As comic Jimmy Durante used to shout, "Stop the music, Maestro." Something's wrong. The brass section is too loud, and nobody seems to hear it! I can't believe I've got this right, but with media proliferation it's impossible to get it wrong.
They tell us it was the nuclear arms negotiations between Iran and the West's "5-plus-1," but on TV it looked more like the Rose Bowl. Who were all those people on both sides of the conference table? Were they all delegates? Did they all speak? Were they all necessary, or were some of them human centrifuges there to help with the spinning? Their deliberations started a long time ago and just now ended, whereupon Iran had a little surprise for the rest of us.
It seems as though the Americans thought the sanctions would be eased on Iran only after real-life proof that Iran had changed its behavior from the world-champion sponsor of state terrorism and learned to imitate a civilized, normal country with no intention of building a nuclear bomb. Supreme Ayatollah Khamenei insisted the sanctions be lifted the instant the deal was signed, with no proof of anything beyond the effectiveness of a stomp-down Shiite hornswaggling.
Those "understandings" are as wide apart as lightning and the lightning bug. With that many people watching, with that many people caring, with that much media tack welded to every jot-and-tittle of the proceedings, how dare the diplomats pretend there could possibly be a misunderstanding of that magnitude? No way. We may safely conclude somebody is lying about what the true understanding was. Who, then, was lying, and why?
This is now "open-house." My guess is that my guess and your guess are as good as Henry Kissinger's guess. A few possibilities suggest themselves. Could the Iranians, sensing the eagerness of Obama and Secretary of State Kerry to get a deal – any deal – with Iran, be pretending they expected the sanctions to vanish at the signing and nothing else will do? That guesswork comes, not after graduating the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, but rather from a North Carolina high school football coach who said, "If you gain eight yards by running off-tackle early in the game, keep on doing it. The guys they keep putting in on defense ain't gonna be any better than the ones that gave you the eight yards in the first place." In other words, the Iranians knew we'd cave.
Conversely, the Americans could have lied. Why? It was suggested in this space last week that American public opinion had achieved critical mass, reached the tipping point, gathered in enough Democratic votes to override any Obama veto of legislation that would allow congressional approval and finally made Obama realize he'd pulled the wrong sow by the ear in pressing for such a pusillanimous "deal" with Iran, and he was looking for a way out without saying, "I was wrong!" around about the time Democratic Sen. Chuck Shumer began to sound like Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. What better way out for Obama than to make the deal unpalatable for the Iranians, throw his shoulders back and proclaim, "I've always said a bad deal is worse than no deal"? In other words, if at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you even tried!
It seems like just yesterday it was leaked that American planes would shoot down Israeli planes if they were to try to bomb Iran's nuclear infrastructure. Now it's today, and Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter warns the Iranians America has the ways-and-means of destroying Iran's nuclear dream. Let's leapfrog over all the other possibilities, trenchant and far-fetched, and spotlight the lesson Obama needs to learn more than any other leader in American history. It is so liberal and so tempting and so noble and so wrong to suppose that if you treat the bad guy nicely he will metamorphosize into a good guy. I should have become a conservative 15 years before I finally did when I had my upscuddle with Arlene. I was 25 and enjoying my first taste of "authority"; I had an office and a secretary. That gave me the opportunity to "change the world" as I knew it. No more of this colonialist "boss-secretary" relationship. No more frowning when she's 12 minutes late. No more scoldings, even private and deserved, when she over-blathers on her personal phone call while I'm standing there at parade-rest at her desk like her secretary. Oh, no. Equality was to be the watchword.
And she trashed me, abused me and took advantage of me sky-west-and-four-ways-to- Sunday. And it took me a decade before I realized that was exactly what I deserved.
Lincoln said at Gettysburg, "The world will little note nor long remember what we say here today." Old Abe got that one wrong. His Gettysburg Address is second only to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount in worldwide popularity. The world may little note nor long remember this column, but while it's being written the president is taking a memorable shellacking in Panama City for treating Communist Cuba like I tried to treat Arlene.
I could have told you, Chief. And at no cost to the national treasury.
It doesn't work!
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