Obama’s Legacy

I often see events, moments, and actions, which serve to define the times and persons involved. An individual choice can serve as an illustration of the overall pattern of a lifetime or career.

President Obama’s deal with Iran is one of those events. He is following a pattern we have seen already in trying to deal with both the economy and healthcare. That pattern in a nutshell is, for the sake of striking a deal now, we will push off the pain of the situation for later.

I am writing this blogpost after watching a press conference where President Obama tried to convince the nation to accept the Iran Nuclear Deal. This is the capper that I believe will be seen by historians as the defining moment of Obama’s presidency. It might be true that he will keep his promise, “Iran will not obtain a nuclear weapon on my watch.” But his actions open the door for Iran to have that weapon later. Iran will be able to reintroduce many of the tools for building a weapon in 10 or 15 years, according to this plan.

There are three ingredients to all of President Obama’s bad deals.

• Believing that the world has to come alongside us and agree with our choices.
• Believing that when his administration does something it will work, even if previous administration did the same things and it failed for them.
• Tunnel vision to complete a deal, so that the devil in the details is overlooked.

In his speech he pointedly stated, “With the world now unified beside us.” This is nice. But I remember a time when we lead the world. We did not wait for them to come alongside us before acting, but instead we lead out. We did what we knew was right, and yes, the world often followed. They did so because they saw us, even trusted us, to do right.

The president assures us this deal is “Ensuring that all pathways to a bomb are shut off.” He lists reasons that he believes this. Part of it is the bomb making tools and facilities they are temporarily not allowed to use. But the majority of this is because he is assuming the inspections set up under his deal will do what all the previous inspections failed to do. He believes this even though the kind of stalling tactics Iran has consistently used against us, are worked into this agreement. Everyone, including the Obama Administration, expects Iran to cheat on the deal. So why allow them to work the framework for cheating into the arrangements?

Finally, the Iran deal is a case of being so intent on reaching a deal that they overlooked how all the compromises added up to empowering the worst disaster the world has seen thus far. This tunnel vision is the only valid reason why they would continue blindly extending the deadlines to complete the deal. A nasty component of this tunnel vision is that prior to narrowing our field of view we would have stood up to Iran as an enemy because of its terrorist activities, and should be opposed for this reason regardless of whether they are trying to build a bomb.

President Obama says we have two choices, take the deal or go to war. I think it’s somewhat predictable we will have to go to war sooner or later. First because Iran will not give up their goals. They will continue to try and get a nuclear weapon. But also because they will continue to be a state sponsor of terrorism against us and our allies. And also because they will continue to desire the absolute destruction of Israel. President Obama is just putting off the pain of this battle until later.

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Relationship with Israel

What I suspect will be the worst decision made by our current president recently came to light. In the past he has made it clear that he doesn’t support Israel in the ways that past presidents have. I wrote about this recently in a blogpost called Netanyahu and Congress.

The decision which I am referring to is not his treatment of Netanyahu on that visit, nor is it the condescending quotes thrown around by Democrats after the speech, but instead it was the recent information that Obama sent agents and money to try and influence the election in Israel.

Election tampering is not appropriately undertaken by the world’s poster child for democracy, but it is especially abhorrent when the action is taken against our allies. Or perhaps more accurately, this action clearly defines Israel as our enemy. We would not be the first nation to speak words of peace while acting in opposition to our own words, and any wise nation will understand the importance of behavior over rhetoric.

We were already moving in that direction by attempting to negotiate for Iran to have nuclear capability. I know the liberal bent on this is sugar coated, but our actions are promising them this capability eventually, if they will back off the goal for the time being. This deal is a hostile act against Israel, since anyone with common sense knows that is where they most would like to use nukes. Of course, common sense would also say we are second on their list.

I don’t know what the future holds, but I hope we can return to a positive relationship with Israel. If we do not a massive escalation of war in the region is predictable. The type of war that leaves no opportunity for neutrality.

Iran Nuclear Agreement

Iran has been working to become a nuclear power for a long time. I assume it knows this process would be slow and receive resistance from world powers. Attempting to stop this grab for power, many countries, including the US, have instituted strict sanctions against the country. These sanctions have been successful in causing pain, and Iran is seeking relief from them.

Secretary of State John Kerry has negotiated a deal, along with other nations, to acquire promises Iran would limit its enrichment of nuclear material to reactor grade material, and the supply of material they have which is stronger than that would be destroyed. In exchange for this they will receive $4.2 billion. Please note that according to the deal they have achieved a supply of nuclear material 4 times stronger than needed for nuclear power and almost strong enough to make a nuclear bomb.

There is bipartisan congressional support for renewing sanctions against Iran though, and likely they will get a law ready for a presidential signature. Obama is trying to halt this action and has said. “Unprecedented sanctions and tough diplomacy helped to bring Iran to the negotiating table, and I’m grateful to our partners in Congress who share our goal of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Imposing additional sanctions now will only risk derailing our efforts to resolve this issue peacefully, and I will veto any legislation enacting new sanctions during the negotiation.”

History speaks strongly against this deal. If Iran was going to abide by its agreements or international law, it would not have strongly enriched nuclear material to dispose of in the first place. Predictably we will see a continuation of Iran’s past behavior of hiding what they are doing. When the truth is finally discovered we will find out our economic support payments actually funded their efforts to become a nuclear power