July 20^th

Today Mona Charen is busy finding new ways to insult the President and, of course, support Bibi Netanyahu. She begins with the premise the President Obama’s policies are just awful. She asks, “Did he (Obama) intend harm, or was he so blinded by ideology that he could not see the damage his policies were creating? The Iran deal provides the answer.” Then she calls the President, “Our duplicitous leader…” because she believes this treaty will allow Iran to develop the bomb “eventually.” Really? And who cannot get the bomb “eventually?”

Then we have her references to the President: not even once in this entire rant can Mona bring herself to call him President Obama: he is always just “Obama.” On the other hand there is “Prime Minister Netanyahu, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, even Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes.”(The AP style sheet requires the title on the first reference and from then on the last name is OK. I guess furious Mona isn’t paying attention.) Charen claims, after mentioning various alternatives, “if all of the above failed he could have deployed strategic bombing to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.” I’ll bet Bibi would have just loved that alternative. At this point the Iranian population has a high percentage of people under 35 who are not happy with the religious restrictions imposed on them by the theocracy. Any military attack will solidify that group behind their leaders and it would be an incredibly stupid move. Moreover, that option isn’t going away so why use it now?

Let’s look at the other “damage his policies were creating:” Since the President took office twelve million new jobs have been created. Of course Democratic Presidents get no credit for recovering economies, only Republican Presidents are entitled to credit for that. Then the stock market has more than doubled and the country’s deficits have dropped by two-thirds, just more of that “damage his policies have created.”

There is more: Health care inflation is the lowest in 50 years. The manufacturing industry and the auto industry are coming back; Ford stock was at two dollars a share and now is over 14 dollars a share. Clean energy has more than doubled. The unnecessary war in Iraq is over and Afghanistan’s hostilities will soon no longer involve us. Osama Ben Laden is dead on Obama’s direct order. None of this matters to Charen, possibly because the benefits are to this country and not to Israel.

Her diatribe against the President culminates in the following quote: “The dishonest core of the president’s pretense is this: That the choice was between war and diplomacy. Every schoolchild knows that diplomacy without the credible threat of force is a nullity. Obama knows how to frighten and intimidate when he wants to.  See his conduct towards Republicans or Netanyahu or the Supreme court.” What incredible nonsense! What other choices except war and diplomacy were there? And then to suggest that the President intimidated the Supreme Court is ridiculous. How could he possibly do that? Charen gives no hint. The evidence that he has intimidated Congress or Netanyahu is exactly what?

Finally, a Pew Research Poll asking which threats are of concern for each country finds that 62 percent of the US citizens are concerned about Iran getting the bomb while that drops to 53 percent of Israelis.  This poll shows more people are concerned about ISIS than are concerned about Iran developing the bomb. Although it probably won’t help, will somebody please tell Mona Charen?