Huck must walk: A letter to President Trump

Dear Mr. President:

You are not noted for taking criticism gracefully or for being charitable toward anything less than 100 percent loyalty from subordinates and allies. For once, this tendency could work to the advantage of the United States, the Middle East, and the world, if only you’ll give in to it. 

Not even Iranian state media treat you more disrespectfully than Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee does. 

On June 16, at the G7 summit in France, you said quite reasonably that Israel would not exist without the United States. This is so patently true that such an utterance ought to be unnecessary, but I know of no president or other major U.S. political figure who has ever dared to state the obvious in public. It needed doing. Oh, how it needed doing. That you did it at a meeting of other world leaders is priceless. Well said, sir.

Ah, but the Rev’d Mike Huckabee sees things a bit differently. Later that same day, Huckabee told the International Conference on Israeli Heritage and Archaeology in Judea and Samaria, an event supported and partly funded by the illegal settlement movement, that the U.S. would not exist without Israel.

“We owe our very existence to what happened in this land,” Huckabee said. 

I trust that no comment on chronology is necessary for readers with a basic knowledge of arithmetic.

Mr. President, could Huckabee possibly have been more defiant toward you? The man corrected you–he rebuked you–before the world, at a gathering not of world leaders but of international outlaws, at a time when tension between the U.S. and Israel is at an unprecedented high. But he didn’t stop there.

“My role is not only to represent the United States in Israel,” Huckabee said, “but also to convey Israel’s importance to the United States.”

Oh my. While it has always been obvious to anyone with a functioning brain that Huckabee’s appointment as ambassador is a ludicrous case of a diplomat gone native long before ever setting up in the host country, now we have an ambassador who clearly believes he is so immune from oversight from president or Congress–so important–that he can openly announce and even boast about a dual loyalty that compromises his mission, undermines American foreign policy, and renders him utterly incapable of a full commitment to the interests of the United States. 

During the last year, Huckabee has defied U.S. policy by meeting–in rather devious fashion–with Jonathan Pollard, the most notorious American traitor since Alger Hiss. He opined that Israel has the right to seize most of the Middle East. He referred to Israel as a “partner” of the United States, in contradistinction to “ally,” and placed criticism of Israel on the same plane as criticism of Mrs. Huckabee. He is said lately to have been working behind the scenes to wrest custodianship of the Jerusalem holy sites away from the Waqf, a course that promotes potentially catastrophic unrest and threatens to gut a precious alliance with Jordan. Were Huckabee to leave the scene at this moment, the passage of a generation would be necessary to restore the slightest notion that the United States might ever be an honest broker in the Levant.

Mr. President, Mike Huckabee is not actually a diplomat. He is a salesman of Israeli goods and an adoring fan of Team Israel. He also is a moron, because the Israelis are a lot more capable than he is and are playing him like a Stradivarius, which makes him an abject embarrassment as well–to the United States and to you personally.

And he thinks he is untouchable. 

Mr. President, Mike Huckabee thinks he’s bigger than you are. This isn’t just about him and you, of course; it’s about the United States of America and the office of the president. But for now, it’s OK if we let it just be about him and you, if that’s what works. 

For once, Mr. President, the world needs for you to get mad and get even. You’re good at that. In the present case, it would be a virtue and a relief. Have at it, Mr. President. The world will thank you. I promise.

Lot Hildegard is a Christian theologian and freelance writer. He has taught in a Palestinian university and in an American Muslim school. His social commentary and short fiction have appeared in an assortment of print and online publications