thanks to that overriding dogma, it is now impossible to hold a meaningful debate in Russia regarding the results of the first year since annexing Crimea.
You either believe that Russia’s army and its military intervention in Crimea saved Russia from a U.S. and NATO invasion on the peninsula or you don’t.
At this turning point in history, you are either “one of us” and can enjoy all the benefits that the best state in the world has to offer, or else you are “one of them,” and there’s no knowing what new problems to expect from you tomorrow. There is no third option.
This explains the obsession with dividing Russian society between “friends” of the state and its “enemies.”
Even the decision to classify the murder of Boris Nemtsov as a “hate crime” is part of that effort to divide Russian society. It seems these people sincerely believe in the threat of a “revenge of the liberals,” in a “Russian Maidan” and that “the liberals could turn violent.”

It would not necessarily be easy. The sanctions that were in place prior to the present round of negotiations were being fought tooth and nail by interests who can profit from trade with Iran. Those same interests are pushing for the new “deal” to stick. To carry out such an economic/military program requires will and a vision of what must be done to put extremist Islam back in the bottle without resort to massive war. Will and vision that Obama and his minions don’t have.

FACTS

Iran has a glass jaw, economically, since it HAS to import about half its calories AND

Its critical money maker has to leave port and float across the world ocean.

Indeed, most of Iran’s strategic assets — economics wise — are right at the Gulf’s edge.

Iran is totally unable to get by without oceanic trade. She’s has an ISLAND ECONOMY. Trade with Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Azerbaijan are a joke.

BTW, it is STILL the case that much of Iran’s critical oil and gas equipment is uniquely produced in the USA. It’s been running on, and on, and on, for more than thirty-years.

Tehran is desperate to retire said industrial equipment with modern replacements. Within the oil and gas industry, most of the critical gear is sole-sourced from the USA.

Japan and Germany never jumped into the turbo-compressor business for natural gas. The client base is all American dominated… to include the critical engineering firms. (Fluor, Bechtel, et. al.)

When turbo-compressors decline in performance — or even stop running all together, the net deliverable gas through a given pipeline COLLAPSES.

&&&&&&

Kharg Island — yes it’s right on the Gulf — is a CRITICAL export assets that can be taken to zero with the very first shot if the balloon goes up. Yes, even the Israelis could do it.

The only other export terminal of great significance is right at the Iraqi border: the Shatt al Arab — Abadan Oil Complex.

And as the Romanians could tell you, bombed oil complexes are self burning.

In the meantime, no-one wants to load oil while the tanks are alight.

So, it’s obvious from the get go that Iran can be economically destroyed — on the cheap — via a few military strikes — missile strikes.

If Iran’s commercial ports were struck — just how would the mullahs feed their nation? (Iran lost its food self-sufficiency when its population exploded in the 1970s. Half the nation would have to die to bring calories back into balance.)

For such a large nation — most of its land is barren, salted and worthless. Iran only has a pitiful few industrial sites. Culture, waterfall, and tradition have keep the Iranians living in the hills all of these centuries. It’s a high-cost place to manufacture — and always will be.

&&&&&

The Saudis have put both Putin and Tehran on their back foot.

So ayatollah Soetoro is promptly moving to let both off the hook… while under cutting American independence from Arab oil imports.

He’s our first anti-American president. By now that should be plain.

I would exchange “enthusiasm”, which implies more shallow whim, for ‘will’, which implies more fundamental leadership.

Reviving the competitive warrior will of the nation is the necessary 1st, core step to correcting everything else. A key Narrative element for reviving our warrior will is setting the record straight on the ‘why’ of OIF in the zeitgeist.

“It’s actually impossible to get third world citizens to stop drinking foul water out of mud puddles. “We’ve always done so. My father did so. It doesn’t hurt anybody…”

It’s funny you brought up that particular example. Where I work, there used to be a fellow who had done a tour in Afghanistan. He’s since moved to Illinois.

I remember him telling me a story of these women in a village where they spent time, who would wash clothes in the river at the same spot regularly. A spot where there was fuel and other pollution in the water. (Not US military trucks, for any liberals reading this.) He said trucks would routinely discharge about 50 yards upstream from them. You could see the sheen in the water he told me. Yet here were these women washing their clothes at the same spot again and again.

He said they had an interpreter with them once and he asked the guy to point out to the women that if they went upstream about 100 to 200 yards, they could wash their clothes in clean water.

Their response was that this was where they had always washed their clothes. They saw no reason to move. They never moved.

And to take it logically further:

To embrace American norms those societies must reject the values of their parents and grandparents…

To admit that their culture is — at some fundamental level — really screwed up.

Homo sapiens, sapiens, is such a critter that such logical jumps are emotionally impossible.

It’s actually impossible to get third world citizens to stop drinking foul water out of mud puddles. “We’ve always done so. My father did so. It doesn’t hurt anybody…”

After half a century the US AID and all the rest of the do-gooders have discovered that the SINGLE most impossible ‘sale’ to make is clean water. During that entire period every third world society rejected every clean water project ever proposed.

Pure water is expensive. Every third world nation regarded such outlays as a total waste of their boon. (Gift from the Western world.)

AFTER the projects are completed, the locals finally come around to discover that their illness rates have collapsed, infant mortality has become unusual.

The success of early projects does not impress the next nation. It’s still “no sale.”

And we’re only talking about drinking clean water from a fountain!

The larger reality is that humanity can’t stand to be corrected… especially by outsiders.

