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Home » Meet Wendy Sherman, Obama’s chief Iran negotiator

Meet Wendy Sherman, Obama’s chief Iran negotiator

The New Neo Posted on by

For a long time the right has been sounding the theme of the relative lack of experience of Obama’s advisors. Obama surrounds himself with sycophantic worshippers and/or neophytes, word-people whom he has elevated to positions of power.

With all that as background, I recently learned of another member of the Obama administration: Wendy Sherman. Never heard of her? Neither had I, until I came across a reference to her as the administration’s chief Iran negotiator:

But the problem [of North Korea’s acquisition of nuclear weapons] didn’t start with Bush. Instead, it began earlier when Obama’s current chief negotiator with Iran, Wendy Sherman, was crafting another bad deal with North Korea while working in the Clinton administration. The moment the West started making concessions…and bribing the North Koreans to stop working toward a bomb, the mad Communist dictatorship knew it had won.

North Korea went so well that the same person is the Iran negotiator? You can find her qualifications for the job here (as well as here):

What about her qualifications and experience?

Ms. Sherman brings just the sort of credentials you would expect in a Clinton and Obama appointee, currently the fourth-ranking employee in the Department of State:

A degree and work experience in social work;
The former director of EMILY’S list, the abortion-supporting political fundraising organization contributing almost exclusive to Democrats;
Former head of the DC office of the failed Dukakis presidential campaign;
The former director of the office of child welfare of Maryland
Founding president of the Fannie Mae foundation, a money-dispensing offshoot of the quasi-governmental agency that more than anyone else was responsible for the 2008 mortgage crisis [although Sherman’s tenure was much earlier than that].

The last two Democrat presidents found these qualifications so compelling they made her responsible for some of the most complex and highest stakes negotiations of the current era.

It’s hard to know what to say, except that she’s probably a lot more qualified than most of Obama’s other advisors, and more qualified than Obama himself. At least she’s had some experience running things, even though she may not have run them well. And I suppose a social worker might be a good negotiator—with families and child protective services and the like. Of course, if the goal is to give Iran what it wants and only maintain a pretense of actual negotiations (as I suspect it is), Sherman is probably as qualified as anyone.

[NOTE: I wrote “actual negotiations” in the above paragraph, but as I see it, negotiations with a regime such as Iran’s is a pipe dream, unless the US carries a big big stick and indicates it is willing to wield it. Even then, I don’t see that negotiations will yield much of anything as long as the Iranian regime remains in place. I think that there are people who sincerely believe that good can come from negotiations with a bad actor intent on our destruction, although I see them as deluded. But people’s desire to believe that such talks could be fruitful is understandable; the alternative is far more frightening. Unfortunately, it is also more realistic.

Even Sherman once said, while testifying before Congress, that the Iranian government lies. Actually, she said “we know that deception is part of the DNA” of the Iranian leaders/negotiators, a statement that earned her some flak. Trouble is, neither Spencer nor the administration appear to be acting as though they believe it. If you are negotiating with a regime that continually (a) professes to wish your destruction; and (b) lies through its teeth, you’d better emphasize the “verify” part at the expense of any “trust.” And you’d better bring a lot of very real economic pressure to bear. Lifting that pressure while assuming it will cause some change in the attitude of that regime is just insane (if in fact that is what Sherman truly believes; I’ll assume for the sake of argument that she is sincere even if Obama is not), although it’s a very social worker-ish way to look at things.

The sort of yielding they’re looking for on the part of the Iranians is not the way tyrannical regimes have operated in the past. If history tells us anything, it tells us that. Pressure that comes from a position of strength is the only language they listen to.]

Comments

Meet Wendy Sherman, Obama’s chief Iran negotiator — 19 Comments

  2. She’s qualified for her position in the front group. Doing as she is told, serving as the public face while the real work is conducted by the shadow government. Most people will live outside of the blast zones and will be just fine. Don’t worry, be happy. When Amerika can longer boss other countries around, we will have peace, love, and understanding.

  3. one has to realize that they apply their ideology and their ideology is the older version. you kjnow, the one in which stalin removed the experienced and talented people from positions and put people in place almost randomly, because we are all equal, and talent is not real its just the thing oppresors used to justify their choices and positions.

    its also part of the equal pay movement that feminists are pushing… ie. a secretary is equal to a doctor and so should be paid the same.

    we in the west have tried to adapt this, while ignoring what negates it… so we dont have artwork or statues that require real talent to execute, we have amorphous soviet realist stuff… the point being that if the elite select this stuff, then the politics of the artist is more important than the actual talent to which the art is made.

    then you have people writing books that 10 years worth of effort leads to the outcome of talent.

    and remember, the whole of affirmative action and that negates the idea of talent replacing talented people who spent time developing it, with anyone that has the right qualities of prefered pigmentation, a pudenda, or sex with the same sex (or more). a preferred pigmentation with pudenda is a double threat.

