Our Left said that the war President Bush initiated with Congressional backing against Iraq in 2003 was a lesson to every dictator that they need nuclear weapons to deter an American invasion.
Yet President Obama overthrew (without Congressional approval) a dictator in 2011 (getting him killed will do that) who had voluntarily given up his nuclear and chemical weapons program under a deal with President Bush.
And President Obama concluded a deal that supposedly disarmed Syria of chemical weapons in 2013 yet this year trains rebels and says we could use air power to protect them.
Which may explain why Syria still has non-covered (by the deal--but still banned) chlorine gas to use and why there are indications Assad didn't turn over all banned material.
Yet Iran, which still claims we are their foe (and has waged war on us for decades, killing hundreds of our military personnel in that time), agreed to give up their longstanding objective of a nuclear deterrent in this latest deal despite these lessons we've taught.
Got it.
UPDATE: Here's something the Iranians learned. Despite our overwhelming conventional and nuclear power, we are the weak horse and they are the strong horse in the Persian Gulf:
In an interview with Tasnim News Agency, Assembly of Experts member Hojat al-Islam Seyyed Mojtaba Taheri said that Soleimani’s speech focused on “Iraq, Syria, Yemen, America’s roles, the enemies of Islam and the presence of [the Islamic State] and takfiris in the region.”
Taheri added, “Gen. Soleimani said that the collapse of American power in the region has happened. He gave the factors for this collapse, and one of the most influential reasons for it is the strong logic of the Islamic Republic of Iran in various arenas.” One of the top headlines in Iranian news agencies this morning read, "The collapse of American power in the region has happened."
Gosh! How did that happen?
Well, President Obama did retreat massively from the shape of the deal he said we had to have:
Throughout the process, President Obama’s chief negotiators ignored nearly 40 years of open Iranian hostility toward America and our allies. They also chose to ignore the fact that Iran has repeatedly broken the terms of its previous international agreements — breaches that prove Tehran’s word is worth only as much as the paper it’s written on.
This is evident from the endless list of concessions the administration gave Iran, a sharp reversal of the president’s own words and his repeated assurances to the America people[.]
We retreated on ballistic missiles, enrichment, inspections with terms that don't allow Iran to cheat as easily, and an open-ended nature to stop--not delay--Iran from going nuclear.
Naturally, the Iranians believe that once we start retreating, there is no logical stopping point. Is it any wonder they believe God is on their side?
So they've got that going for them. Which is nice for them.
UPDATE: We dropped our demands and flopped like a fish. So now we have nuclear nonsense.
