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.]

Obama’s plans for Israel

The New Neo Posted on by

This has been alluded to before, but more details can be found here.

I have little doubt that Obama plans to stab Israel in the back as forcefully as possible, and that this is not a new idea for him.

The real question is will he actually need to do this (if he’s successful in Iran—meaning in empowering and arming Iran, he might not see the need), will he succeed in doing it, and what will be the reaction of the US Congress and people. I would say it ought to be impeachment/conviction time (not that it will be). But the damage to Israel will have already been done.

Read this for more.

How about Michelle Obama in 2016?

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Mrs Whatsit” asks:

Is anyone besides me wondering whether the reason that the Obama administration has been so quick to throw Hillary under the bus might be to make room for a new candidate who’d offer the trifecta of being black and female and having great name recognition and besides that, would circumvent the 22nd Amendment ”” that is, Michelle Obama?

I’ve been hearing people predict for years that Michelle would run in 2016. I have never thought so, and I still don’t think so.

It’s not that I don’t think Obama would want it. I just don’t think people would buy it, due to Michelle’s complete and total lack of political experience—and by “people” I mean also Democrats. Hillary Clinton has been a senator for years and then a Secretary of State, and no matter what you think of her performance in each job you can’t deny it’s relevant experience for a run for the presidency. Michelle only has the First Lady experience behind her, which I don’t think would be enough for her to win, even with the Obama name.

People have also long suggested that Obama is going to force some sort of crisis before the 2016 election, declare a state of emergency a la Reichstag fire, and run for a third term. Again, I am fairly certain that he would run again if he could, but I don’t think he can or will. That’s not because I think there won’t be a crisis (manufactured or natural, there are plenty of potential possibilities). Nor is it because the US is so filled with people who are wedded to and protective of the Constitution; I think fewer and fewer people care about the importance of following a constitutional process that protects us against a tyrant. The reason I think Michelle won’t run is that many Democrats and even some on the left are sick of Obama, and they want new blood. For the left, that new blood would be someone like Elizabeth Warren, not Michelle. And since Warren would also be a first woman president, it’s not necessary to the left that she also be black; first black president has been done.

I recall that right before the 2008 election quite a few people thought the economic crisis had been engineered by shadowy behind-the-scenes operators such as Soros, in order to facilitate Obama’s victory. I never bought that conspiracy theory, but it is the case that the economic crisis certainly acted to do just that. And by the way, this seems as good a place as any to point out to those who are angry that McCain ran against Obama, because McCain was such a poor and RINO-esque candidate, that I think you should refresh your memory as to the entire list of Republican candidates that year. Besides McCain, there was Thompson, Huckabee, Ron Paul, Alan Keyes, Duncan Hunter, Rudy Giuliani, and Mitt Romney. Who of those do you think would have been able to beat Obama?

My favored candidate at the beginning of the season was Giuliani, but he ran a poor campaign and dropped out. I seem to recall he was rejected as being a RINO by the right of the party. And I don’t see how any of the others would have had a chance against Obama—except perhaps for Romney, but only after the economic downturn. But by then the primaries had ended and the candidate, McCain, had been chosen. McCain was, unfortunately, probably the weakest of all of them on economic affairs (which had become particularly important) and Romney the strongest, which might have meant that by November of 2008 Romney would have been a far better candidate than he seemed to be back when the Republican field was being winnowed down.

That’s one of the problems with the nomination process; it’s not nimble enough to react to changing circumstances—although I think it was highly probable that Obama would have won against any of those 2008 GOP candidates, because Americans were determined to repudiate Bush and the Republicans and go with hope and change.

So here we are.

About Indiana’s religious freedom law…

The New Neo Posted on by

…and the firestorm around it—

The topic makes me weary, weary, weary, to see that everything that we predicted is coming to pass. What began as a simple “gay people ought to be able to get married” morphed seamlessly into “anyone who doesn’t agree is a bigot and must be destroyed” (see Eich, Brendan) and then into “if you offer a service and we want you to facilitate the wedding ceremony you have no right to refuse on religious grounds, even though there are plenty of other people eager and willing to participate instead” and then on to “a state that passes a law protecting those religious rights must be boycotted.”

Well, quelle surprise. I wrote a post about this issue around a year ago, when it surfaced in Kansas (although Kansas hadn’t actually passed a similar law, but merely voted on it). At the end of that post, I referred back to another post I’d written a year before that, and quoted it:

I’ve written before that I personally have no problem with gay people marrying. But I have a huge problem with compelling Christians to be part of such celebrations or face lawsuits or the loss of their businesses. And I have a huge problem with propaganda that misrepresents what those who oppose gay marriage are suggesting and why. But such propaganda doesn’t surprise me in the least, nor should it surprise anyone else.

About a year ago I wrote, in a lengthy piece about gay marriage:

I’m not personally a follower of a religion or religious subdivision that still subscribes to such beliefs in the literal sense. But I respect religious people and think I understand the reasons for their objections to same sex marriage. I believe that”¦SSM [same-sex marriage] is merely one step in a long “progressive” march towards the eradication of religion and/or its demonization (a word that has an ironic twist in this context, does it not?).

I see absolutely no reason to change my mind.

There’s even less reason to change my mind now. There is absolutely no interest in liberty on the part of progressives if it’s the liberty to oppose something they want, and they will make sure to stifle that liberty if they possibly can. They’re well on their way.

[NOTE: If you want to read a legal analysis of the Indiana law, there’s this from Jonathan H. Adler at Volokh.

I’ll also add that I wonder if the forces driving the anti-Indiana campaign would be interested in making an exemption for devout Muslims who run businesses and don’t want to be forced to be part of gay marriage ceremonies. Somehow I think they might.]