    Natural Talent is a Sham: You Can Do Anything

    I believe that, in reality, we’re all fundamentally capable of most things. What we get good at is where interest, internal confidence and external support overlap.

    ‘Natural talent’ is, therefore, a child’s innate interest in a given subject and a lack of fear to give it a try. This is recognized by others and externally supported. As a result, confidence grows and real talent forms.

    But the talent wasn’t innate, the interest was.

    its why they presume that outcomes should be equal, given talent is a sham…

    Why there is no talent by Magnus Holm.
    Art is Not About Talent By Jerry Fresia
    and 100 others

    you see, once you remove the ideal of talented as a bourgesie false construct, then your free to use other things to select whom you want to do things. even more so if you ignore outcomes based on their actions.

    the assumption then becomes, another personw ould ahve done just as well, or poorly… so it made no difference who was in the position, and if it makes no difference, then it should be a person with the right ideological connections and collective associations

    the whole wacko land of feminism will play games in that no man has a talent women dont have, and women have talents that men and others cant have.

    the conclusion from that is easy…
    women make better firemen because they cant lift other people, they can join the special forces despite ZERO being able to pass the obstical course for regular troops, you can order companies to add women to the board cause without talent only gender matters, etc

    your old fashioned, you believe in the patriarchal colonial white man bs called talent, designed to put you in yrou place and keep you there while they claim they have it and use it to justify theirs and your position.

    at least thats how they would put it.

  4. Research in Practice
    The Talent Lie

    I should make more precise what I mean by “the talent lie.” It’s really several variants on a fundamental idea. People who are really good at math must have been born with a gift, for example. That they must be extra smart. That being good at math (or not) is something that doesn’t change over time. That being smart (or not) doesn’t change. In short, that your intellectual worth, and the worth of your engagement with the field of mathematics in particular, is an already-determined quantity that’s not up to you. That’s the talent lie.

    now, remember… academics are abysmall at doing things others can do easily… so they like the talent is a lie bit.. wich means all the nice things that they like, like we are all equal cause darwinian evolution for some odd reason doesnt bother with evolving intelligence unequally. or that they are not physically as able as a baseball player cause taht didnt interest them.

    We need, as a culture, to gut-renovate our understanding of what’s going on when we see people accomplish impressive mathematical feats. Likewise, when people fail at mathematical tasks. We need to stop seeing people’s mathematical performance as nothing more than the surface manifestation of a well-spring of mathematical gifts or talent they may or may not have. Relatedly but even more importantly, we need to stop reading the tea-leaves of this performance to determine these gifts’ presence or absence. This whole game is bunk.

    Not only is it bunk but it’s a crippling distraction, for everyone — teachers, students, parents, and our culture as a whole — from the real job of studying, wandering through, becoming intimate with and standing in awe of the magnificent edifice known as the discipline of mathematics.

    in the effort to prove this, we have dumbed down the smart talented people and crippled them to equalize them with those that have less talent or focus, etc.

    so how can anyone not have the talent, ability, be unqualified (if the qualifier deems they are), etc

    read rawlsian stuff..

    What does it mean to be “more talented” in the context of Rawls’s theory? As Nozick remarks (in a footnote of his discussion of Rawls’ Theory – in Anarchy State and Utopia), “most talented” individuals just means, in the contexts of Rawls theory, those who are able to produce a larger economic output or who happen to be able to trade their work more favorably or to obtain social positions connected to the highest responsibilities and powers. The most talented should not be conceived to be such “from birth”. Nothing must count as a talent absolutely – prior or independently from institutional arrangements. It follows that it is the ongoing scheme of cooperation that establishes whether some quality (or lack of it), say, the ability to speak backwards, or physical strength, corresponds to a talent (or lack of it). “Being talented” is a predicate that has a meaning only relative to a social arrangement.

    http://michele-journal.blogspot.com/2008/05/rawls-and-talents.html

  5. Entirely in keeping with the epilogue of Western civilization. It’s not what you know; neither is it who you know, it’s only that you are part and parcel, cog and crank, of the mechanism that would put an end to that civilization that is the result of white/het/Euro/Christian privilege.

    The hate, contempt, are palpable. That it has not yet generated a visceral response is to despair. An even greater despair when all of it is excused as incompetence or the insouciance of an inveterate golfer.

