PrintWhat caused the Iran deal fiasco?
One week after the Senate's infamous rejection of their responsibility as our representatives to vote on the ethics, rationality, and wisdom of trusting Iran's hate-filled clerics with access to nuclear weapons, it is time to assess what caused that epic failure.
First and foremost is the self-aggrandizing decision of President Obama to pursue this plan for the sake of his legacy, or whatever other delusional or malevolent intension he has in mind for the Middle East in general and the United States of America in particular. Much has been written about this already, and about the fecklessness of those senators who stopped a simple majority vote on the Iran deal. It is the other contributing reasons that deserve more coverage.
The next most significant cause of the calamitous Iran deal is the American public education system. The modern public education system is more concerned with politically correct minutia than the actual dangers posed by Iran, North Korea, and Putin's newly aggressive Russia. As argued in a 60-second video here, the typical understanding of a nuclear weapon is in the form of a 1950s-style mushroom cloud that is devastating to cities but not existentially threatening to America as a whole. A modern nuclear weapon is as far from the 1950s version of a nuclear bomb as the iPhone is from a rotary-dial wired telephone.
Nuclear weapons have evolved over the last 60 years. One nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapon mounted on a relatively simple SCUD missile and exploded some 80 miles over Illinois could destroy almost all of the electrical systems and electronic circuits in continental America. That means no post-1970s cars or trucks, no communication systems, no modern health care, fuel, food distribution, water, sewage or anything else that separates our technology-rich lives from Iron Age people – and those people all knew how to grow their own food.
Next in line as a primary cause of the inaptly named "Iran deal" is the so-called "free press," which in large part functions as a disinformation system every bit as potent as its collectivist counterparts – for good reason. As a simple example, compare actual video from the anti-Iran-Deal protest in Washington, D.C. on 9/9/2015, showing 7,000-10,000 protestors, with press reports of the gathering:
DailyKos.com - Wed Sep 09, 2015 at 01:31 PM PDT
"We are led by very, very stupid people," Trump told several hundred Tea Party members gathered on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol, calling the Iran deal "incompetently" negotiated.
USAToday.com 4:47 p.m. EDT September 9, 2015
We are led by very, very stupid people," Trump told several hundred Tea Party members gathered on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol, calling the Iran deal "incompetently" negotiated. (Hmmm …)
NPR.org - September 09, 2015 5:37 PM ET (Publically funded?)
Trump, who leads the Republican presidential field in virtually all national polls, had his trademark bluntness on full display. He told the crowd of hundreds on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol that he has experience with negotiating, and that the United States got a bad deal with Iran.
Hundreds of people stood in sweltering heat on the west lawn of the Capitol for the rally; many huddled under a large tree far from the stage to shade themselves from the blazing sun.
The event drew several hundred people who showed equal amounts of contempt for the Islamic Republic of Iran, President Barack Obama—and the congressional leadership of the Republican Party.
Hundreds of people gathered on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol for a combination political rally, church revival that featured shofar blowing and loud boos following any remarks referring to Iran, President Barack Obama and any politician who supported the nuclear agreement with Iran.
Clearly, we cannot count on the media to be unbiased or even competent in their coverage of political material that does not fit their mantra.
Finally, we in the conservative media deserve some small share of the blame. We simply are not as well-organized as the shared-brain Democratic Party and their media assets, and we were not able to overcome their doubling down on their own lies about "war-mongering" and "peace in our time." Despite some great and effective attempts to educate a largely lethargic American public, too much of the heavy lifting against the Iran deal was left to Israeli organizations, who did an excellent job, but their focus naturally was on the immediate threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon to the Jews in Israel. At one time, that would have been effective, but today, the American people are more interested in what's in it for them.
Fortunately, the final verdict on the Iran deal is not yet in. President Obama wasted a lot of political capital on this, and perceptions of his incompetence or malevolence will only become clearer with time. Iran has cheated, is cheating, and will cheat on its newfound supporter in the White House, and the consequences for America will not be good.
This doesn't let us off the hook. We have an opportunity to wrap Senate Democrats and others in the Iran deal, but we need to do it in a way that communicates well to Millennials, who think at internets speeds but often with Twitter-sized attention spans. Dennis Prager's work is a great start, but it needs the technological appeal of something similar to but even better than this. And that something needs to be both developed, funded and made freely available in time for the next elections.
