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PrintMay 26, 2009
Time to Remember an Obama Promise
This is a good time to remember an Obama campaign pledge that could come into play any day now.
During the second debate between presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain, Obama said this:
"We cannot allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon. It would be a game-changer in the region. Not only would it threaten Israel, our strongest ally in the region and one of our strongest allies in the world, but it would also create a possibility of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists. And so it's unacceptable. And I will do everything that's required to prevent it. And we will never take military options off the table."
Any wiggle room there? Doesn't seem so. When someone says "We cannot allow...," that seems definitive on its face. Particularly when coupled with "we will never take military options off the table."
So the only wiggle room is to say, when the time comes to break the pledge, "Things have changed since the campaign. I inherited a Middle East situation made even more complex by the negligence of the previous administration to engage in serious diplomacy."
But then candidate Obama did say, "I will do everything that's required to prevent it" (Iran getting a nuclear weapon), then that means "everything." Right?
Well, that's not right according the Dick Morris, who, in an article posted in a Rasmussen Report, wrote this:
"Those sunshine Jewish patriots who voted for Obama must realize that we, as Jews, are witnessing the possible end of Israel. We are in the same moral position as our ancestors were as they watched Hitler rise but did nothing to pressure their favorite liberal Democratic president, FDR, to take any real action to save them or even to let Jewish refugees into the country. If we remain complacent, we will have the same anguish at watching the destruction of Israel that our forebears had in witnessing the Holocaust.Because one thing is increasingly clear: Barack Obama is not about to lift a finger to stop Iran from developing the bomb. And neither is Hillary Clinton."
Morris was reacting to a May 22 column by Jerusalem Post writer Caroline Click wherein she wrote,
"During his ad hoc press conference with Netanyahu, Obama made clear that he will not lift a finger to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. And acting as Obama's surrogate, for the past two weeks CIA Director Leon Panetta has made clear that Obama expects Israel to also sit on its thumbs as Iran develops the means to destroy it."
Meanwhile, about all we can do are hide and watch.
