Iranian Seizure of American Sailors: The Message

By Douglas V. Gibbs

Shortly after President Obama, and other global appeasers, struck a deal with Iran over their nuclear ambitions, and literally hours before Obama's State of the Union Speech, ten American U.S. Navy military personnel were taken hostage by the Iranians.  The sailors were held on Iran's Farsi Island, and then released after Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry slobbered all over themselves in apologies for the Americans daring to venture into Iranian waters as a result of a mechanical failure.  Vice President Biden went so far as to say that the Iranian military was simply rescuing the two U.S. Navy vessels in distress.  While I watched CNN report on the story, I noticed that the not-so-fair-and-balanced cable network refused to call the detained American military personnel "hostages," and instead said that the sailors were "arrested."  Using the word "arrested" implies that the Navy sailors were at fault, and deserved to be taken hostage.  Republican U.S. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, when he came on the CNN broadcast, immediately used the word "hostage."

The Obama administration did all they could to appease, and grovel, before the Iranians over this situation, and will likely say that the subservience of America's leaders was what led to the release of those hostages (they want to recognize and reward obedient behavior, after all).  Meanwhile, while John Kerry was calling the Iranians "kind" for releasing the hostages, one wonders if the liberal left Democrats remember that it was the Iranians who supplied armor-piercing IEDs that killed hundreds of our personnel in Iraq, recently “test fired” rockets near a U.S. aircraft carrier, and that the Iranians are ignoring all of the terms they don't like in Obama's “nuke deal.”  And notice, the words from the Iranians were not so much against Obama, as they were against the United States Congress for daring to demand a continuance and increase of economic sanctions against Iran, saying this incident “should be a lesson to the troublemakers in the U.S. Congress.”

Peace is achieved through strength, and a perception of strength.  Obama has humiliated our allies, and has done all he can to show weakness to the enemy, and the result is our enemies acting arrogant toward us, our allies no longer trust us, and now we live in a world on the verge of numerous wars, and perhaps a massive world war.

The captured sailors were filmed, and the propaganda video shows our soldiers humiliated and on their knees.  As expected by a totalitarian, evil regime like the one in Iran, they cannot be trusted, and they were doing all they could to broadcast the video throughout Iran and the larger Middle-East in order to portray the perception that Iran, through this situation in the Persian Gulf, made the U.S. military cower.

While the apologies are flying, my first thought is that first of all, if a President who had the integrity and aura of someone like Ronald Reagan was President, Iran would not have even dared to take the sailors into custody in the first place.  Second, if hostages were taken, the truly American President would not be apologizing, he would be ensuring that Iran paid for it, and would not act in such an arrogant way again against the United States of America.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary