President Obama made a good deal

Hmmm . . . The Iranians refuse to recognize the right of Israel to exist. I wonder, did anyone bother to ask for their input on the establishment of Israel? Or did we just barge in, throw millions of people off their ancestral lands, then tell the Jews "Here you go, Now all the rest of you need to accept this, or we will bomb your asses off and steal your oil "

I wonder why they just won't listen to reason.

Delusional.

After the Iranians get the bomb - and they WILL - the Saudis are going to want one, because if the Shia have it then the Sunnis must have it.

"Chance for peace in the Middle East" is a pure fantasy. I remember all the handshaking after the signing of the Camp David accords, which accomplished nearly nothing.

People don't even talk about "peace" anymore. They talk about "peace process" or "road map to peace".

Because it is hard to claim that you achieved peace when the terrorist attacks continue and the missiles keep getting fired into Israel.

But you can still cling to the fiction of "peace process" and "road map to peace" after terrorist or missile attacks, because - hey! - how do you prove that you aren't heading towards peace? That is off in the indefinite future. Originally Posted by ExNYer

I too am quite skeptical of the so-called framework agreement with Iran, but two of your points are incorrect.

First, the Sunnis already have the bomb. Pakistan is predominantly Sunni and they exploded their first nuclear weapon back in 1998.

Second, it is nonsense to say the Camp David accords "accomplished nearly nothing". They have kept Egypt - the most populous Arab country - on the sidelines for almost four decades now. Without Egypt, there can be no large-scale, seriously threatening Arab war against Israel. Taking that off the table is clearly an accomplishment.

.

Since Iran disagrees with almost everything the White House has said I doubt that there is any agreement to anything. The only thing that they may have agreed to is to meet again so Obama can give them something more.

Hmmm . . . The Iranians refuse to recognize the right of Israel to exist. I wonder, did anyone bother to ask for their input on the establishment of Israel? Or did we just barge in, throw millions of people off their ancestral lands, then tell the Jews "Here you go, Now all the rest of you need to accept this, or we will bomb your asses off and steal your oil "

I wonder why they just won't listen to reason. Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

"Hmmm . . . The Europeans refuse to recognize the right of Indians to exist. I wonder, did anyone bother to ask for their input on the establishment of the United States? Or did we just barge in, throw millions of people off their ancestral lands, then tell the Settlers "Here you go, Now all the rest of you need to accept this, or we will shoot your asses off and steal your oil "

I wonder why they just didn't listen to reason."

Sound familiar?

"Hmmm . . . The Europeans refuse to recognize the right of Indians to exist. I wonder, did anyone bother to ask for their input on the establishment of the United States? Or did we just barge in, throw millions of people off their ancestral lands, then tell the Settlers "Here you go, Now all the rest of you need to accept this, or we will shoot your asses off and steal your oil "

I wonder why they just didn't listen to reason."

Sound familiar? Originally Posted by LexusLover

The whole world is a big mess, is it not?

The whole world is a big mess, is it not? Originally Posted by DSK

There are "sailors" and there are "fair weather sailors."

There have always been storms.

Who do you want at the helm?

There are "sailors" and there are "fair weather sailors."

There have always been storms.

Who do you want at the helm? Originally Posted by LexusLover

Yes, we quickly came to the realization that George W. Shrub wasn't up to the task.

Shrubbie left things in a mell of a hess.

Carry on!

Yes, we quickly came to the realization that George W. Shrub wasn't up to the task.

Shrubbie left things in a mell of a hess.

Carry on! Originally Posted by bigtex

Who is "we' ... or is that both your personalities?

Your preference is straightening up things quite nicely, I see!!!!!

1. Calming down the Middle East.
2. Keeping Russia, China, and North Korea in check.
3. Backing up our traditional allies.
4. Providing health care for all those uninsured citizens.
5. Protecting our borders.
6. Creating jobs for the poor and minorities.
7. Oh, yea. Defeating terrorism.
8. Unifying the citizens of this country and ending racial unrest.
9. Assuring transparency in his administration.
10. Creating a happy and enjoyable U.S. in which to live and thrive.

Aren't you proud of your vote ... 2x's?

Since you apparently don't give a shit whether "your boat" leaves the dock or not, it doesn't really matter who is at the helm, now does it? Dock rooster, huh?

So tell us Dumb Ass.. why it was bad to trade weapons to Iran to GET OUR HOSTAGES BACK, but good for Obama to trade 5 top combat leaders to the Taliban to get one deserter back? Originally Posted by RedLeg505

Two totally different scenarios- Did the Taliban ever take 50 plus hostages at an embassy? Did we trade weapons with Taliban to get a deserter back?
Iran was in a midst of a war with Iraq who the United States was openly supporting with military aid and than at the same time supplying our allies enemy??????
If you can't see the difference between those 2 scenarios you are one sad case.

