Category: Foreign Policy

Natan Sharansky, a former political prisoner of the old Soviet Union, writes in the Washington Post, “When did America forget that it’s America?” in regards to the way that the United States acted towards the Soviet Union during the latter years of the Cold War that resulted in the ultimate collapse of the Communist Empire. Sharansky compares that to the current administration’s negotiations with Iran.

Even Jimmy Carter, with all of his faults, left human rights abuses in the Soviet Union on the table for negotiations. Sharansky himself benefited from the pressure the United States government put on the Soviet Union when he was released from the gulags, in February 1986, the first political prisoner to be released by the hand of Mikhail Gorbachev in the face of Ronald Reagan’s resolve on the issue. He had been imprisoned since 1977 when he was arrested for high treason – his crime was that he had passed along a list of 1300 refuseniks to the Western media.

Sharansky writes in the Post;

When American negotiations with the Soviets reached the issue of trade, and in particular the lifting of sanctions and the conferring of most-favored-nation status on the Soviet Union, the Senate, led by Democrat Henry Jackson, insisted on linking economic normalization to Moscow’s allowing freedom of emigration. By the next year, when the Helsinki agreement was signed, the White House had joined Congress in making the Soviets’ treatment of dissidents a central issue in nearly every negotiation.

Iran’s dismal human rights record, by contrast, has gone entirely unmentioned in the recent negotiations. Sadly, America’s reticence is familiar: In 2009, in response to the democratic uprisings that mobilized so many Iranian citizens, President Obama declared that engaging the theocratic regime would take priority over changing it.

Of course, that’s just one aspect of the failures of this administration in the Middle Eastern region, but probably the most dangerous to people living in the Middle East as well as the rest of the world – Iran’s clients, Hezbollah and the Houthis draw more of the countries into the circle of Iran’s control.

The John Kerry-Barack Obama State Department is only too anxious to sign something, anything with the Iranians, they’ve given away the store in the process.

Back to Sharansky;

Imagine what would have happened if instead, after completing a round of negotiations over disarmament, the Soviet Union had declared that its right to expand communism across the continent was not up for discussion. This would have spelled the end of the talks. Yet today, Iran feels no need to tone down its rhetoric calling for the death of America and wiping Israel off the map.

Because the politics of the agreements are more important than the contents. It’s better to have something, anything signed than nothing, no matter how poorly that something, anything serves any party in the agreement.

The United States used to be the great defender of international human rights, creditable to Jimmy Carter in the modern era, but this administration has abandoned that tenet in favor of political expediency.

You should stay out of the comments of the article since the antisemitism directed at Sharansky in particular and Israel, in general, is rampant. Apparently, it’s all the Jews fault that Iran wants to wipe them out. So, the propaganda from Tehran is still working the magic that the propaganda from Moscow on the same pointy-headed apologists that caused this mess.

That’s the headline on a National Constitution Center article today.

Since the announcement of the invitation to Netanyahu in January, much has been said about the risks of a rupture in the relationship between the United States and Israel. Whatever may be said further about that, a constitutional precedent is being set in the House chamber that could lead to a rupture in how the two elected branches of the national government deal with the most sensitive of issues over global security.

I don’t remember it being an issue when members of Congress told President Bush that “you’re not the boss of me”;

I’m thinking that Pelosi and her delegation to Assad, and Senator John Kerry’s delegation to Syria probably did more to harm our relations in the region than inviting the Israeli Prime Minister to speak to Congress, especially when the figurehead of our government, our face overseas, refuses to meet with Benjamin Netanyahu because he wants his nation to survive in the face of Iranian nuclear weapons.

There was no discussion about it when Pat Leahy was a mule for Cuban spy sperm from the US to the prisoner’s wife in Cuba. I’m not sure whether or not sperm samples are included in the embargo against Cuba, but I’m sure that facilitating the birth of yet another virtual prisoner into that vast prison yard is morally wrong on some level.

But I guess Democrat Congress members have their own private Constitution that they get to live by without being questioned by the complicit press.