  6. A society is just, according to Rawls, if its basic structure (the main institutions that govern the distributions of social advantages and burdens) satisfies the following criteria:

    1. Each person has an equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme for all; and in this scheme the equal political liberties, and only those liberties, are to be guaranteed their fair value.

    2. Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are
    both:
    (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle, and
    (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.

    The principle of fair equality of opportunity (b) says that:

    Those with similar abilities and skills should have similar life chances. More specifically, assuming that there is a distribution of natural assets, those who are at the same level of talent and ability, and have the same willingness to use them, should have the same prospects of success regardless of their initial place in the social system.

    http://neoneocon.com/2015/03/31/meet-wendy-sherman-obamas-chief-iran-negotiator/#comment-883219

  7. “Of course, if the goal is to give Iran what it wants and only maintain a pretense of actual negotiations (as I suspect it is), Sherman is probably as qualified as anyone.”

    I have to take issue with this, if the goal is to give Iran what it wants and only maintain a pretense of actual negotiations, then one quality is of paramount importance; a willingness to be a traitor, to intentionally betray the people to whom their oath of office applies.

    I’m no longer willing to give fools in willful denial the benefit of the doubt. Stupidity that results in the deaths of millions (a predictable outcome) is not tolerable, it has to be held accountable.

    But this is not a case of willful denial, naivete or simple denial. Ms Sherman’s prior words (and Kerry’s and Obama’s) indicate that they KNOW the character of the fanatics they are dealing with but rather than confront those fanatics with military force, they are willing to sacrifice millions of innocent American lives. This is malevolence writ large, there can be no other explanation for the duplicity exhibited.

  8. Artfldgr,

    If Western civilization has a basic flaw, it is in its protection of congenital idiots like Rawls, Holm, Fresia, Sherman, et al. They are at war with the reality within which they exist. The spiritual essence of that resistance is, at base enmity against the being who created this universe and who ordained the operative realities against which they rant.

  9. Geoffrey Britain:

    You are forgetting hubris.

    They (some of them, at least) think that despite the nature of the regime, they themselves are such brilliant and persuasive and just plain smart chess-playing negotiators that they can devise a plan that will hold Iran in check.

    Some are just that narcissistic. Others are as you say. Some are both (for them a “win-win” situation).

  10. Geoffrey Britain, i agree… though they dont believe in such a person, they are still at war with the qualities that they themselves think would be better being different or non existent.

    the key to remember here is that these are people who are assumed to have thoughful ideas as to improving things, but in truth, they would be unhappy in heaven. ie. regardless of where they are or what reality they find themselves in, they would find something lacking to their minds in terms of something they want and so, its not right and would have to be changed.

    so its not that they really have ideas that would work, what they have are unworkable fantasies hiding behind all manner of social cues that its not fantasy, and so, make a living or at least garner fame for expositing on them and ignoring why they wont work

    given that i am a physcist, artist, and engineer… i get a smaller but similar thing in experience all the time. like the phd doctor of genetics that wanted me to construct a UV system for bathing mice with porpheria. he wanted it to put out the same level of UV the sun did for the subject, and wanted it to run on a 9 volt common battery (the tiny square ones), and do so for 12 hours…

    of course, not wanting to even try to do the math, or even understand it.. (and he does know electronics), he thought this was doable… not in this reality…

    the same is true of lots of leftist designs (of which for some reason they have fetishes for trains, human feces, and a few other things that constantly pop up, including solar power… even the 18,000 trees being felled to power great adventure in nj dont cue them to the amount of harm their enviornmental solutino will do)

    anyway… here is what obama said..
    its a case of believing what you want and in doing so making it real to oneself, and refusing to be in another reality… ie, reality is what i believe, not what it is or based on what i can know, but what i believe i know.

    “I think Iran is like North Korea,” Obama told David Brooks when he was running for president in 2007. “They see nuclear arms in defensive terms, as a way to prevent regime change.”

  11. Hubris is a form of stupidity, as is narcissism. Both spring from a fundamental insecurity that refuses to face itself. It can be and in this case is, as harmful to the republic as the malevolence of Obama and his cabal.

    I am convinced that this country is in the mess it is in because we have protected from consequence those guilty of narcissistic, hubristic stupidity. How else has Joe Biden retained his seat in Congress all those years?

    Nature declares that, “Stupidity cannot be cured. Stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death. There is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.”* we have protected the stupidly hubristic and, we are and shall pay, a heavy price for doing so.

