More like desperate, Mitt:
Barack Obama's letter to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei suggesting that the nation both sign a long-fought-over nuclear agreement and then join with the forces fighting the Islamic state was "beyond the pale" and "naive," Mitt Romney said Friday.
Oh, but there is a certain logic to it, Governor. After all, ISIS was and is beheading Americans right now; the mullahs only machine-gunned their own people by the thousands, and the last time they did so publicly was five and a half years ago, when, BTW, The One reacted pretty much the way he used to to "Uncle Jeremiah" Wright's racist sermons: with a quiet nod of approval. Even five months is an eternity in politics, much less half a decade. And that would foolishly assume that the American people pay any attention to overseas events, especially those not affecting Americans.
Besides, remember how clever O considers himself to be. I'm sure he considers his personal letter to the mullahgarchy's grand poobah to be a feat of Kissingerian jiu jitsu.
"I was frankly stunned that the President of the United States would write a letter of that nature, in effect legitimizing a nation and a leadership which is violating international norms and is threatening the world," the former Republican presidential nominee said during a speech at the inaugural Israeli American Council National Conference, reports the Washington Times.
"I find it astonishing. You can talk about a president talking to other world leaders. But to suggest that somehow we could somehow work together is something that is so far beyond the pale I was speechless."
You shouldn't have been, Mitt. You have to remember the one overarching character trait of Barack Hussein Obama: his cosmic ego. His multiversal strutting narcissism, and accompanying sociopathy. His delusions of godhood. Indeed, I actually consider this foolish correspondence to his turbaned, bespectacled, heavily-bearded "pen pal" to be a hopeful sign, because it suggests to me that maybe, just maybe, there is a possibility that he might leave office voluntarily in 803 days, 23 hours, and 45 minutes. In which case, he is entering the twilight of his presidency, and is engaged in what all lame-duck POTUS's become obsessed with in their last biennium: his legacy. The bigger the presidential ego, the bigger, more garish, and more potentially dangerous the legacy quest. That danger becomes more than potential when the POTUS in question is facing an opposition Congress, as has just been thunderously elected just four days ago, and therefore the only path to the history books (or, if you prefer, the only means of escape from your picture landing in history textbooks beside that of Millard Filmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and Jimmy Carter) is via foreign policy stunts.
That's what this "Dear Ali" letter is: a legacy stunt. It deeply vexes King Hussein that his infamous Cairo speech way back in 2009, which did everything but disinter Mohammed's corpse so that he could give the skeleton of "the prophet of Islam" a tonguebath, didn't magically "fix" the Middle East and "fundamentally transform" Obamerikastan - which is to say, himself - into the object of the same swooning, idolatrous worship that he used to get everywhere he went in...well, pretty much the rest of the world, and especially in Europe and here at home. This meant he had to actually (ugh) work at jihadizing the Middle East, and those efforts had uneven results - al Qaeda got Libya, ISIS has gotten much of Syria and Iraq, but his Muslim Brotherhood buddies couldn't hold onto Egypt, and Benjamin Netanyahu has aggravatingly refused to let his country become the twenty-first century Czechoslovakia. And, of course, the Islamic State had the temerity to embarrass him - because remember, EVERYTHING is about Barack Hussein Obama - with all those publicly inconvenient beheadings of Americans, necessitating his slow, agonizing metamorphosis into George W. Bush, which is akin to tying him up, holding his eyelids open with alligator clamps, and forcing him to watch as every club in his bag is slowly fed into a sulfuric acid bath, one at a time.
Another descriptive term for the Ayatollah correspondence is "Hail Mary". The One is tired of having to work at winning over the Muslim World, he's tired of them inexplicably and perplexingly laughing at him and rewarding his every genuflection and concession with one martial embarrassment after another no matter how many times he plaintively apologizes for that Texas cowboy he replaced, and into which our highly amused enemies are gleefully and sadistically turning him. So, with the stroke of his pen, he thinks he can, at a stroke, make an ally of his fellow Supreme Leader, get that long elusive nuclear deal, and secure Iranian cannon fodder to throw at ISIS so he can withdraw the now-2,000 U.S. "non-combat" troops he's had to humiliatingly send back into Iraq, make that whole miserable patch of the globe once and for all go away, and snag himself a second Nobel Peace Prize at the same time.
The joke is, his imperial majesty really thinks he's going to succeed, just as he always believes. His ego will never permit him to ask questions - such as: (1) What does Tehran really want? And (2) why have they never quite agreed to a nuclear deal despite over a decade of haggling? If he started letting his mind query in that direction, it might occur to him that what the mullahs really want is nuclear weapons to use against Israel, Europe, and us. It might dawn on him that the mullahs cannot be talked out of this dream, the only reason they've gabbered on and on for this long was to gain the time they needed to build an arsenal of warheads and the ICBMs to deliver them, and that the only way to deny the "Islamic Republic" their cherished endgame is precisely the thing he wants to do the least: invade Iran and remove the Islamic regime for good....Iraq style.
Thus the cruel (or hilarious, depending upon your point of view) irony: Barack Obama's prostrating letter to Ali Khamenei makes a rapprochement with Iran more unlikely than ever, because it completely eliminates any conceivable incentive the mullahs might still have for wanting to come to the table. Remember, the Regime capitulated to Tehran over a year ago on its nuclear weapons program, and there still isn't a piece of paper for The One to wave coming down the steps of Air Force One. There'd be a lesson in that, if he didn't think he already knows everything: Why should the mullahs even pretend to negotiate if we're so desperately chasing after them even after having given up the whole farm?
The first rule of negotiating is that the side that is willing to walk away first has the upper hand. President Ronald Reagan was willing to talk with his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev, on nuclear arms reduction, but he wasn't willing to make any concession just to get a worthless, or actively counterproductive, agreement and symbolic photo-op. At their first summit in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1986, Gorbachev played the usual hardball, demanding that Reagan give up SDI as an opening ante to any nuclear arms negotiation. Jimmy Carter would have happily folded like a K-Mart deck chair (or, more likely, would have nixed SDI in the first place and not have possessed that "chip" to forfeit in the first place); Reagan, being made of sterner stuff, not having (heh) "chickenshit" for brains, and not giving a rat's ass what the media thought about anything, told Gorby to go pound sand and walked out. The press called Reykjavik a "failure" and blamed the Gipper for it; Gorbachev, whose government's internal position, unbeknownst to anybody at the time, was steadily weakening, recognized that this was one American president he could neither bully nor play, and was - that's right - forced to come to the table and bargain for real. The USSR fell five years later, and the rest is history that Barack Obama obstinately refuses to learn.
This is what should have been the length, breadth, and width of the "negotiation" with the Iranian mullahgarchy over their nuclear ambitions (and this applies to the Bushies as much as the Obamunists): "Here are your choices: (1) You can pursue your dreams of becoming a nuclear power, and we will invade your country and send your regime the way of your late neighbor, Saddam Hussein; or (2) you can verifiably give up your dreams of becoming a nuclear power, and we will allow your regime to remain - for now." Then attach a short-term time limit. In essence, an ultimatum. The time to do so would have been in 2003, when the U.S. was the "strong horse" of the region and every last tinpot and despot was pissing his robes in (heh) terror that we were going to do precisely that, ultimatum or no ultimatum - especially the mullahs. Regrettably, Dubya let the moment pass, and the situation has degenerated into a circle jerk ever since.
That's the setting in which Barack Obama's personal appeal to Ali Khamenei was sent.
I have to believe that our enemies have moved beyond contempt, beyond roaring laughter, to sheer incredulity and suspicions of neuroses at this point. If O went to Tehran now for a summit, I think the odds would be at least even that he'd be captured and held hostage to some outrageous demand or demands - complete U.S. withdrawal from the entire Middle East (ahead of The One's schedule, of course), dismantling of Israel, probably both.
One other point: I think we owe Neville Chamberlain an apology. Yes, his appeasement provoked Nazi Germany into starting World War II, and his idiotic "sitzkrieg" guaranteed that Hitler would gain the upper hand in the European conflict, but eventually, even he recognized his folly and closed ranks after his sacking as Prime Minister in favor of Winston Churchill. Barack Hussein Obama will be "reaching out" to al Qaeda and ISIS and the mullahs and Vladimir Putin and the ChiComms and Kim jong-Un even after U.S. cities start going up in flames. Because Barack Hussein Obama is never wrong, and when he is, it's the fault of reality for not conforming to his demidivine will.
I'm sure it was in the letter.
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