The real parallels:
Iran’s motive for proposing to annihilate the Jewish State is the same as Hitler’s, and the world’s indifference to the prospect of another Holocaust is no different today than it was in 1938. It is the dead’s envy for the living.
Dying civilizations are the most dangerous, and Iran is dying. Its total fertility rate probably stands at just 1.6 children per female, the same level as Western Europe, a catastrophic decline from 7 children per female in the early 1980s. Iran’s present youth bulge will turn into an elderly dependent problem worse than Europe’s in the next generation and the country will collapse. That is why war is likely, if not entirely inevitable.
And Obama/Kerry seem determined to increase the likelihood, even if unwittingly.
[Update a few minutes later]
And then there’s this:
Obama’s commitment to rapprochement with Iran arises from deep personal identification with the supposed victims of imperialism. That is incongruous, to be sure. Persia spent most of its history as one of the nastier imperial powers, and its present rulers are no less ambitious in their pursuit of a pocket empire in the Shi’ite world. The roots of his policy transcend rationality. Israel can present all the evidence in the world of Iran’s plans to build nuclear weapons and delivery systems, and the Iranians can cut the Geneva accord into confetti. Obama will remain unmoved. His heart, like his late mother’s, beats for the putatively oppressed peoples of the so-called Third World.
I think that there is a lot of truth to D’Souza’s thesis.
This “Iran / Munich” comparison is stupid. First, comparing Iran’s military capability to Nazi Germany’s is comparing a flea to an elephant. Second, a temporary relaxation of some sanctions is nowhere near the same thing as handing over a chunk of somebody else’s territory.
Regarding anti-imperialism – I thought anti-imperialism was an American virtue. Didn’t we fight two wars against British imperialism? Didn’t we threaten to go to war against French imperialism in Mexico immediately after our Civil War? Didn’t Eisenhower twice refuse to intervene to help European imperialism (Suez and Vietnam)?
The more recent history of Iran (from 1800 on) has been British, Russian and US interventions in Iran, such as the 1953 US-sponsored coup that put the Shah in power, and our subsequent support of him and his secret police. Our history with Iran did not start in 1980.
Finally, Americans back the Iran deal by a 2-to-1 margin. There is no stomach for more war.
Modern (and Obama’s) “anti-imperialism” isn’t really anti-imperialism. It’s anti-west.
And the fact that the American people are weary of war doesn’t mean that they won’t get it, and hard.
Chris, from your link.
Unless Israel and Saudi Arabia strike, option #2 is guaranteed, because the deal does nothing to halt Iran’s nuclear program. The only reason Iran is at the table is they saw how completely inept the Administration was in Libya, Egypt, Iraq, and Syria. I’d say it’s like taking candy from a baby, but it’s like taking candy from a baby that’s waddling around giving adults pieces of candy.
comparing Iran’s military capability to Nazi Germany’s is comparing a flea to an elephant.
More like a bobcat or puma to an elephant. Iran has a sizable regular military establishment and also has more than 500,000 Quds Force islamist fanatics well-armed and organized. Some unknown number of these latter troops are currently on the ground in Syria supporting Assad. And of course if we should be so foolish as to allow the Persians to complete deliverable nukes, the flea vs. elephant comparison with Nazi Germany becomes true, but with the numerator and denominator transposed.
This sizable regular military couldn’t defeat Iraq. Why exactly does anybody think it could defeat a more competent foe?
Obama wouldn’t even keep troops in Iraq after we’d stabilized the situation (letting it fall back into chaos). There’s no way he’d fight the Iranians on behalf of all the former US allies that he’s busily alienating, and Iran knows it. Once Iran gains a nuclear strike capability, they’ll be able to establish a nuclear umbrella over the Persian Gulf, and we’ll become reluctant to maintain aircraft carrier strike groups there, further diminishing US influence in the region. Meanwhile the Sunni states near Iran will have to develop their own nuclear weapons programs to counter Iran, and then we’ll have a nuclear armed Middle East – full of apocalyptic crazy people who’ve been fighting a religious war for their entire existence, and who sit around reading “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
Of course eventually this all leads to a nuclear jihad in Europe, followed by the annihilation of all the dense, built up urban areas of the US that voted for Obama. At some point, standing in the ashes of a global conflagration, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee will awkwardly rescind his award, noting that Obama’s record could only have been topped if Genghis Khan and Atilla the Hun paid Napoleon to hire Adolf Hitler to shoot Archduke Ferdinand.
There’s no comparison between the Iran deal and Munich deal, but let my last word be an echo of Chamberlain: There is no stomach for more war.
Alas, it doesn’t really matter the comparison; Iran has already noted that the WH lied to the US people and the deal is invalid. 2 in every 3 Americans back a deal that doesn’t exist. Sort of like the number of American’s that backed the fantasy of Obamacare. Now that reality has set in, how’s the polling going?
“If you like your deal with Iran, you can keep your deal with Iran”
I find this interesting:
“Obama’s commitment to rapprochement with Iran arises from deep personal identification with the supposed victims of imperialism.”
If so, then why hasn’t Obama done a “pivot to (sub-saharan) Africa”?