Wednesday, March 04, 2015

Obama in danger of becoming irrelevant.

The war between Barack Obama, President of the US, and Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel is out in the open. Seems that both men detest each other intensely, which is dangerous because that may warp their judgement. Netanyahu was invited to speak to the Congress by John Boehner, Speaker of the House without informing the White House, which was deeply insulting to Obama. Obama refused to meet him on his visit and said that Netanyahu offered " nothing new " on Iran and 60 of the 232 Democrats in the House did not attend the speech. Netanyahu wants to destroy Iran's nuclear program, by bombing its centrifuges if need be. Iran has consistently lied about its nuclear ambitions and prolonged negotiations only to gain time. Apparently last year Obama threatened to shoot down Israeli jets if they tried to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. The day after Netanyahu's speech Secretary of State, John Kerry was in Geneva trying to negotiate a deal with Iran. Obama wants Iran to halt its Uranium enrichment for 10 years and a 1 year " breakout period ", which means it would take Iran a minimum of 1 year to construct a nuke if it so wanted. Iran has already rejected Obama's demands as " excessive and illogical " but wants to continue to negotiate. Iran wants to show that it is serious to get some of the sanctions on its economy lifted while continuing to enrich Uranium so that it has a stockpile with which it can make a bomb quickly. Is Obama relying on Iran to stop the Islamic State in Iraq? Even now Iranian forces are helping the Iraqi army in its assault on Saddam's home town of Tikrit. Iranian forces in the south of Iraq, which is Shia, Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Syria and the Hezbollah, a Shia ally of Iran, in Lebanon threatens to encircle Israel. Question is, does Obama care? He, after all, has been using drones to blow up hundreds of people. His term will be over in a couple of years and, if Israel is attacked, he can shrug his shoulders and call it ' collateral damage ' as Americans tend to do when killing innocent civilians. Iran must think that the US is the most hypocritical nation on earth when it refuses to destroy its own weapons and allowed Pakistan, a Sunni country, to become a nuclear power. Meanwhile the Islamic State has destroyed priceless statues, some 3000 years old. Militants destroyed centuries old treasures in Timbuktu while the Taliban destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas. What kind of god is afraid of statues? But then who was responsible for the destruction of the museum in Baghdad? The US, of course. 

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