Barack Obama has a history of humiliating photo-ops associated with his full-blown Radical Islam Denial Syndrome: the burning consulate in Benghazi juxtaposed with Obama partying it up in Vegas with Beyonce; the dead bodies of ISIS-slain Parisians juxtaposed with Obama telling the world that ISIS could be fought with a climate change summit; corpses in San Bernardino juxtaposed with Obama simultaneously telling a national audience that ISIS was contained.
Perhaps the worst one yet happened on Tuesday.
As Obama prepared for his last State of the Union address – an event he pitched with hijinks and mugging for the cameras – the Iranian Revolutionary Guard arrested 10 American sailors and seized two Navy boats. Obama never mentioned it in his State of the Union address; the day after the address, Iran returned the sailors, unharmed.
But the message was clear to those who were watching: Obama had been castrated on the world stage by Iran, a country he once termed “tiny compared to the Soviet Union.”
That message became clearer on Wednesday morning, when Iran also released photos of American sailors on their knees, hands behind their heads, at the beck and call of a Shiite terrorist army; a female sailor forced to wear a hijab; a male sailor forced to apologize on camera for supposedly encroaching into Iranian waters. The IRG accused the Americans of “snooping” and Iranian army chief Major General Hassan Firouzabadi said, “This incident in the Persian Gulf, which probably will not be the American forces’ last mistake in the region, should be a lesson to troublemakers in the U.S. Congress.”