prerogative of an American president, while ceding to the U.S. military what was once the province and power of diplomacy.

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s as well as The End of Victory Culture, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, The United States of Fear (Haymarket Books), has just been published.

Attacking Iran: Lessons From The Iran-Iraq War

Military action against Iran, and even the continuing threat of attack, is likely to give the Islamic Republic a new lease on life.

 By Annie Tracy Samuel, cross-posted from openDemocracy

The presumed aim of an attack by the United States and/or Israel on Iranian nuclear and military facilities would be to weaken the Islamic Republic, particularly by hindering its ability to build a nuclear weapon. However, the history of the Iraqi invasion of Iran in September 1980 calls into question the contention that an attack will weaken the regime in Tehran. Iran’s security policies, and its policy outlook more generally, have been shaped enormously by the country’s experience in the Iran-Iraq War. As the Iranians themselves continuously point to the lessons of the war and their bearing on the present day, it behooves policymakers to follow suit.

The Iranian Revolution of 1978-79 was a movement of several different groups that were united most strongly in their opposition to the regime of Muhammad Reza Shah. Following the ouster of the Shah in February 1979, the union of those groups began to break down. In invading Iran, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein assumed that the divided Iranians and their dilapidated armed forces would be unable to put up much of a fight. He was wrong. Iranians responded to the invasion by uniting against him and under their current leadership, even though many opposed the direction the revolution had taken. Iran’s leaders quickly resurrected the armed forces by halting military trials and purges and enforcing conscription.

The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), which was established following the revolution to serve primarily as an internal security force, transformed into a second military and rushed to confront the invading forces. Thousands of volunteers were incorporated into both the IRGC and the regular military. They were driven to defend the country, the revolution, and the Islamic Republic by a potent combination of nationalism, revolutionary mission, and religious zeal that was stoked by the foreign threat. Their dedicated and determined defense, combined with the Iraqi forces’ poor performance, caused the invaders to stall and then retreat. The IRGC and the Basij remain today as the Islamic Republic’s most devoted defenders. They have a substantial interest in the survival of the regime, and can therefore be expected to vigorously confront attacking forces, just as they did when the Iraqis invaded.

An attack on Iran by the United States or Israel will likely add to the ranks of the regime’s supporters. Just as a divided population came together to confront the Iraqi invasion, Iranians of all stripes will unite in opposition to an attack. The upshot will be a stronger, more cohesive, and more militant Islamic Republic. In the wordsof Mohammad Khatami, Iran’s reformist former president and a harsh critic of some of Iran’s current leaders and policies, “If there should one day be any military interference in Iran, then all factions, regardless of reformists or non-reformists, would [unite] and confront the attack.” Iranians interviewed by Reuters, Radio Farda, and the Campaign for Human Rights in Iran made the same argument. “A war will unite the regime, and it will also force many to unite behind a regime they don’t even support” said a 56-year-old woman living in Tehran. “What else should we do, [cheer] for Israel, which would kill our countrymen working in the nuclear sites?” Similarly, a Tehran-based journalist who said he sympathized with the opposition Green Movement wrote that, “[Iranian] society will not welcome any country that attacks its soil.”


An attack on Iran will not only bring Iranians together under the current regime; it will also unite them in support for a decision to acquire nuclear weapons. Even if it targeted Iranian nuclear facilities and was limited in scope, an attack will most likely be interpreted by Iranians as a declaration of war, an attempt at regime change, and a determination to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear technology or enrichment capability of any nature. It will also convincethem that acceleratingthat drive and ultimately possessingnuclear weapons is the only wayto safeguardtheir regime and their country from future attack. Hans Blix, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, recently put forward this view. “I don't think you can convince anyone to give up an atomic programme through the threat of violence,” he stated. “Rather, it will cause them to move even faster on it, in order to defend themselves. ... If the decision to build a bomb has not yet been taken, a military strike would ensure more than ever that it is.”

While the regime may increase its strength in the wake of an attack by winning new supporters, it may also be able to capitalize on an attack to eliminate its internal enemies. That is precisely what happened following the 1980 Iraqi invasion. Ayatollah Khomeini and his allies used the war to strengthen their control over the state along the war-making state-making nexus, followingthe pattern of revolutionary elites in other countries. Throughout the war Khomeini used the conflict to discredit and eliminate his internal rivals. By keeping the people mobilized for the war and focused on Iran’s external enemies, he was able to consolidate his power with fewer constraints and less debate.

Iran’s current Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and the powerful IRGC would be able to achieve similar results in the case of a strike on Iran. The Revolutionary Guards have long warned of the dangers posed by Iran’s external enemies and have characterized internal opposition as the work of external forces. An attack on Iran will seemingly vindicate the IRGC’s position and enable them to increase repression and their own power. Iranians favoring any sort of softer line will be undermined and suppressed. Hossein Ghazian, an Iranian sociologist who was jailed in Iran and is now a visiting scholar at Syracuse University, said that, in the case of an attack, the regime would have “enough legitimacy, excuses, and reasons to repress those opposed to it.”