If you can't see the difference between those 2 scenarios you are one sad case. Originally Posted by wellendowed1911

The simple fact that you THINK there is a difference in the two trades shows you are one sad case.

Two totally different scenarios- Originally Posted by wellendowed1911

Of course, one of them involves "Obaminable"!!!!!

Normally, I would say that at least 5 of "theirs" is worth just one of "ours"!

(Whether it's trading or killing.)

But in this "scenario" there is an exception to the rule.

(There always seems to be with most general rules.)

"Hmmm . . . The Europeans refuse to recognize the right of Indians to exist. I wonder, did anyone bother to ask for their input on the establishment of the United States? Or did we just barge in, throw millions of people off their ancestral lands, then tell the Settlers "Here you go, Now all the rest of you need to accept this, or we will shoot your asses off and steal your oil "

I wonder why they just didn't listen to reason."

Sound familiar? Originally Posted by LexusLover

Since I have Native American ancestry, I think my positions would be consistent. However, I don't understand how the reprehensible way we treated the Native Americans justifies the reprehensible way we treated the Palestinians. That's what the liberals do when we catch Obama or Hillary doing something illegal. "Well, Bush did it." C'mon, LL! You're smarter than that. Don't argue like an Obamazombie.

Two totally different scenarios- Did the Taliban ever take 50 plus hostages at an embassy? Did we trade weapons with Taliban to get a deserter back?
Iran was in a midst of a war with Iraq who the United States was openly supporting with military aid and than at the same time supplying our allies enemy??????
If you can't see the difference between those 2 scenarios you are one sad case. Originally Posted by wellendowed1911

Ok, this is my third fact-checking post in this thread alone. WTF? The sale of a small quantity of weapons to Iran occurred in 1985-86 and was linked to securing the release of 7 American hostages held by Hezbollah in Lebanon at the time. It had nothing to do with the "50 plus hostages" held at the US embassy in Tehran, who were released just before Reagan was sworn in on Jan. 20, 1980.

Since I have Native American ancestry, I think my positions would be consistent. However, I don't understand how the reprehensible way we treated the Native Americans justifies the reprehensible way we treated the Palestinians. That's what the liberals do when we catch Obama or Hillary doing something illegal. "Well, Bush did it." C'mon, LL! You're smarter than that. Don't argue like an Obamazombie. Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

I'm not. There may be "some evidence" eventually that the Europeans were on the ground that is now called "North America" before the native Indians actually arrived, but for now history seems to conclude otherwise. It is my recollection that at one point in time ancestors of the Jewish followers were present in the area of Israel before 1948 by several thousand years.

Having had such a not so hospitable welcome in Europe from the late 1930's until the mid 1940's, I thought relocation to a desert location along a river to carve out an existence was a decent alternative for the otherwise rebuffed group!

Actually, I believe the "issue" is that they have created an "oasis" adjacent to despair and actually provided economic opportunities for those who wish to partake rather than throw bombs. I suspect a lot of the ugliness is motivated by some of the same ugliness in this country from the have nots against those who have prospered. Leaders tend to do that .. demonize those who have and blame those who have for their shortcomings as leaders and their utter failure to improve the lives of those who project them into "leadership."

While the "leadership" enjoy the "opportunities" behind the scene.

Some common sense from Peggy Noonan:



Misplaying America’s Hand With Iran

The president’s desperation for a foreign-policy legacy is leading toward a bad nuclear deal—and a dangerous one.

By Peggy Noonan
April 2, 2015 8:06 p.m. ET

Barack Obama, six years into his presidency, does not have a foreign-policy legacy—or, rather, he does and it’s bad. He has a visceral and understandable reluctance to extend and overextend U.S. power, but where that power has been absent, violence and instability have filled the void. When he overcomes his reluctance to get involved, he picks the wrong place, such as Libya, where the tyrant we toppled was better than many of those attempting to take his place.

Syria, red lines, an exploding Mideast, a Russian president who took the American’s measure and made a move, upsetting a hard-built order that had maintained for a quarter-century since the fall of the Soviet Union—what a mess.

In late February, at a Washington meeting of foreign-policy intellectuals, Henry Kissinger summed up part of the past six years: “Ukraine has lost Crimea; Russia has lost Ukraine; the U.S. has lost Russia; the world has lost stability.”

What Barack Obama needs is a foreign-policy win, and not only for reasons of legacy. He considers himself a serious man, he wants to deal constructively with a pressing, high-stakes international question, and none fits that description better than Iran and nuclear weapons. And so the talks in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Here is the fact. The intention behind a deal—to stop Iran from developing, and in the end using, nuclear weapons—could not be more serious and crucial. The Arab world has entered a war phase that may go for decades. Its special threat is that the struggle is not only an essential one—Sunni vs. Shiite, in a fight to the end—but that it engenders and is marked by what British Prime Minister David Cameron has called “the death cult.” Many in the fight have no particular fear of summoning the end of the world.

