printProviding material support for a state sponsor of terrorism, incentivizing hostage-taking, aiding and abetting Hezbollah: These are some of the angles conservatives have come up with in mustering outrage over the revelation that, as WSJ has reported, “The Obama administration secretly organized an airlift of $400 million worth of cash to Iran that coincided with the January release of four Americans detained in Tehran, according to U.S. and European officials and congressional staff briefed on the operation afterward.”
I support negotiating for the lives of compatriots imperiled by the US government’s policies. (See “AFTER THEIR HEADS ROLL, AMERICA’S DEAD REMAIN FACELESS,” written for antiwar.com, in 2004.)
Obama, however, likely had to bribe the Iranians to release the American prisoners because they harbor no particular good will toward him. He signed the Iran nuclear deal without considering American interests. However, for his legacy to stand, as the president who marked “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal” (Obama as quoted in my new book), he has to portray the Iranians as having been swayed by his diplomacy. For his legacy, Obama has to paint a picture of himself a president who managed to restore comity between America and her Arab adversaries. To that end, Obama has lied and stolen to pacify the Iranians behind the scenes and to make them appear genial toward the US.
The same thinking went into Hillary’s refusal to beef up security in Benghazi. This from a 2012 column, “Standing Armies Commandeered by Cowards,” on the subject:
In the fullness of time, I believe, it will transpire that the woman who cracks the whip at Foggy Bottom had decided to leave the U.S. embassy in Libya undefended.The open community center Hillary was running there was meant to signal that the war on Libya, Hillary’s special project, was a success. (Recall, Libya was “a war of the womb,” a product of the romantic minds of three women who fantasized about an Arab awakening. This estrogen-driven paternalism on steroids began, as in Greek mythology, with the Gorgon sisters. Medusa’s posse included Samantha Power, and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice. They helped Hillary devise the casus belli for the war.)