Days before it was given some were calling Netanyahu's speech before congress on Iran and the nuclear talks, historical. Five minutes after the speech Nancy Pelosi made comments that could accurately be called hysterical..
Pelosi called Netanyahu's speech on Iran which pointed out the obvious flaws in Obama's position and his lack of negotiating skills "an insult to the intelligence of the U.S." Which was itself insulting to the intelligence of everyone involved.
In attempting to act as a political flak for Obama she ended up insulting the intelligence of everyone in the House chamber and everyone in the United States and around the world including the Saudis and Egyptians and anyone who had the temerity ( and good judgement) to disagree with her and agreed with Netanyahu or at the very least felt his position and concerns deserved to be heard.
Pelosi has embarrassed herself before on matters of policy but she embarrassed herself even more by thinking she had some gravitas or authority moral, political or intellectual, to speak for the entire country and the congress. What she did was display exactly the kind of partisan political knee jerk arrogance , intellectual dishonesty and stupidity that Netanyahu was there to warn against.
Democrats and Democratic voters remember that it was Pelosi who betrayed and sold out her own conscience, Democrats in the House and those who voted for Democrats in 2008 by supporting Obama's sell out and capitulation to the health insurance lobby on health care reform by agreeing to drop the public option which led the Democrats over a cliff in the 2010 elections because of the betrayal by both Obama and Pelosi on the promise of a public health care option, reneging on that promise even though Democrats had the votes to pass it.
Pelosi's embarrassing comments naturally ignored her own failures and Obama's well established lack of negotiating skills, his established lack of backbone and a history of selling out and caving in to an adversary whether it was the health insurance industry, Wall Street, Putin in Crimea and eastern Ukraine or backing down from his own red line with Assad over the use of chemical weapons. None of which has been lost on Netanyahu.
Add Obama's horrendous judgement in refusing the advice of his former Secretary of State three years ago and 3 former Secretaries of Defense who all quit rather than carry out his policies of refusing to arm the moderate rebels in Syria to fight the fledgling Isis, instead writing them off as "the junior varsity" and you have one foreign policy disaster after another all of which could have been avoided with better and tougher and more principled decisions instead of Obama's bad judgement and decisions that made a bad problem a thousand times worse as both Isis , Syria and what Putin did in Crimea and eastern Ukraine proves. Again, none of which is lost on Netanyahu but which would have far more serious consequences with Iran having a nuclear weapon. In fact it could be reasonably said that after George W. Bush, Obama is the worst foreign policy and domestic policy president the country has had since Richard Nixon.
The White House also criticized Netanyahu's speech by saying Netanyahu didn't offer an alternative plan that in Obama's words, " I could see". That Obama couldnt see it doesn't mean it wasn't there. If he could've seen it Netanyahu probably wouldn't have been there to make the speech in the first place.
Netanyahu actually did offer an alternative as he pointed out himself in response to Obama's remarks. In fact the "nothing new" comment from Obama and some anonymous White House flunky saying Netanyahu is all talk and no action ( this is what psychologists call projection) sounded like something they had prepared before the speech was even given.
Netanyahu's alternative was increasing the sanctions on Iran not decreasing them, until they were willing to give up any possibility of being able to make a nuclear bomb which meant, in Netanyahu's words, cutting off all paths to Iran being able to obtain a nuclear weapon. That included reducing their number of centrifuges,eliminating and dismantling their heavy water reactor which is only used to enrich uranium and plutonium to weapons grade and to increase the "break out" time for Iran to make a bomb if they decided to renege on the deal in the future. Netanyahu also wanted Iran's state sponsorship of terrorism to be part of the negotiation which it is not. All of that was new. Along with a mechanism to verify Iran's compliance with unfettered inspections to insure that a government who has been caught lying in the past , this time can't.
So it's no wonder Obama didn't see it as anything new. Because Netanyahu's alternative would actually mean getting tough with Iran and drawing a real red line that Iran cannot cross or suffer more and tougher sanctions. That was the alternative plan Netanyahu offered that Obama couldn't see, instead of the dog chasing its tail negotiations going on in Geneva where it's Obama and Kerry who are constantly afraid Iran will walk away if it gets its feathers ruffled when it should be exactly the opposite.
As for Pelosi she is the last person in the world who can criticize anyone about being "condescending". Right now the U.S. has 50 million people who cant afford healthcare coverage but who would have had it under the public option. Which doesn't stop Pelosi from trying to tell them how affordable the health insurance they cant afford really is. Which makes Pelosi the most condescending figure since Marie Antoinette.
The Democratic party has been in a shambles because of the lack of leadership of both Pelosi and Obama, and with a March 24 deadline for the Iran talks approaching Netanyahu clearly wanted to shine a light and might help prevent Obama from selling a bad deal.
While Pelosi's comments were designed to politically protect Obama from criticism, Netanyahu's speech was designed to protect Israel and the United States and the rest of the world from an Iranian nuclear bomb. That is the real insult by Pelosi to everyone who knows there is no alternative to preventing Iran from having a nuclear weapon.
Pelosi's politically motivated attempts to defend Obama's track record of failures which have already cost tens of thousands of lives in Syria and thousands of lives in Ukraine, and insisting Obama should just be trusted and given the benefit of the doubt is not just an insult to everyone's intelligence, it's farcical. And if Democrats have any hopes of winning in the future they need to realize it before the 2016 elections. For Netanyahu, he can't afford to wait that long.
ADDENDUM: To highlight the true absurdity and weakness of the U.S. position in the Iran negotiations, almost making Netanyahu's point in warning against a bad deal, nothing could be more telling than what John Kerry said about the negotiations on Saturday, March 7. In expressing a united front with the UK in the negotiations Kerry said, " We know what we are chasing and we are chasing after the same thing."
If Obama or Kerry knew how to negotiate it would be Iran, who wants all the sanctions lifted, who would be doing the chasing. Not the U.S. Which is why the talks will either fail or will result in Obama and Kerry trying to sell a bad and dangerous deal.
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