Once Iran has what used to be called the bomb, there will be a race among nearby nations—Persian Gulf states, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey—to get their own. As each state builds its arsenal, there will be an increased chance that freelancers, non-states and sub-states will get their hands on parts of it.

The two most boring words in history are “nuclear proliferation.” Jimmy Carter made them so on Oct. 28, 1980, when, in a presidential debate, he announced that his 12-year-old daughter, Amy, had told him that the great issue of the day was the control of nuclear arms. America laughed: So that’s where the hapless one gets his geopolitical insights.

Nuclear proliferation has been a problem for so long that we no longer talk or think about it. But in the current moment in the Mideast, we’re not talking “nuclear proliferation” in the abstract. It’s more like talking about the spread of nuclear weapons among the inmates of an institution for the criminally insane.

Here I digress, but only to get near the heart of the matter.

There are many reasons nuclear weapons have not been used since 1945. One is that the U.S. was not evil and the Soviet Union was not crazy. It was also a triumph of diplomacy, of imperfect but ultimately sound strategic thinking, that kept the unthinkable from happening. (There was luck involved, too.)

Great credit is due also to a book. It is what made the future use of nuclear weapons unthinkable.

“Then a tremendous flash of light cut across the sky. Mr. Tanimoto has a distinct recollection that it travelled from east to west, from the city toward the hills. It seemed a sheet of sun.” That is from the first pages of “Hiroshima,” by the journalist John Hersey, published in a full issue of the New Yorker magazine almost exactly a year after the Aug. 6, 1945, dropping of the atomic bomb on that city. Soon after, the article was published as a book.

Both caused a sensation, painting for the first time, in plain, subdued style, the facts of what really happened when a nuclear weapon was used on a human population. He wrote of people vaporized, radiation sickness and poisoned water. “The fluid from their melted eyes had run down their cheeks.” A man reached for a woman and the skin came off her hand like a glove. In a city of 245,000 almost 100,000 were immediately killed, and another 100,000 left desperately sick and wounded.

“Hiroshima” did a huge and historic thing. It not only told the world what happened when a nuclear weapon was used, it single-handedly put a powerful moral taboo on its future use. After “Hiroshima,” which sold millions of copies, no one wanted it to happen again.

But now it is almost 70 years since that book. It isn’t required reading anymore. In that time nuclear weapons have only become more powerful. But the world hasn’t really thought about nuclear war since 1989, as if the threat ended when the Soviet Union did.

What do the wild, young, apocalyptic warriors of the Mideast know of the old taboo?

***

To Iran, and the negotiations:

What is needed is a deal that keeps Iran from developing nuclear weapons, period. A bad deal will be worse and more dangerous than no deal. A bad deal will—perhaps—slow the deadly project, not end it.

None of the reporting out of Lausanne has suggested that a helpful agreement would emerge. Tuesday’s deadline for production of a basic framework was missed; on Thursday, a framework, the contents of which were not revealed, was announced. But President Obama is not known as a good negotiator. He and his White House have given the impression that they want a deal too much—they need the win. It isn’t good when you let the people on the other side know how much you need it.

Meanwhile there were interesting journalistic reflections from left and right. The headline on Ari Shavit’s April 2 piece in Haaretz, the liberal Israeli newspaper, called the talks a “march of folly.” Past sanctions on Iran cratered their economy and forced them to the table, but now, from a position of weakness, he wrote, they are “overcoming the West” with “cunning” and “resolve.” Signs point to a bad deal in June and a bad deal will be dangerous.

K.T. McFarland, writing online for Fox News this week, opposed the talks from a different angle. The “neoconservatives who believe the only way to stop Iran’s bomb is to bomb Iran” are wrong, she said, as is President Obama when he says the choice is a deal or war. “Our policy . . . should not be Obama-style capitulation or Bush-style war,” but increasing political pressure through increased economic sanctions. More than 70% of Iranians are under age 30, Ms. McFarland noted. “How long will they tolerate being ruled by a handful of 80-year-old mullahs who have pushed their economy into free fall?”

Everything about the talks has had the look of a bad deal, one that will not stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions but will allow that nation, in Mr. Shavit’s words, to “cast a giant shadow on world peace.”

Mr. Obama should have walked when Tuesday’s deadline failed to hold. Absent an ultimate deal, something good can always happen down the road. With a bad final deal nothing good will happen, and bad things will surely follow.

In the end he should toughen the sanctions and wait out the mullahs. No one in America would be angry. Most would think “Wow, if he walked, it must have been a terrible deal—give him credit for trying!” Everyone else would be relieved.

That would enhance his foreign-policy legacy. That would be a win.

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