Saturday, March 14, 2015

U.S. and Iran: Searching for Criminals Everywhere but the Crime Scene

by
Anne Bayefsky
Bio
March 13, 2015 - 3:18 pm
In the twisted world of American politics, President Obama has spent years empowering successive brutal, xenophobic Iranian regimes, each installed after bogus elections.  And yet he slams GOP congressmen — who are trying to avoid the lethal consequences – for enabling Iranian “hardliners.”
In the twisted world of human rights politics, Iran has spent years sponsoring terrorism around the world.  And yet Foreign Minister Zarif stood up at the UN Human Rights Council last week and said “it is frightening that Da’esh [ISIS] terrorists speak European languages with native accents.”

In the twisted world of women’s rights politics, Iranian women have spent a generation living under a barbaric judicial system which includes death by stoning for alleged adultery.  And yet Iran is elected a member of the UN’s top women’s rights body, the Commission on the Status of Women.
No wonder we need spin doctors.

The purpose of all the double-talk and the double-dealing in American foreign policy is clear enough:  preventing straight shooters from knowing where to point.

The Iranian, UN and Obama administration lingo of “root causes” is about searching for criminals by looking everywhere but the crime scene.

In Geneva, Zarif pointed to “alienation and disenfranchisement in ‘Western democracies’.”
Section 1 of the UN “global counter-terrorism strategy” begins with “measures to address the conditions conducive to the spread of terrorism,” and hones in on “youth unemployment…and the subsequent sense of victimization that propels extremism and the recruitment of terrorists.”
Likewise, President Obama used his violent extremism conference in February to list a host of “economic and political grievances” against America as part of “the soil out of which they [ISIS] grew.”

Steering us in the wrong directions has two consequences. It takes our eyes off the real perpetrators and their inexcusable, unpardonable hate and intolerance.  And it trains our attention on a familiar scapegoat – Jews and the Jewish state.

Secretary Kerry’s negotiating partner, Zarif, didn’t blink an eye with this whopper to the UN rights council:  “start with human rights by resisting the urge to politicize everything. To this end…the gross and systematic violations of the human rights of the Palestinians by the Israel regime should be terminated immediately.”

And here’s President Obama‘s playbook.  After Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s address to Congress — at Obama’s behest not attended by a single member of his administration — the president said: “it is very important for us not to politicize the relationship between Israel and the United States.”

Moreover, while the president told Americans in response to Netanyahu: “it is very important not to be distracted by the nature of the Iranian regimes’ ambitions when it comes to territory or terrorism,” he had no problem simultaneously sending Ambassadors Susan Rice and Samantha Power to the AIPAC conference to charge Israel with throwing up “obstacles to peace” that “erode trust.”

The contradictions and the inconsistencies from the Obama administration, Iranian authorities, and the United Nations are enough to keep your head spinning. Fortunately, there is an antidote.  Common sense.

Does an ayatollah responsible for kidnapping and killing Americans, ruthlessly suppressing his own people and those in the states around him, committed to killing Jews and acquiring weapons of mass destruction, deserve a handshake?

No comments:

Post a Comment