“if Israel had made the necessary concessions to provide for a Palestinian state.”
“if Israel had never occupied the West Bank.”
“if Israel didn’t insist on being a Jewish state.”
“if Jews hadn’t returned to Palestine to begin with.”
I don’t really expect that any of my readers would say “true” to these questions (except in the trivial sense that you can have “peace” solely by means of one group simply not fighting back), but I’d bet that, Obama, and the rest of the “negotiators” now hailing the agreement/giveaway view Israel as an inconvenience, and would be happy to wish it away.
So what if Iran’s leadership persists in announcing that Israel will be wiped off the map? Says Obama, “it wouldn’t be my fault.” “I didn’t launch the missiles that cause Tel Aviv to be in flames.” (Or set loose terrorist/militant groups, secure in the knowledge that we’re protected from retaliation.)
But here’s what I don’t get:
No one believes that the new agreement will deter Iran from getting a bomb; at best it delays it. From what I understand, even Obama recognizes this.
Obama says he cares about his legacy. But surely he understands that his “legacy” is more than just having enough supporters when he leaves office to be able to fundraise his way to the Obama Museum. If chaos erupts in the Middle East (well, worse than the present ISIS chaos), even if the museum curators pretend otherwise, Obama’s legacy will be “he paved the way for Iran to get nuclear weapons.”
So the only mindset that makes sense is that he is truly convinced that Iran is fully of good people at heart. But even this requires willful disregard of Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism.
Is he as dumb as a bag of rocks on this one? Or is this just one more step in disengaging from the Middle East, with the desire to pull away from even sanctions enforcement, imagining that we can just walk away and shrug off whatever happens in the Middle East as “not my problem”?
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