Category Archives: Iran
Putin’s Quagmire
Vladimir Putin is in Syria killing people and breaking things. He told the US to get out of the way. Putin’s the new cop in the Middle East. He says Russia is part of an alliance to stop ISIS, like the alliance to stop Hitler. But he seems more interested in stopping the revolt against his guy, Bashar Assad.
Quagmire
Barack Obama is flexible. He showed no sign of humiliation. He even welcomed Putin but warned him about be getting into a quagmire. Then he got out of the way.
Happy Jewish New Year from Iran
Iranian good cop President Rouhani tweeted Happy Rash Hashanah wishes for the Jewish new year. In English, not on his Persian account. Earlier in the week Supreme Leader Khamenei announced that Israel will be gone in 25 years.
Iran Deal Bizarro World
It’s President Obama’s Bizarro World and we just live in it.
He created a parallel universe in order to pass the Iran Nuclear deal .
Critics believe the deal qualifies as a treaty. A treaty requires 2/3 Senate approval and that wasn’t about to happen. Just ask John Kerry. So the president made it an executive agreement. No approval needed.
Bizarro World
That was one indignity too far for Senator Bob Corker. Corker decided to defend the Senate’s honor by allowing a vote of disapproval of the executive agreement. Obama agreed, promising to veto a vote to disapprove. Overriding a veto requires a 2/3 vote by the full Congress.
It never came to that. The president was able to muster 42 Senate votes to keep the vote for disapproval from even making it to the floor.
Refugees Responsibility
IBD says that McKinley was our first colonialist president. Obama is our first anti-colonialist president. That explains why Mt. Mckinley is now just Denali. Nobody got hurt, except for some feelings here in Ohio.
AP
Refugees
The unraveling of colonial arrangements in the Middle East has been less benign. Refugees are flooding Europe.
The White House announced yesterday that it would accept 10,000 Syrian refugees in the coming year. John Kerry says the US might take up to 100,000 total refugees this year. A Washington Post editorial complains that’s less than half the number from our last big bug out – Vietnam in the 70’s.
Citizen Barack
In a 2008 campaign speech in Berlin Barack Obama called himself a “citizen of the world”. Whatever his path to citizenship, he hasn’t been a model citizen.
Since his humbling election to the presidency of just the United States, our Citizen of the World has been withdrawing America from the world. That’s left a big vacuum – if a vacuum can be big. Anyway, very bad guys have rushed in to fill the vacuum. The result has been a refugee crisis a WSJ editorial calls “the worst human catastrophe of the 21st century”.
Right on cue, enter Vladimir Putin. Russia is planning to send S-300 missiles to Iran.
During the Bush administration Putin complained about a planned missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. The purpose of the system was to deter Iranian missiles. In 2009 President Obama withdrew the system.
