Hamas War

Friday, November 15, 2013

Obama, The Appeasement President

United States President Barack Hussein Obama has it all wrong.  Being nice to a dangerous bully does not make him nice; it makes him more dangerous and powerful.  Tightening sanctions against Iran will not cause war.
Obama warns of 'unintended' effect of more Iran sanctionsUS President Barack Obama warned Thursday against imposing further sanctions on Iran, saying a deal would set back Tehran's quest for nuclear weapons capability and prevent the "unintended consequences" of war.
If the sanctions got Iran to the negotiating table that should show that there was some value to them. Although in all honesty, I don't see any great accomplishment in Iran's agreement to "half" their production.
"What we have done is seen the possibility of an agreement in which Iran would halt advances on its program," Obama told a news conference a week after talks involving the United States and Iran in Geneva.
That is worse than no agreement.

  • It officially sanctions Iranian nuclear development
  • It shows western, especially United States' weakness towards Iran 
  • It trusts Iran, taking them at their word
The bottom line is that it's all a farce.

Hat tip IMRA
The IAEA-Iran Agreement: A Palliative?INSS Insight No. 485, November 14, 2013
The agreement between the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran, announced on November 11, 2013, is a culmination of sorts of many years of disagreement between these two parties. The IAEA has long sought the right to inspect all nuclear-related facilities and sites in Iran, including the right to search for undeclared facilities. More specifically, the IAEA wanted Iran to reinstate IAEA rights under the Additional Protocol, which permits intrusive inspections, and to address the many questions regarding the possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program. Yet while the new agreement is “nice to have,” it does not have much more than a placebo effect, where the patient, in this case the world, believes that it is receiving a true palliative. Unfortunately, this is not the case here.
This would all be funny if it wasn't so potentially tragic. It's the curse of those who don't learn from history being forced to repeat it.  Deja vu, it's appeasement time again.
Chamberlain and Hitler 
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaAppeasement in a political context, is a diplomatic policy of making political or material concessions to a (potential) enemy power (or powers) in order to avoid a threatened conflict.[1] Appeasement was used by European democracies in the 1930s who wished to avoid war with the dictatorships of Germany and Italy, bearing in mind the horrors of World War I.
The term is most often applied to the foreign policy of the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain towards Nazi Germany between 1937 and 1939. His policies of avoiding war with Germany have been the subject of intense debate for seventy years among academics, politicians and diplomats. The historians' assessments have ranged from condemnation for allowing Adolf Hitler's Germany to grow too strong, to the judgement that he had no alternative and acted in Britain's best interests. At the time, these concessions were widely seen as positive, and the Munich Pact concluded on 30 September 1938 among Germany, Britain, France and Italy prompted Chamberlain to announce that he had secured "peace for our time".[2]
It didn't work against Hitler, and it certainly won't work against Iran.  Did Barack Hussein Obama and his advisers and staff ever learn basic World History?

2 comments:

NormanF said...

Israel purues the same wrong-headed policy towards the PLO.

Netanyahu needs to take a refresher course in world history as well.

No dictatorship has ever kept an agreement with a free country unless it was in its interests.

Both Obama and Netanyahu believe soft power can make their adversaries more pliable and willing to live in peace. They are mistaken.

Batya said...

Norman, so true. Bibi makes strong speeches and weak policy.