When new information is too far away from prior norms — it’s rejected wholesale.

This is just as true for us as it is for them.

When I elaborate about how the third world largely can’t stand receiving Western ‘help’ — I get stiff resistance — especially with the touchy-feely do-gooder crowd.

This is particularly apt with Liberal Jews.

Tikkun olam — healing the world — is a value-truism for Jews.

The problem is that the vast bulk of humanity can’t stand to be healed if it means rejecting their father’s norms.

The MORE Jews try and help their ‘lessers’ the more they are hated.

THIS is largely why Black politicians are — virtually to a man — anti-Semitic — usually extremely so.

Many (socialistic) Federal housing projects are actually designed for Jewish norms. (Making the term ghetto doubly ironic.) European (Ashkenazi) Jewry has been massively urbanized over the recent centuries. Consequently they are totally fine living in New York City; a city that has taken on its current character largely since the arrival of European Jews on a massive scale a century, and more, ago.

(Brighton Beach, anyone?)

In complete contrast, Black American culture is actively anti-urban. No Africans lived in conurbations until the last generations. Ditto for book centric culture — and all the rest.

So what we witness are Federal (Jewish) low income (elderly, Section 8) projects in the greater New York area that are crime free, pristine even.

When the exact same structure (more or less a clone) is inhabited by Black Americans in the mid-West it quickly devolves into a charnel house for drug addicts, and the ‘economic engine’ that sustains them.

This is true even as the Section 8 project’s (Black) tenants are elderly. The gangs simply move right on in.

Back in Africa adolescent boys — virtually to a man — hook up with gangs. It’s their cultural norm. It’s also the land of the tattoo – for pretty much the same reason.

In the US, such gang oriented tats are reason enough to begin a police profile on ‘a future trouble maker.’

What no do-gooder can bear to admit is that Blacks don’t lust for urban living. No amount of Federal ‘interventionism’ is going to change that. For all we know, it’s in their DNA.

&&&&&&

All of the above is a long way of saying that the road to Hell is paved with the best of intentions — whenever the paving crew is of an alien culture.

This is universally true for all Federal assistance for Black Americans.

If you listen to Farrakhan/ Wright: most Blacks don’t want to mix with White culture. They want true separation — rural ghettos, if you will. If the finances were there, no small number would leave the US all together.

While Whites scoff at such a statement: look at just how many Jews flee to Israel — and how many Whites flee to anywhere but America.

Wozniak is relocating to Australia — for cultural and political reasons.

So the reality is that wealthy Americans are leaving all the time. The ones who want to leave the most — are too broke to finance the trip back home — to Africa.

Finances ARE the only hang-up. Federal largesse has them trapped in cold northern cities — that they so dislike that they’re bouncing off the walls every winter.

The logic of this is as alien to do-gooders as clean water is to those in the third world. They won’t even consider it.

“The goal–and the person freely admitted this was a gamble–is to open Iran to more Western influence and over time to soften the theocratic regime there, much as happened in the Communist world years ago.”

I call bullshit right there.

First, that’s NOT what happened to the communist world, as anyone even moderately knowledgeable with world events is aware. But I digress.

In 2009, a full two years before the so called ‘Arab Spring’ there were widespread demonstrations against the theocratic Iranian regime in response to the rigged election, which could have easily expanded into widespread rebellion and the possible toppling of a regime many in Iran were more than a little tired of. Recall the Green Movement. Many urged Obama to do something, anything. Even if it was to only make a statement in support, or sympathy with their cause. This went on for weeks.

So where was Obama? He did nothing. Nothing. He allowed the regime to recover and crush the rebellion. He has shown what side he was, and is on.

How fast reality slips down the memory hole for liberals.
They believe what affirms their belief and hate, discredit, ignore, or forget what doesn’t.

The fallacy of said liberal’s position is the assumption that Iran, with more exposure to the west will absorb some of its culture and thus somehow magically soften its positions. (If they only got to know us, they’d like us and we’d all get along)

Why is this a fallacy? Because the ordinary citizenry already has exposure to American culture. It happens to be very popular. They are already disgusted with the present regime. As for the Mullahs, they aren’t going to change one iota when they know that to do so would be political and quite possibly literal suicide. Nor are they going to willingly give up power. What do these liberals smoke?

“Otiose: “We are too financially weakened,”

Are we? The federal budget doesn’t seem to be contracting.”

Financially weakened refers to a government at all levels that is too big, deficits remain to high, and debt levels have been and are continuing to grow towards levels which will inhibit the fighting of any new wars.

“Otiose: “our military has been downsized too far,”

The military can be upsized.”

Upsizing takes years and will be limited by the growing financial weaknesses.

“Otiose: “and there is no political will for such an undertaking.”

Political will or lack thereof is a product of activism.”

Even on the right I doubt there’s much enthusiasm for another invasion of a Mideastern country, and it would take a nuclear bomb dropped on NY to get the left worked up enough but by then it would be moot for them.

Whether it’s the best choice or not Obama will likely get his way on this and we will see the sanctions dropped and the Iranians will have a bomb within a matter of a handful of years.

On the bright side note that Pakistan and India have had the bomb for decades now and surprisingly have resisted using it on each other.

Are we? The federal budget doesn’t seem to be contracting.

Otiose: “our military has been downsized too far,”

The military can be upsized.

Otiose: “and there is no political will for such an undertaking.”

Political will or lack thereof is a product of activism.