Similarly, in a 2005 op-ed in The New York Times, Iranian human rights activists Shirin Ebadi and Hadi Ghaemi put forward “The Human Rights Case Against Attacking Iran.” They argued that, “for human rights defenders in Iran, the possibility of a foreign military attack on their country represents an utter disaster for their cause.” The authors also drew a parallel with the Islamic Republic’s behavior following the 1980 Iraqi invasion. The “threat of foreign military intervention will provide a powerful excuse for authoritarian elements to uproot [independent human rights organizations] and put an end to their growth,” they argued. “Human rights violators will use this opportunity to silence their critics by labeling them as the enemy’s fifth column. In 1980, after Saddam Hussein invaded Iran and inflamed nationalist passions, Iranian authorities used such arguments to suppress dissidents.”

In a report released by the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran in November 2011, Ghaemi, writing as the president of that organization, emphasized that the parallel is still valid. In summarizing the views of Iranians interviewed by the Campaign, Ghaemi wrote that, “an attack would further militarize the state, exacerbate the human rights crisis in Iran, and undermine Iranian civil society and the pro-democracy movement. ... A military strike would likely lead to an upsurge of political violence, threatening all those considered enemies of the government. Given the mass executions of numerous political prisoners during the Iran-Iraq War, strong fears were expressed about the fate of hundreds of current political prisoners in the event of a conflict with the United States.”

Military action against Iran, and even the continuing threat of attack, is likely to give the Islamic Republic a new lease on life. Its devoted supporters will be strengthened and mobilized, and it will enjoy the additional support of those who will join in condemning and retaliating for an attack. Threats of a possible strike, and certainly a strike itself, substantiate and animate the security narrative Iranian leaders have been propagating for years: that the West is determined to raze the Islamic Republic. They have mastered the art of using the threat of attack, signs of Western hostility towards Iran, and even invasion to consolidate their power. Further, the more likely an attack appears, the more determined Iranians will be to acquire a nuclear weapons capability. The policy of attacking and threatening Iran has served as the lifeblood sustaining the Islamic Republic. We have yet to see how the regime might sustain itself without it.

Supporting Israel Means Advocating For A Two-State Solution

By Jeff Pozmantier, cross-posted from Bumpspot

Representatives David Price (D-NC) and Peter Welch (D-VT) deserve accolades for their Congressional letter encouraging President Barack Obama and Congress to work together to prevent cutting U.S. assistance to the Palestinians.

They correctly note that aid to the Palestinians is not a favor to the Palestinians, nor is it something that should be withheld as punishment for their statehood efforts at the United Nations. Continued assistance is actually in the strategic interest of the United States, Israel and Palestine, because it bolsters security and strengthens Palestinian governance.

Supporters of the letter are far from left wing anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian peaceniks. The Shin Bet, Israel’s F.B.I, has noted that U.S.-trained Palestinian Authority security forces are a primary reason that 2010 was the most terror-free year in the last decade. U.S. and Israeli experts also connect the dots between U.S. assistance and improved security.

But only 44 members of Congress chose to put their name on the letter.



The other 391 didn’t have a “Rick Perry oops” moment and forget their political platforms or the raison d’etre of their Congressional service. Unfortunately, taking the safest route to reelection is too often their platform and focus. That route and focus certainly risks offending fewer (ostensibly) pro-Israel organizations and   large contribution bundlers. And it helps ensure continued Congressional employment — a form of government tenure where it’s not “publish or perish” as much as “assimilate or face strong opposition at election time.”  Congress’s Pavlovian reaction to what they believe the traditional pro-Israel lobby wants also helps ensure the continued pro-Israel organizational employment of the reliable gaggle who revel in creating perpetually myopic fundraising campaigns primarily focused on blamestorming.

It’s not only AIPAC or AJC and others on the pro-Israel right who seem to generate campaigns more aligned with their own organizational fundraising interests (or in the case of ECI, Republican political goals) than Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking goals. J Street and many on the pro-Israel progressive left are, at times, also guilty of similar confusion.

How many Congressional resolutions have to be proposed or opposed before  pro-Israel organizational supporters recognize that victory doesn’t come from names on Congressional letters or the few extra fundraising bucks they generate?  How many “fire-up-the-troops” speeches about Israel’s vibrant democracy and focus on human rights — always, of course, with a compare and contrast to Israel’s neighbors (who we are assured have neither) —  have to occur at (ostensibly) pro-Israel conventions before there is a realization that the quality of Israel’s perfection isn’t the issue?

