Yes, You Can

If one attains to the hallowed post of President of the United States of America, and Commander in Chief, then all is possible. An American president can, like those before Barack Obama, drag his country into wars large and small, or he can, like Mr. Obama, take the initiative to forestall war and make bargains with bloody tyrants. Sometimes war is necessary, although not all wars that the United States has engaged in fit that category of 'necessary war'.

Sometimes it can and should be avoided, although such choices do not always fit the category of 'avoidable-by-choice' to avert a large catastrophe, particularly when avoiding the confrontation will invariably lead to a larger catastrophe.

"When I first ran for president, I said it was time for a new era of American leadership in the world, one that turned the page on a decade of war and began a new era of engagement with the world. As president and as commander in chief, I've done what I've said."
"Tough talk and bluster may be the easy thing to do politically, but it's not the right thing to do for our security."
U.S. President Barack Obama

FILE - This Nov. 23, 2103 file photo shows President Barack Obama speaking in the State Dining Room  …

"Since 2002, the agency has become increasingly concerned about the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed nuclear-related activities involving military related organizations, including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile."
IAEA report, November 2013

President Barack Obama pauses as he speaks about immigration reform, Monday, Nov. 25, 2013, in San Francisco …

President Obama speaking in defence of his secret talks with Iran leading to the members of the UN Security Council and Germany (G5+1) arriving at what many insist is a flawed and dangerous capitulation to the demands of Iran that it be treated differently from any other aspiring nuclear state that kept its plans and experiments hidden, along with its construction of underground nuclear sites, and its centrifuges spinning enriched uranium.

The successful negotiations leading to broadly congratulatory smiles and weary hugs among the participants to the high-level Geneva talks has spawned more than a normal agreement's share of criticism from doubters. Canada, along with other U.S. allies has expressed its skepticism born of relations with the country that defy normal state constraints against victimizing its population, against breeding terrorists, against conducting violent attacks abroad, against threatening to annihilate a neighbour.

Among President Obama's own political party, his fellow Democrats, and other members of the U.S. Congress, criticism is vocal and damning. The dismay voiced by the Sunni-majority countries of the Middle East, fearing an Iran whose belligerence and intransigence has been validated by the UN members has its obvious origin in fearful anticipation of the future in that powderkeg of regional tribalism and sectarian violence.

The agreement that so pleases President Obama is meant to temporarily halt parts of Tehran's nuclear program in huge dispute. And to permit for more frequent international monitoring of Iran's facilities. Iran has, on the surface, gained a modicum of relief from sanctions, more to come should six months pass to the satisfaction of the negotiators' terms of reference in muting Iran's nuclear plans. But Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gained far more than the release of $7-billion of the country's assets; he gained legitimacy.

Consequences are everything. Appearances are just that, and often quite meaningless. Iran has been given reason now to believe that the wider international community which has shunned its nuclear aspirations through fear of proliferation and much, much more, has through this agreement forgiven Iran's creation and funding of Hezbollah, its violations of human rights for the Iranian people, its search for dominance in the region, and its existential threats against Israel.

The rigidly fundamentalist theocratic mindset of the Iranian Ayatollahs is sufficiently alien to the understanding of the international community that they are incapable of grasping the depth of belief in Armageddon, hastening its blessed occurrence in welcoming the Hidden Imam, and ascending to Paradise, chuckling in amusement at the plight of all the non-believers remaining below in the soul-charring fires of damnation.

The 'new era' of which President Obama speaks so fervently is steadily approaching.

  FILE - In this Nov. 9, 1979, file photo, one of the hostages being held at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran is displayed to the crowd, blindfolded and with his hands bound, outside the embassy. (AP Photo)

"It's kind of like Jimmy Carter all over again," said Clair Cortland Barnes, now retired and living in Leland, N.C., after a career at the CIA and elsewhere. He sees the negotiations now as no more effective than they were in 1979 and 1980, when he and others languished, facing mock executions and other torments. The hostage crisis began in November of 1979 when militants stormed the United States Embassy in Tehran and seized its occupants.
Retired Air Force Col. Thomas E. Schaefer, 83, called the deal "foolishness."
"My personal view is, I never found an Iranian leader I can trust," he said. "I don't think today it's any different from when I was there. None of them, I think, can be trusted. Why make an agreement with people you can't trust?"