The Left's track record on international relations

One reason why conservatives don’t trust the Left on the Iran deal, without yet reading it, is that their track record is shaky at best and destructive at worst for American interests.

Let’s review things cursorily.

The 1973 Paris Peace Accords told the North Vietnamese to remain up north. But then the Left swept into power in 93rd Congress in 1974, and they cut aid to South Vietnam, so Saigon fell in 1975 on the heels of Nixon’s resignation. At the time, Kerry testified before Congress and assured them no widespread massacre would occur. He was fatally wrong. The peace and our partial victory -- that’s right, our victory -- was lost.

In the late 1970s President Carter misread the Iranian revolution. Apparently he thought the change in government, allowing the Supreme Leader to accumulate power, along with the Guardian Council to veto legislation that did not conform to sharia, would bring peace. The ensuing hostage crisis humiliated his administration.

In 1983 Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union the Evil Empire, but the Left, missing the obvious, excoriated him as a know-nothing. For all I know, they may have called him “insensitive” to their needs. But he was right. One usually is when one states the obvious.

In the 1994 American-North Korean Agreed Framework, North Korea was supposed to suspend its nuclear program in exchange for more light-water reactors, which hinders development of nuclear weapons. North Korea was supposed to allow the IAEA to inspect their program, but the regime blocked the inspections. And North Korea resumed their program. The framework was a failure.

At the end of 2011, Obama withdrew all the troops from Iraq, and like the North Vietnamese communists, ISIS swept into the vacuum and is now wreaking great evil in the area and expanding their reach. There had been enough peace in the region that we could have maintained it for the next several decades with a military base, as we have in Japan and Germany and notably South Korea. But Obama miscalculated.

In 2009, Hillary’s reset button with Russia didn’t stop the Putin regime from annexing Crimea in 2014 and the bullying of Ukraine, still ongoing.

Saudi Arabia and our allies in the region no longer trust us.

Worst of all, because it illustrates a wrongheaded utopian vision of the world, shortly after Obama swore the oath of office in Jan. 2009, he went to Egypt and Turkey and said let’s be friends. We’re not at war with Islam (and we’re not, but with radical, violent Islam). “Look at my middle name! It’s Arab!” he said, in effect. “We want a new beginning,” implying Bush was the problem; Obama the solution. Then he boarded Air Force One and put his feet up on the table, dusted off his hands, smiled, and gazed out over the horizon at no one in particular. Afterwards, radical Islam went on the march.

In 2009, he didn’t support the Green Revolution in Iran, but instead validated the sham election results.

In 2012, In Benghazi, Libya, an administration official told our military to stand down from coming to the aid of our embassy. Our ambassador and his staff were murdered in a multi-hour attack.

In 2012, regarding Assad’s threat to use of chemical weapons, Obama’s “red lines” of reprisals became no lines, when Assad indeed used gas in August 2013.

Several times now an Iranian politician or general has said Israel should be wiped off the map. Recently large crowds chanted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” on al-Quds day -- their holy Take-Over-Jerusalem Day.

This history of miscalculations and misreadings show the Left to be like little children who don’t understand stranger danger. They miss the obvious.

That’s why conservatives are, a priori, distrustful of the Iran deal.

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