Rather, it’s about how perfectly Israel acts to respond to the world it lives in: Passing laws that threaten Israel’s democracy or proposing laws that many argue will weaken dissent, equality and human rights is far from a perfect reaction. So is engaging in “we’ll show you” settlement building that merely ensures a more entrenched and expanded pool of  enemies, weakens Israel’s relationship with its key supporters, and  limits the opportunity to enter into “two state” negotiations with the Palestinians.

If counting who gets more standing ovations in Congress— Obama or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu —  could lead to a two state solution, then let’s give Netanyahu the win for his May 24th speech (as ECI trumpeted and AIPAC and AJC used in fundraising appeals) and encourage pro-Israel organizations to back a Congressional rule that  legislators must remain upright whenever they listen  to  novella-like speeches about Israel’s proven sincerity and the Palestinians’ demonstrated perfidy.

But the rules won’t change any more than the pointless speech-making  will, at least while so many pro-Israel organizational actions remain mired in tactics that are deeply disconnected from any strategic focus, and Israel’s coalition government seems allergic to visionary leadership.

So we are left with a  24 hour, seven days a week soap opera that, in the version played around the world, primarily features deprivation and violence caused and furthered by leaders who, too often, prefer reciting their own history lessons rather than taking decisive and meaningful actions. It is, unfortunately, a  show guaranteed to renew, unless  organizations, who claim to be pro-Israel,  start to redefine their mission to include advocating for Israel to recognize and act as if it understands that not only is peace with the Palestinians  an Israeli vital interest, the absence of peace  is a growing existential threat — a threat to Israel’s survival as a democratic nation serving as the homeland for the Jewish people.

Friends don’t let friends drive drunk: It is past time for pro-Israel organizations to stop effectively giving Israel the keys to drive along whatever path she wants to take. There are, no doubt, any number of dangerous obstacles and drivers on Israel’s road. This isn’t intended to ignore them. This proposed change in approach is, however, intended to help Israel best navigate around the obstacles, including the ones she has managed to create for herself, which will provide a more direct route toward a two state agreement and peace.

Support J Street

"The political home of pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans," J Street was formed in 2008, to counter the stranglehold of neo-conservatives on U.S policy towards Israel.  In a welcome contrast to AIPAC, it "gives political voice to mainstream American Jews and other supporters of Israel who, informed by their Jewish values, believe that a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is essential to Israel’s survival as the national home of the Jewish people and as a vibrant democracy."

For those in the Bay Area, you can support J Street by attending this fundraiser on October 25, 2011, at the City Club in San Francisco.  Of course, anyone can donate even if you can't attend.

Crazy-Making Discourse On Middle East Peace Efforts

The Onion's brilliant parody on the fate of a government official who had the temerity to criticize Israel, Government Official Who Makes Perfectly Valid Well-Reasoned Point Against Israel Forced To Resign, captures why it is so difficult to have any rational discourse on the Middle East peace process.

Politicians have long been fearful of antagonizing not only Israel but American Jewish voters.  Now, Republicans are skillfully exploiting this fear for partisan advantage, with the aid of cowering Democrats, by, as Greg Sargent states, "distort[ing] what’s actually happening in order to paint Obama as anti-Israel." 

After President Obama had the audacity to restate the long-established parameters for negotiating a Middle East peace agreement, that the 1967 borders would be the starting point for talks about land swaps, the hysteria inside the Beltway reached epic proportions.  As noted in a recent New York Times editorial:  While "pandering on Israel in the hopes of winning Jewish support is hardly a new phenomenon in American politics," Republicans, knowing full well that Obama was not calling on Israel to retreat to its 1967 borders, were being "unusually dishonest," while Democrats piled on out of fear that "Republicans will paint them as anti-Israel."

How else to explain the 29 standing ovations that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received when he addressed a joint session of Congress May 24th.  Unfortunately, as the Jewish Daily Forward notes, Netanyahu's "spirited defense of the status quo and his reluctance to offer a way back to the negotiating table," puts "American Jews in a difficult and uncomfortable situation."  By failing to give a speech to "move the process forward, safeguarding Israel’s security as he must, but also recognizing the cogent, entirely reasonable requests from the President of the United States," he is driving a wedge between Israeli and American interests.

The Republicans, as Rep. Howard Berman (Dem-CA) correctly points out, "in their never-ending quest to try and persuade Jews to shift their voting, have jumped on this to try to exacerbate that split."  That is to be expected.  What is discouraging is that the Democrats with very few exceptions, are helping them do so by refusing to stand up to the Republicans' manufactured outrage over the President's speech.  While, as Steve Benen says, there is "no point in even hoping Republicans will be responsible on this . . . congressional Democrats have to be more sensible — not for Obama’s sake, but for the sake of Israel’s future and that of the peace process."