7-17-15

Ramirez - Investors Business Daily

...In 628, Muhammad agreed to a 10-year truce with the Quraysh tribe of Mecca. Two years later, when Muslim forces had gathered strength, Muhammad broke the treaty and marched into Mecca.

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I had lunch with a liberal friend yesterday who admitted that he was  a little sorry I didn't seem to be too on board with the President's Iran deal.

I told him that I said the deal made me sick to my stomach, not that I was necessarily against it. But the more I read about it, the more foolish it seems.

Noah Feldman wrote a telling piece for Bloomberg yesterday, Iran deal makes E.U. a power broker that illustrates the structural impediments to "snapback", which includes relying on the E.U. and the United Nations.

...there’s the verification role that the deal gives the EU going forward. According to Paragraph 78, if the IAEA isn’t satisfied with Iran’s compliance, it must go to a “Joint Commission” of eight members. The commission can “advise on the necessary means to resolve the IAEA's concerns” -- if and only if at least five members agree.
Iran is a member of the commission, as is Russia and China -- so it’s likely that three votes would almost automatically take the Iranian side in any dispute with the IAEA. That leaves the other members of the joint commission: France, Germany, the U.S., the U.K. and the EU itself. The U.S. can be expected to side with the IAEA, and it’s likely that its traditional European allies would agree. That gives the decisive fifth vote to the EU.
No doubt the U.S. assumes that the EU will do what its most powerful and important members want. Seen in this light, the treaty is using the EU as a kind of proxy mechanism to give the U.S. the capacity to push Iran not to defy IAEA inspectors.

Doesn't give me a lot of hope. The Europeans and U.N. have been notoriously one sided in their approach to mideast politics for decades.

I am not going to go through a laundry list at this point, I frankly don't have time. But I will tell you that a quick look at any comments section on practically any liberal website you read quickly points to the splendid triangulation job that now points to the real culprits in the area's general equation. Of course we are talking about the big bully Israel and any jew not of the squishy J street variety, make that any jew that believes in Israel's right to exist and defend itself. 

While the liberal leaders are careful not to make the nexus about the identity of the real impediments and antagonists to Obama's grand vision, the troops on the ground are under no such duress or compulsion.

We need to invade the pesty and obdurate zionist regime and dismember their nuclear capability, then lets see how long that they last in the neighborhood. People have become a little jew weary, tired of hearing about poor Israel and the tribe's long history of persecution. What happened to the Israel that would take care of these matters by themselves and not ask anybody else's permission? In any case, the jewish liberal who supports Israel is now viewed with suspicion by the left if not totally anathema.

I have never voted republican in my life, finding their social policies dreadfully abhorrent, but suddenly to many eyes I am a neocon. I can't stand Netanyahu and never could but I am definitely drifting right at the moment. I have real doubts about Israel's ability to survive when Iran has all this new dough to throw around to Hezbollah and Hamas to buy new missiles. Iranian missiles which by the way will soon be capable of hitting targets in the United States. Obama is almost clinical in discussing how this deal might embolden and strengthen Iran's threats and campaigns against its neighbors. Throw a little more money and weapons at Israel and the Saudis, they'll shut up.

So forgive me if I can't wax rapturously about our great leader's plan to turn swords into plowshares. Just don't think we are there yet. Iran is in the midst of a major national argument about what it wants to be in the future. I recognize that the young people have a serious desire for normalcy. But the Ayatollah and the Revolutionary Guard are still the last word and a prudent person doesn't make a bet based on how he hopes things will turn out. He takes people at their word and watches their actions. Doesn't act precipitously until the thing shakes out.

The shadow commander of the Revolutionary Guard, Qassam Suleimani, gets a bit of relief in this deal. 

According to Tuesday's agreement, Suleimani will be removed from the EU's nuclear-proliferation-related sanctions upon "transition date," which will occur in eight years, or when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) concludes that Iran is in fact following the deal's terms, and pursuing a wholly peaceful nuclear program — whichever is earliest.
The same time frame applies to the UN asset freeze on Suleimani, while his travel ban would automatically expire in five years, or when the IAEA reaches its conclusion.  The eventual lifting of all UN sanctions was a central tenet of the November 2013 Joint Plan of Action agreed to by Iran and the P5+1, which set the stage for Tuesday's deal. The P5+1 are the five permanent members of the Security Council — the US, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China — and Germany.

Weekly Standard has its own interesting take on Suleimani.

From Obama’s perspective, the Sunnis aren’t going to stop ISIS—in fact, they helped create it. However, the Iranians can do it, and plenty of other things as well. They can make sure Iraq stays stable—or the administration hopes Iran will play that role because it has no other options. Same, the White House thinks, with Syria, where Iran can manage the inevitable transition, after Assad steps aside, thanks to the Iranians, or is killed. The way Obama sees it, the Quds Force can be the administration’s boots on the ground.

Rhetorical flourish? From the Jerusalem Post:

The US pledge three months ago for “anytime, anyplace” access to Iran’s nuclear facilities was more of a rhetorical flourish than anything else, US Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said on Thursday “I think this is one of those circumstances where we have all been rhetorical from time to time,” Sherman, who played a central role in the negotiations, said in a conference call with Israeli diplomatic reporters.
“That phrase, ‘anytime, anywhere,’ is something that became popular rhetoric, but I think people understood that if the IAEA felt it had to have access, and had a justification for that access, that it would be guaranteed, and that is what happened.”

I read the Obama presser transcript and he seems raring for an opportunity to defend his crown jewel. The last part is what got me.

The last thing I would say, and this is a longer-term issue, is we have to address the youth in the region with jobs and opportunity and a better vision for the future so that they are not tempted by the nihilistic, violent, dead-end that organizations like ISIL offer. Again, we can't do that entirely by ourselves, but we can partner with well-intentioned organizations, states, NGOs, religious leaders in the region. We have to do a better job of that than we've been doing so far.

This is a typical Obama administration refrain that makes you pine for the days when we got to listen to Marie Harf on a regular basis. We need to give these guys jobs, win their hearts and minds.

We’re killing a lot of them and we’re going to keep killing more of them. So are the Egyptians, so are the Jordanians. They’re in this fight with us. But we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that lead people to join these groups, whether it’s lack of opportunity for jobs, whether…

Yesterday a well to do, young Arab American killed four marines in Chattanooga, Tennessee. This is a man with an engineering degree. Lived in a nice house. Intern at the TVA. This follows a real pattern, be it Major Nidal or the Texas bombing suspect from a few years ago with a chemistry and engineering degree. Many of the terrorists have been very well educated, and were found to have been living quite privileged lives.

Commenter at the Daily Kos says it sounds like a typical workplace shooting, a guy with a grudge. Please.

We are not dealing with a jobs problem or a class issue here, we are instead dealing with a theologic and cultural problem, with a creed that unfortunately places little or no value in innocent and/or non muslim lives. Why do the Obamaites continue to push their tired, bullshit narrative? The sooner this administration and the rest of us confront this elephant in the room in an honest way the better off we will all be.

associated press