One more thing had to be said about the Ben Rhodes episode
and it was said. When this happened, it called for a response, and that gave
impetus to this presentation.
This time, Richard Cohen said what had to be said. He did so
in a column he wrote under the title: “Of pride, falls – and Obama's foreign
policy,” published on May 9, 2016 in the Washington Post. What follows is the
passage he wrote that called for a response:
“The lie exposed a truth. Obama wanted the deal (almost) no
matter what. He had not been beckoned into the talks by more reasonable
Iranians, but had initiated them with the previous regime. In other words, he
wanted the talks more than the Iranians did – a negotiating position of great
weakness. It explains why nothing in the agreement thwarts Iranian efforts to
support terrorism in the Middle East or continue to make mayhem in Iraq . It lowers
the odds that Iran
will continue to adhere to the agreement”.
If you do not recall what was said about the deal while it
was negotiated, you should know that many of the articles written at the time
were discussed on this website. They can be accessed in the archives on the
right side of the page. In short, what was said by a pundit that had “connected
the dots,” and was endlessly echo-repeated by every pundit and his copycat
apprentice – each of whom had discovered new dots to connect – was that the
sanctions brought the Iranians to the negotiating table.
When that notion was hammered securely into the heads of its
creators, each pundit took the trouble to advise the Obama administration of a
new way to take advantage of the situation because each had determined that the
Iranians were negotiating from a position of weakness whereas America was
holding a strong hand. And no matter from which direction each pundit
approached the discussion, they all converged on the idea that America must
take a tougher negotiating stance at the table, and must tighten the sanctions
even more. And they speculated that such moves will bring the Iranians to their
knees, forcing them to concede more and more.
Go back now and look again what Richard Cohen was saying,
having proclaimed that the truth had been exposed: “Obama wanted the deal. He
was not beckoned into the talks; he initiated them.” Well, we are left with no
choice but to admit that this revelation kills all the determinations and
speculations that were fabricated when the “lie” was thought to be the “truth.”
And true to Jewish form – in the same way that the pundits of yesterday saw fit
to build on the foundation of the prevailing lie – Richard Cohen sees fit now
to make new determinations, and to fashion new speculations based on the truth
of today.
Thus, he has determined that “nothing in the agreement
thwarts Iranian efforts to support terrorism in the Middle
East .” And he speculated that nothing will thwart the Iranians
from “continuing to make mayhem in Iraq .” And that's not all because
there is worse (or perhaps it is a glimmer of hope depending on your point of
view) in that the newly discovered truth will “lower the odds that Iran will
continue to adhere to the agreement,” says Richard Cohen. Maybe the Iranians
will reject the deal, and America 's
pundits of the echo chamber will have reason to celebrate. Time will tell.
Meanwhile, something that’s even more consequential than all
that – if you can believe it – comes out the Ben Rhodes saga. It is that in the
hands of those pundits and their apprentices, the truth and the lie are
interchangeable in the same way that six-of-one or half-a-dozen of the other
can be used to reach the desired outcome. You'll find that in the Richard Cohen
column, the desired outcome is explained in a lengthy and drawn out manner over
two paragraphs. When condensed, the passages read as follows:
“If Obama can reach understanding with Iran , he can rid himself of the Middle East and pivot elsewhere. American boots will not
hit the ground unless to protect American interests … It could be that Obama's
foreign policy is brilliant or that the establishment is stuck in the amber of
lessons from World War II and the Cold War. I do not know that these lessons
are irrelevant to our day. Hitler and Stalin were evil. The sheer inability of U.S. leadership
to appreciate that fact doomed millions of people”.
In other words, he says in his subtle way that America must
not leave the Middle East – which means must not abandon Israel – to pivot
elsewhere, because the Middle East is burning and needs America the fireman to
douse the fire.
All we can say to that is: here we go again. We say it
because it was the neocon repeated arguments that brought America to set the Middle
East on fire in the first place. And you know what, my friend? All
those pundits and their apprentices are authentic neocons or neocon-trained
echo-repeaters.
For Cohen to come now and ask America to douse that fire is akin
to the son of the fireman who set fire to properties then joined the effort to
douse the fire. The difference between the two situations is that the Middle
Eastern fire will only get worse the longer that Jewish America remains in the
region.