RUTHFULLY YOURS

We’re witnessing a strange spectacle in U.S. foreign policy, one with no obvious precedent: President Barack Obama is trying desperately to protect his cherished nuclear deal with Iran, making one concession after another in response to Iran’s post-deal demands to ensure that Tehran doesn’t walk away from it.

Thus despite the terms to which U.S.-led global negotiators and Iran supposedly agreed in July, the deal is less a firm agreement than a continuing drama with one storyline: Tehran demands a concession, the administration proposes a response, Iran-watchers in Congress and elsewhere voice concerns and U.S. officials offer a middle ground to satisfy Tehran without igniting a revolt in Washington.

But the concessions – the most recent of which involve Iran’s ballistic missiles program and its access to the U.S. financial system – are not just rewriting the previous consensus among government officials, diplomats, nuclear experts and Iran-watchers in the United States, Europe and the Middle East over how the deal would work. They’re also serving to expand Iran’s military capability, strengthen its economy and leave U.S. allies in the region feeling more abandoned.

President Obama has been boasting of his foreign policy prowess, in part by criticizing other world leaders. Bret Stephens of The Wall Street Journal cited [1] Jeffrey Goldberg’s recent article in The Atlantic based on his interview with the President, in which Obama aimed criticism at Prime Minister David Cameron of England and former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, among others:

David Cameron comes in for a scolding on U.K. military spending, as well as for getting ‘distracted’ on Libya. Nicolas Sarkozy, the former and possibly future president of France, is dismissed by Mr. Obama as a posturing braggart.

But according to several officials who served in high level national security positions under President Obama, it is the President himself who has made some major blunders and bad decisions that have damaged our national security and weakened our leadership position in the world.

The Fox News Channel recently aired a special on the state of the military and the challenges it has recently faced titled “Rising Threats-Shrinking Military [2].” It has received almost no coverage from the mainstream media, despite the fact that numerous former Obama administration officials used this opportunity to lambast the President’s policies toward Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and more. Their criticisms span the entire length of President Obama’s two terms in office. Perhaps it is the very fact that these people are speaking out against President Obama’s flawed leadership as commander-in-chief that has led to an almost complete media blackout. And it raises the question, why didn’t they speak out much sooner, when it might have made a difference?

“According to the report, [former Defense Secretary Robert] Gates was told to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from the defense budget after already having slashed it,” reports [3] The Hill. “I guess I’d have to say I felt double-crossed,” Gates told Fox News. “After all those years in Washington, I was naïve.”

US News & World Report also briefly highlights [4] how Gates claims that Obama chose to push for Egypt’s leader Hosni Mubarak to leave despite the advice of his national security team.

“Literally the entire national security team recommended, unanimously, handling Mubarak differently than we did,” said Gates. “And the President took the advice of three junior backbenchers, in terms of how to treat Mubarak-one of them saying, ‘Mr. President, you gotta be on the right side of history.'”

As we have repeatedly reported, both Obama and the press regularly try to bolster President Obama’s legacy at the expense of the truth. The truth is that President Obama’s signature legacies, such as his deals with Iran and Cuba, involved reaching out to totalitarian regimes, and making deals that were terrible for the U.S., but great for Cuba [5] and Iran [6].

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his counterparts from Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Italy went to Japan to pay homage to the victims of the Aug. 6, 1945 nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the last days of World War II.

They did this by touring the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Museum, which displays the horrors suffered by the Japanese people who had been blitzed by the United States. It is estimated that 100,000 to 200,000 people were killed in those bombings, whose justification is being debated to this day.

“Everyone in the world should see and feel the power of this memorial,” Kerry wrote in a guest book at the museum. “It is a stark, harsh, compelling reminder not only of our obligation to end the threat of nuclear weapons, but to rededicate all our effort to avoid war itself.”

That Kerry used the death and destruction depicted in the museum to tout the nuclear deal he had just spent years begging Iran to sign is completely in character — his own and that of the Obama administration he represents. That while he was at it he threw in a good word for pacifism is also not surprising.

The trouble is that his conclusions are always based on false premises and an obfuscation of the facts. Chief among these is his lying about the Iran deal, to the point that Congress is about to launch an investigation into whether the Obama administration purposefully hid or distorted crucial information about it. Legislators on Capitol Hill were already familiar with the overt capitulation on the part of the White House and State Department to the powers in Tehran.

In any case, what is becoming clear to all who didn’t see it before is that the one thing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action did not accomplish was preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. It certainly did not contribute to eradicating war. On the contrary.

