Among the more disturbing questions emerging from the renewed use of gas by Bashar Assad is whether Barack Obama and his loyal minions (Kerry, Rhodes, Rice, etc.) actually knew the Syrian leader still had chemical weapons, even though they trumpeted the opposite to the American public on numerous occasions. Either they lied or were so extraordinarily credulous they believed — apparently without verification — the Syrians had truly rid themselves of those WMDs, in which case Obama — not Trump — was Vladimir Putin’s personal “useful idiot.”
(It may even be time to take a second look at the contention of some that Saddam transferred his chemical weapons to Syria way back when, which would be a surprise vindication of Bush 43.)
Whatever the case, it’s “heavy water” under the bridge at this point, but should alert us even more to the absolute necessity of revealing everything known about the also Obama-instigated Iran Deal, all its myriad hidden codicils and clauses that remain mysterious to the citizens of this country in whose name they were allegedly signed. That agreement too could be the product of useful idiocy, a sucker punch from the mullahs. The devil, in this case, is very much in the details, few of which we know, except that the Iranians refused to give a baseline development level for their nuclear weapons program in this first place. In a sense, that made everything else moot.
Nevertheless, Iran has been the beneficiary of this deal to the tune of billions of dollars, some evidently in cash, much of which has been and is being spent in Syria, if not directly on chemical weapons, on a war that no less than the former chief rabbi of Israel, himself a Holocaust survivor, has called another Holocaust. Iran is also using the money to finance Hezbollah in that war, simultaneously arming those terrorist thugs with tons of modern weapons, including long range missiles, even while the mullahs use Hezbollah’s guerrillas as cannon fodder to spare Iran’s own quasi-terrorist Revolutionary Guard. The Islamic Republic’s obvious goal is to control both Syria and Iraq by proxies. A victorious Assad would be Iran’s boy as much as Russia’s, possibly more.
The Trump administration should expose this deal in its entirety to public view now. If that means Iran pulls out of the agreement — as they have warned — so be it. The transparency is worth whatever minimal insurance against a nuclear-armed Iran might be inherent in these evanescent documents. After seeing just how much insurance against chemical weapons was inherent in Obama’s deal with Putin over the crossing of our then-president’s “red line,” one could be skeptical that there is any at all. Indeed, what little we know of the Iran Deal leads one to believe that it would be simple for the mullahs to be as busy as ever on their nuclear program. That they are allied with North Korea makes this all the more likely.
To Win the Real War in Syria, We Must Defeat Iran
Further to be investigated is Obama’s peculiar desire to make a deal with these same mullahs from the very beginning of his administration or even before. Indeed, Obama representatives have been accused of meeting with both Hamas and Iran during his first presidential campaign. These meetings are better documented than Trump’s supposed collusion with Putin, which seems so unlikely now.
In a continuation of that behavior, Obama later famously ignored the pleas for support by the Iranian pro-democracy demonstrators during the Green Revolution of 2009. “Obama, you are either with us or are you with them!” they chanted. Obama was evidently with them. He didn’t want to disrupt his rapport with Ahmadinejad in order to make his dreamed-of deal. (You can see it all on YouTube here. As we used to say in the sixties, “Which side are you on?”)
Obama and Kerry then welcomed the election of Hassan Rouhani, whom their cheering section in the willfully ignorant mainstream media ludicrously called a “moderate” when he was, if anything, worse than Ahmadinejad and has since been responsible for many more murders of political prisoners than his predecessor. They made their deal with Rouhani, who is obviously now cooperating in the maintenance of peace…. Well, not exactly.
What’s behind all this? As I said at the outset, this is disturbing — liberalism and progressivism turned upside down, at least according to their own self-described principles. Everything is situational. That Democrats like Schumer and Pelosi were so positive about Trump’s actions in Syria is a sure sign that not so deep down they were more than a little uncomfortable when Obama did nothing after a similar gassing. Like a lot of people I would imagine, they had to bury their feelings and opinions in the name of party loyalty, what the French called mauvaise foi. They should have felt the same way yet more intensely after Obama’s execrable non-reaction to the Green Revolution. Maybe they did, but we’ll never know until someone leaks it out in a memoir. We didn’t need to send in the Marines. All Obama would have had to have done was to say a few words of encouragement echoed by the international community and the revolution might have happened. It was close enough.
Thank God there’s a new sheriff in town. Maybe there will be some hope for the citizens of Iran, eventually, some support for regime change after eight years of kowtowing to the mullahs. But for now let’s at least clear up the terms of the mysterious deal, its provenance and its usefulness, if any. No time like the present.
Roger L. Simon is an award-winning novelist, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and co-founder of PJ Media. His latest book is I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn’t Already. You can follow him on Twitter @rogerlsimon.
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