What kind of president spreads American weakness and failure in foreign policy for years, and then wants so badly to negotiate a deal with the world’s prime state sponsor of terror that we give them one more last chance again and again, virtually begging them to stay at the table cobbling together a deal lousy for our country but maybe qualifying as a presidential legacy in the last quarter of his term?
What kind of president not only lets the rare opportunity pass, but rejects the very idea of pressing Iran to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist, while knowing Iran is eager to use a nuclear weapon to destroy Israel and even while the head Mullah chants on TV, “Death to America”?
What kind of president would spin the “framework deal” to be good for America while Iran is celebrating their negotiating table victory in the streets, their leaders claiming the deal does not require them to close any facility, that they keep six thousand centrifuges spinning, that inspectors are limited to “known facilities” and will have to schedule their visits in advance, that Americans will have to release $130 billion in Iranian frozen assets and that the lifting of sanctions will be an immediate boon to the Iranian economy? Even our French and Saudi allies, never mind Israel, think the deal stinks.
Meanwhile, our State Department mirrors Obama’s claim that America has prevailed at the negotiating table. All we have to do is trust the Iranians, who have clearly learned the lesson that delay is a highly effective means of denial. Who do you believe?
I’m reminded of the President Clinton years when tensions with North Korea led to sanctions and troop buildup at the DMZ to be ready for conflict. Clinton covertly recruited Jimmy Carter to undertake a private mission to provide Kim Il-sung a face-saving way to back down. Carter’s negotiation with Kim Il-sung went farther than Clinton intended, but before Clinton knew details of the “framework” negotiated, Carter had announced to the world on CNN. North Korea received oil and light water reactors from America to purchase their nonproliferation guarantee and promise to abandon their nuclear ambitions. What could possibly go wrong? The fact they now threaten the world with their nuclear weapons will surely be blamed on George W. Bush by the Democrats, but those same Democrats were almost as desperate for a deal then as Obama is with Iran today.
Secretary of State John Kerry can almost be forgiven by some for leading the Iranian boot-licking since he has been siding with America’s enemies since he visited with Viet Cong leaders in Paris in the early 1970s at the same time American troops were still being killed in Vietnam and while he was still an officer in the US Naval Reserve. Yes, we Americans have flexible standards to measure our elected and appointed officials.
While we’re at it, let’s ask what kind of president announces a “Red Line” for Syria not to cross, then backs down after Syria crosses that line? Does it help shape your thinking to be reminded Syria is a client state of Iran, and our president was continually seeking to negotiate with the Iranians? Apply that same line of thought to Obama’s refusal to support the Iranian uprising against control by the Mullahs in 2009, and ask yourself again what kind of President would do that? Does it help you understand why he supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt?
Well, I guess that same kind of president would swap five top-tier Taliban leader POWs for one U.S. Army sergeant who had deserted in Afghanistan to join the Taliban. Our own president told us his reasoning was “This is what happens at the end of wars,” and that he had followed in the path of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. What kind of president would haughtily put himself in such lofty company when a high school freshman could point out (1) George Washington did not become president until the Revolutionary War had been over for six years, (2) Abraham Lincoln was assassinated a month before the Civil War ended, at which time all prisoners were released without negotiations or swaps of any kind, and (3) FDR died before the end of WWII, and his successor, Harry Truman presided over complete victory, after which our forces freed prisoners on both sides with no deals.
None of that stopped our strutting president from celebrating the unfortunate swap in a Rose Garden press conference with Sgt. Bergdahl’s parents. There of course was no mention of desertion, only that Bergdahl had served his country honorably, an insult to every man and woman in American uniform.
Subsequent facts showed in a timeline that Obama’s swap was part of his strategy to empty out Gitmo to pave the way for closing the facility, and all the noise about not leaving a man behind was just cover. Thin and tawdry cover at that.
For the few of you who didn’t already know by your own good sense that President Obama is a prolific, habitual and shameless liar, this a case of egregious lying because he not only tried to buy your favor with propaganda, but with crummy propaganda easily proven wrong. I suppose in some cases stupidity can be a defense for dishonesty but maybe it doesn’t matter and maybe he wins anyway merely because so much of the American public is brain-dead.
Wasn’t your suspicion aroused when Obama refused to wear an American flag lapel pin saying, “I don’t want to take sides”?
Haven’t you wondered about President Obama directing agencies not to enforce established immigration law, directing them like a King unfettered by an annoying Constitution to apply different policies, defending his action as “prosecutorial discretion” even though a hard-thinking person would recognize that discretion would apply to a single case whereas blanket coverage amounts to illegally superseding the law. Once you recognize that, doesn’t his political rabble-rousing, “American immigration law is broken” seem ludicrous on its face since he is the one who broke it? These lies are his way of saying he doesn’t like the law and you must agree to change the law to his liking. If you agree with his desire to change the law, but disagree with his dishonest methods, at least you are thinking honestly.
On a less lethal scale, what kind of president would give a cold, ignoring shoulder to the funeral of America’s great friend, Margaret Thatcher, in London but lead a horde of celebration to Nelson Mandela’s funeral in South Africa? Of course there could be a tiny bit of jealousy involved because Obama is such a small man compared to Thatcher’s renowned steel strength as Britain’s leader. I suppose racial preference may be involved, as evidence by the president and attorney general fanning the flames of racial division here in our country in recent cases, even after evidence they were inappropriately intervening on the wrong side. How does a president stoop to that low level? He is supposed to have advisors to remind him when to pull up his big boy pants.
Since the 1970s the overwhelming source of terrorism in the world has been radical Islam in the Middle East. What kind of president continues to direct his administration not to utter the words “Muslim” or “Islam” connected to any acts of terror even when it is undeniably so? I suppose it is not too surprising given his new-president apology tour in the Middle East, or a disappointing and consistent practice of alienating America’s allies while coddling our enemies, or refusing to acknowledge a recent rash of murderous terrorism against Christians world wide.
Even when it comes to the genocidal lunatics called ISIS, what kind of president provides moral equivalence cover to these madmen by comparing to the Christian Crusades over a thousand years ago? And that he did it while implying the Muslims were innocent victims of Crusades once again is easily proven wrong, but only by the small part of the population with their brain engaged.
I could go on, but I’m getting tired. If you are not one of the brain-dead who trust anything this man says, maybe you are, too.
Remind me again: when we worry about our country’s future, who is our enemy?
[Terry Garlock of Peachtree City occasionally contributes a column to The Citizen. His email is terry@garlock1.com .]
