RUTHFULLY YOURS

It is fitting that on the 75th anniversary of the appeasement at Munich, which enabled Adolf Hitler to seize parts of Czechoslovakia without a fight, the current presumed “leader of the free world,” President Barack Obama of the United States, has decided that the avoidance of war with Iran is now the principal goal of American foreign policy. If that means Iran joins the nuclear weapons club, so be it. Obama may be the most incompetent president since Jimmy Carter, but that is only if one grades him on a traditional scale, assuming the president wants the country to continue its leadership role abroad, and remain strong economically at home. If, however, the president has different objectives — to pull America back from its overseas role, and to create a dependency nation at home, increasingly tied to government largesse, then the president’s term in office may be judged a wild success.

The current partial shutdown of the federal government in Washington has revealed the smallness, pettiness and mean-spiritedness of the man who occupies the White House. Cutting off death benefits to the families of those killed in Afghanistan, money needed for funerals among other things, might have been the most noxious decision, but using government employees to keep national parks and monuments closed, rather than open, was just as petty. The World War II Memorial was closed to 90-year-old veterans flown into town for almost certainly their last trip to their nation’s capital, and a group of older foreign visitors were prevented from even photographing the Old Faithful geyser from their bus windows in Yellowstone National Park, but the National Park Service was just happy to be helping out in a rally for illegal immigrants on the National Mall:

“At the same time as the National Park Service was holding legal foreign visitors under house arrest, it was also allowing illegal immigrants to hold a rally on the supposedly closed National Mall. At this bipartisan amnesty bash, the Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said she wanted to “thank the president for enabling us to gather here” and Republican Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart also expressed his gratitude to the administration for “allowing us to be here.”

The president has jumped at the opportunity provided him by the appearance of a more moderate Iranian leadership, to charge into a negotiating process that will inevitably result in more time for Iran to weaponize its nuclear program (it already has enough enriched uranium for seven to nine bombs). The president has put Congress on notice that he wants no new sanctions imposed on Iran during this “delicate” negotiating period. Sanctions have taken a toll on Iran, which is of course why the regime is willing to give the appearance of a new openness and moderation in order both to stave off new sanctions, and to get some existing ones removed. The removal of sanctions will likely require some Iranian concessions, but these too may be illusory. After all, the West, and particularly Obama, are anxious for a deal, to be able to throw Iran into the same pile as Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan of foreign problems “removed from sight since we don’t want to fight,” so illusion will trump reality here, just as it did with the rapid about-face on Syria.

There are many members of Congress, from both parties and in both the Senate and the House, who are highly skeptical of the president’s negotiating initiative on Iran. But already, the Senate has chosen to delay further consideration of a new sanctions bill, already passed in the House.

The New York Times, the newspaper that is the official voice of the administration’s appeasement policy on Iran, described the congressional role this way in a “news” article this week:

“With a tough, new Iran sanctions bill teed up in the Senate, following the overwhelming passage of similar legislation by the House in July, lawmakers are poised to do one of two things: They could tighten the screws on Iran’s leaders in a way that helps produce a nuclear deal. Or they could foul up delicate diplomacy at a crucial moment.”

The president could not have said it better — Congress will foul up delicate diplomacy at a crucial moment if it toughens sanctions, which seem to have successfully brought Iran to a posture of “making nice” to seek their removal. So what exactly is the president’s stick in the upcoming negotiations? One carrot is to offer to remove existing sanctions in exchange for some Iranian concession. A second carrot is not to pursue any more sanctions since the Iranians have already presumably offered something- namely a willingness to talk directly to the United States. The third carrot may be the pressure the Obama administration has placed on Israel to do nothing about Iran and allow more time for negotiations.

Repeatedly during his near five years in office, the president has spoken of “all options remaining on the table with regard to Iran.” Of course, for this president, even saying the words “military option” is unbecoming, so the preferred vernacular is “all options” (hint, hint). But no one at this point in Iran is probably remotely concerned about an American military strike against their nuclear program. The pullback from even the threat of an inconsequential one or two day cruise missile strike against Syria for their use of chemical weapons, makes it plain enough that an attempt to deliver a consequential blow to Iran’s nuclear program is not and never was in the cards.

Israel, the nation most threatened by an Iranian nuclear weapons program, has undoubtedly been told in straightforward language by Obama, that any Israeli military action may be unnecessary if diplomacy is successful, and Israel had best not even think about screwing up our new diplomatic initiative before it has had a chance to bear fruit. The campaign to isolate Israel as a nation seemingly unaware of all the good things Obama will soon deliver is also being carried out in the pages of The New York Times.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, already blasted by The Times for his tough talk at the United Nations General Assembly, wherein he expressed skepticism about any new Iranian willingness to forgo its nuclear weapons program, is now derided as “messianic” and alone in his obsession about Iran. Too bad the Israeli prime minister can not just toss foreign problems aside, as president Obama does, so he can get back to his primary goals of ending the sequester, increasing spending, taxing the wealthy, and moving millions of people onto government programs, such as Obamacare, which unfortunately seems unable to get them signed up.

“Ten days after publishing a front-page editorial blasting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the U.N. General Assembly as ‘combative’ and sarcastic, The New York Times has published an interview-profile that portrays Netanyahu as a ‘shrill’ voice on a one-man ‘messianic crusade’ against Iran’s nuclear weapons program.”

There we have it — only Israel has a different idea of what to do about Iran. The rest of the world knows that we can have peace in our time, the kind of peace Neville Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier brought home from Munich. If negotiations fail or continue on with no end or resolution in sight (the best result for Iran, which continues to enrich uranium while they go on), the Western powers and Obama can applaud themselves for their good faith effort. At some point, Israel may strike with its own military resources, or other means, or Iran will have the bomb, assuming they don’t already. Iran’s single-minded pursuit of a nuclear weapons program for more than a decade will not be negotiated away. Hitler’s appetite for Czechoslovakia and the rest of Europe could not be either.