Which is why it takes true gall for Kerry of all people to hold up the history of Japan as a cautionary tale.

I am not an economist, but it is clear that the path we are on leads to an unhappy place. It is determined by wishes and hopes, not reality and facts. I write about debt. And I write about interest rates that are set by government, not determined in the marketplace. Price fixing, whether by consortiums, monopolies or government and whether for goods, services, wages or money, is generally not wise. Hidden behind Islamic terrorists, the interminable presidential nominating process, corruption, and the hypocrisy of political correctness looms a debt crisis that has been abetted by artificially low interest rates. Approximately eight trillion dollars has been added to our national debt since the financial crisis and the “great recession” ended almost seven years ago.

To put what has happened in perspective: In 2000, U.S. Federal debt was $5.7 trillion. The Ten-year government bond yielded 6.6 percent. That debt and those rates supported a GDP of $10.3 trillion. At the end of 2015, U.S. Federal debt was $18.2 trillion; the Ten-year yielded 2.1%, while GDP was $17.9 trillion. In other words, while GDP expanded at a compounded annual rate of 3.8%, Federal debt grew at 8%, more than double that of economic growth. Despite debt tripling in those fifteen years, federal interest expenses remained about the same – thanks to a compliant (and not so independent) Federal Reserve. Shortly after his inauguration, President Obama caustically noted: “I found this national debt doubled, wrapped in a big bow, waiting for me as I stepped into the Oval Office.” Mr. Obama has returned the favor with interest, pardoning the pun. Since 2009, GDP growth has slowed further, while Federal debt has persisted, increasing at double the rate of economic growth. The situation is untenable. If deficits are not reduced and interest rates not allowed to rise during recoveries, what happens when the next recession hits?

The problem is not limited to the Federal government. State and local municipalities, with tax receipts down, demands on resources up and interest rates low, have increased debt. Making things worse are structural problems within states: Infrastructure is crumbling. Entitlements are ballooning, with the gap between benefits promised and assets on hand nearing a trillion dollars, according to Pew Research. (The Cato Institute puts the federal government’s unfunded liabilities related to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid at $70 trillion.) Corporate debt exceeds $29 trillion, with leverage at a 12-year high. Because of myriad government hindrances, corporate debt has not been used for investment, but for stock-buybacks, dividends and mergers. Consumer debt, at $12.12 trillion, is approaching the levels of 2008, despite mortgage debt being more than a trillion dollars below where it was at that time. Since the federal government took over student loan programs in 2009, student debt has increased from $700 billion to $1.2 trillion, with 43% of debt holders currently in arrears or in default. What will happen to local governments, businesses and individuals when interest rates rise, as is inevitable?

“I know these issues are sensitive, especially coming from an American President. Before 1959, some Americans saw Cuba as something to exploit, ignored poverty, enabled corruption.” (U.S. President Barack Obama, March 22, Havana Cuba.)

“I believe that there is no country in the world including any and all the countries under colonial domination, where economic colonization, humiliation and exploitation were worse than in Cuba, in part owing to my country’s policies during the Batista regime.” (U.S. President John F. Kennedy, Oct 24, 1963.)

It’s understandable that two U.S. Presidents should hail the resourcefulness and guile of American businessmen. But liberal Democrats aren’t exactly renown for that sort of thing. And read right, the above statements imply exactly such praise—if somewhat backhandedly. The (seemingly) apologetic statements also imply condescension for those poor, stupid, corrupt Cuban natives who were such easy marks for sharp Yankee robber barons.

You’d never guess this from the media, Hollywood or your professors (or speechwriters for Democratic presidents), but in 1953 more Cubans vacationed in the U.S. (and voluntarily returned to Cuba) than Americans in Cuba. Yes, pre-Castro Cubans found the U.S. “a nice place to visit, but they certainly wouldn’t want to live there.” All this despite the friendliness and quaint habits of the natives — and despite the ability to emigrate from Cuba virtually at will and obtain U.S. visas virtually for the asking. During the 1950s and based in Florida, Sheriff Joe Arpaio would have been lonelier than the Maytag repairman.

Obama and Kennedy were describing a nation (pre-Castro Cuba) with a higher per capita income than half of Europe, the lowest inflation rate in the Western Hemisphere, the 13th lowest infant-mortality on earth and a huge influx of immigrants. Furthermore, in 1959 U.S. investments in Cuba accounted for only 14 percent the island’s GNP, and. U.S.-owned companies employed only 7 per cent of Cuba’s workforce.