    Had this country held John Kerry fully accountable when he illegally went to Paris and ‘negotiated’ with the N, Vietnamese, he would never have become a Senator, much less the Secretary of State.

    *R. A. Heinlein

  12. Artfldgr,

    When someone rejects fundamental aspects of the reality within which they exist, by definition, all that is left is fantasy.

    All ‘isms’ of the left, to one degree or another, reject critical aspects of the reality within which they find themselves. The old definition of insanity; an inability to distinguish between right and wrong may not fully apply but there is no doubt that Americans on the left are disconnected, to one degree or another from reality. And in aggregate, profoundly disconnected from reality.

  14. bho has several agendas. Foremost is to deeply wound Western Civilization. Next, to be adored while punishing those do not adore. And, lastly rake in millions and continue to be adored.

  15. Wendy Sherman was selected because of her pliancy.

    We’ve seen this picture before: Adolf chose Paulus to ‘command’ 6th Army during Case Blue (the drive on the Volga to Stalingrad) BECAUSE Halder (Cos OKH) assured him that Paulus was ‘a mechanic’ — in the German terms equivalent.

    For Adolf wanted — from the get-go — to be the man calling the shots in what he believed would be THE signature event of his eastern campaign against Jewish-Bolshevism. (I know, I know.)

    Likewise, ayatollah Soetoro wanted a cypher — from the get-go — as ALL of the key trading would originate from his desk.

    The REAL negotiating is occurring between ayatollah Soetoro, Valerie girl, and ayatollah Khameni.

    And as we now know, ayatollah can do more than bow down to a Wahabbist!

    &&&&&&&&&&

    Slightly OT:

    For some crazy reason the MSM STILL thinks that holding Iran down to a mere 5% enrichment is any kind of bottleneck towards the Bomb.

    AS IF!

    More than 90% of the separatory effort towards a U235 bomb is expended getting just to 5%!!!!!!

    The jump from 5% up to 85% (or some such) is a walk in the park.

    Bibi knows this. The MSM is not listening.

    Chemical engineering — and its math — is all too much for the MSM.

    Folks, it all boils down to mass transfer economics. When you’re forced to work with extremely dilute process streams, all of your equipment is tied up moving immense amounts of inerts. (U238 in this case)

    By the time the enrichment is up to 5% the amount of inerts clogging the process stream has utterly collapsed.

    Meaning: it takes hardly any time at all to reach bomb grade metal. Heck, America did it way back in 1945!

  16. “Question is what do we do about it? As my dear wife-with-a-Mennonite-gene would tell me: “DO something about it! Otherwise you’re just complaining!” g6loq

    Patience young Padawan, patience.

    Shakespeare spoke of this;
    “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries; on such a full sea we are now afloat; and we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.”

    The ‘tide’ is not yet ‘at the flood’, nor will it be until the Left thinks it has won, lets drop its guard and reveals to all its true nature.

    It is a certainty that they shall do so for everything must be true to its nature, once the need to pretend otherwise is thought to have dissipated.

    Lies and deceit are its camouflage but reality and the Left’s lust for dominance will lead to the premature throwing off of that dark cloak and that shall be its undoing. We shall not defeat the Left, it shall instead defeat itself. Evil (live spelled backwards) always sows the seeds of its own undoing. It cannot help but do so for it knows no loyalty but to itself.

    When that time comes and the LIVs are enraged at the betrayal and the military confronts its choice between either following illegal orders or its oath to the Constitution, that will be the time to DO something.

    In the meantime, speaking out is NOT ‘complaining’.

    “In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” George Orwell

  17. Wendy Sherman? Head of negotiations with Iran? Well, isn’t that just special. She has all the right credentials to be a community organizer. And, as we know, that’s all it takes. It is to weep!

  18. Yes, “negotiations” in Lausanne have been designed to fail.

    It’s a feature.

    Obama must be portrayed as trying his very hardest to reach a deal—to prevent war, to save mankind—while knowing full well that it’s not in the cards (nor from his view is it desirable, given what he wishes to accomplish).

    It’s all optics.

    And even if a “deal” is reached, Obama knows that the Iranians will not be held to it. (So do the Iranians.)

    In any event, a “deal” is not intended to be reached.

    Instead, let’s delay some more. And some more. (The delay mechanism is, of course, built-in—to help prevent war, to help save the world, etc.)

    While Iran ramps up—and Israel is further isolated and ridiculed.

    And subverted.

    This is called “win-win-win”.

    Obama and Zarif are on the same side. It’s not supposed to look like that—they’re supposed to be adversarial—but that’s how it is.

    Just ask that Iranian translator who defected last week….

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