Netanyahu is preying on the general ignorance and gullibility of Americans when it comes to foreign policy and conditions abroad. I expected something like Bibi's version of W's famous "smoking gun will be a mushroom cloud" remark, but what I heard was that the Middle East could be littered with nuclear weapons (yeah - Israel's!) and set with nuclear trip wires (need I repeat myself here?) I also saw yesterday a headline on Yahoo News that the delicate negotiations that we are conducting with Iran are breaking down, with one of Iran's top negotiators blaming the US. This may be concrete evidence that Netanyahu's speech before congress is indeed doing its insidious work to undermine the foreign policy initiatives of a sitting US President. After all, ever since the traumatic experience (to Iran) of the CIA overthrow of Mossadegh, Iran's democratically elected ruler, in 1953, Iranians have tended to be suspicious of the US as a den of covert, back stabbing spies. Even under much better conditions, trust is a hard thing to build and cultivate between nations. But here, the Iranian negotiators, seeing what just happened in the US, would naturally revert back to their earlier suspicions, and blame Obama. What they don't realize is the contentious and downright hostile nature of US two party politics right now, and how deeply the whole race issue of Obama being black works as an invitation to old angry white men Repuplicans to refuse to honor the sovereign authority of a duly democratically elected US President, with insidious undercurrents of sedition and blackmail. The historical karma between the US and Iran is indeed playing out in ironic and unforeseen ways: Essentially, what the CIA did to Mossadegh in 1953 the Republicans are doing to Obama and his diplomatic negotiations with Iran in 2015. The former was international intrigue, but the latter is primarily domestic, with huge international consequences and ramifications.
Another question: Are the Republicans and Netanyahu, in their fear mongering and sabre rattling, simply doing the bidding of the arms dealers and the military industrial complex as we drift, willy-nilly, towards another war in the Middle East? It's like the bumper sticker with the car's odometer changing from IRAQ to IRAN. But - would I be too presumptuous to predict here that after we get into a war with Iran as a direct consequence of Republican meddling, the Republicans will find a way to turn that around and lay the blame, like an albatross, around Obama's neck???
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