Further thoughts on the Germanwings co-pilot

The New Neo Posted on by

The motivations behind the extraordinarily destructive act of Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz remain a mystery.

We know a little more about him, though—the most salient fact so far being that investigators found a torn-up “doctor’s note that called for him to go on medical leave on the day of the tragedy.” He was being treated for some sort of illness, but authorities either won’t say what it was or don’t know yet what it was. I believe it’s the former.

Speculation, however, is that it was depression. Lubitz is reported to have had a depressive episode six years ago during his pilot training that caused him to take some time off.

Of course, depressed people have a higher likelihood of suicide, particularly if the depression is severe. But they don’t usually take 149 other people with them. So even if it turns out the Lubitz suffered from depression, that really explains very little.

Was he taking anti-depressants? He might have been, if Germany is anything like the US, because since 2010 pilots in the US have been allowed to take one of four antidepressant medications, although only after 12 months of being grounded and undergoing monitoring and successful treatment. That does not seem to have been the case with Lubitz; if it had been the airline would have known.

The reason this might have been relevant is that some people, and some studies, have said that antidepressants cause a higher incidence of suicide and other violent behavior. I haven’t seen many studies that convince me that’s correct, and I’ve seen quite a few that seem to indicate otherwise (see this and this). Nor would anti-depressants negate any criminal liability. And at any rate, there’s no evidence that Lubitz was taking antidepressants.

I have generated some theories about Lubitz’s behavior, both of them extremely speculative. So take the following with more than a grain of salt.

One is what I’d call the Charles Whitman theory. Whitman was the man who climbed a tower at the University of Texas in 1966 and killed 13 people before being shot dead by police. Later it was discovered that he had brutally murdered his mother and wife earlier in the day. But he had also left a journal and notes that indicated he knew something was very very wrong with him, and he had no idea what it was:

I don’t really understand myself these days. I am supposed to be an average reasonable and intelligent young man. However, lately (I can’t recall when it started) I have been a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts.

It was after much thought that I decided to kill my wife, Kathy, tonight ”¦ I love her dearly, and she has been as fine a wife to me as any man could ever hope to have. I cannot rationa[l]ly pinpoint any specific reason for doing this…

Earlier Whitman had gone to several doctors for treatment, complaining of terrible headaches and irrational, overwhelming impulses to do violence, impulses which he experienced as invasive and foreign to his nature. He even left a note asking authorities to do an autopsy after his death, and when they did, they:

…discovered that Whitman’s brain harbored a tumor the diameter of a nickel. This tumor, called a glioblastoma, had blossomed from beneath a structure called the thalamus, impinged on the hypothalamus, and compressed a third region called the amygdala. The amygdala is involved in emotional regulation, especially of fear and aggression. By the late 1800s, researchers had discovered that damage to the amygdala caused emotional and social disturbances.

There’s been much argument ever since about whether this could have been the cause of Whitman’s behavior. I doubt it was the entire reason, but it could certainly have contributed to an increase in the severity of his hostile impulses and a decrease in his ability to moderate them, although he still probably would have been held criminally responsible had he survived.

What does this have to do with Lubitz? Probably absolutely nothing. But it’s at least a possibility, however remote, that something similar was happening to him, causing a change that was both sudden and severe. We will almost certainly never know, because the evidence—his brain—was most likely obliterated in the crash.

My second idea involves the phenomenon known as copycat syndrome. Whatever caused Lubnitz to become violent, the form his violence took—deliberately flying a large and loaded airplane into a mountain—is extreme. Extreme, but not unheard of; there have been several incidents of pilot murder/suicide over the years. One year ago, the disappearance of Malaysia Flight 370 received an enormous amount of coverage, and was the focus of so much attention—including the very strong suspicion that it was pilot murder/suicide—that it’s possible Lubitz was attracted by the idea of the world knowing and speculating about him, too.

In fact, an ex-girlfriend alleges (in a German tabloid) that this is exactly the case, although she doesn’t tie it to the Malaysia flight:

When I heard about the crash, I remembered a sentence, over and over again, that he said,” the woman, a 26-year-old flight attendant the paper gave the fictional name of Maria W. to protect her identity, told Bild. “‘One day I’ll do something that will change the system, and then everyone will know my name and remember it’.”

Far-fetched? Yes. But the whole thing is so far beyond the ordinary, so difficult to imagine and assimilate, that these explanations are as good as any at this point.

[NOTE: It also seems bizarre that a man so young as Lubitz, and with so little flying experience, was allowed to co-pilot a plane of that magnitude. I don’t think that would be allowed in the US, but I haven’t been able to discover what the rules are about that.

Another strange thing is that the German doctor’s excuse note was given to Lubitz to give to his employer. Isn’t there some requirement that the employer be notified by the doctor? Otherwise, isn’t there an enormous risk that the patient will do exactly what Lubitz appears to have done here: rip them up? Would giving the employer the information be considered some sort of confidentiality violation? Shouldn’t that be waived when there is a clear danger to others, a sort of duty to warn?]

Hillary must have figured…

The New Neo Posted on by

…it worked so well for Lois Lerner, it will work for me.

And perhaps it will. Seems to me, though that it’s a potential felony:

While it is not clear precisely when Secretary Clinton decided to permanently delete all emails from her server, it appears she made the decision after October 28, 2014, when the Department of State for the first time asked the Secretary to return her public record to the Department,” Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), chairman of the Select Committee on Benghazi, said in a statement.

Clinton was under a subpoena order from the panel for all documents related to the 2012 attacks on the American compound there. But David Kendall, an attorney for Clinton, said the 900 pages of emails previously provided to the panel cover its request.

Does the accused get to decide what is evidence and what is not, and can he/she destroy what hasn’t been turned over? Sounds a bit—let’s just say, irregular—to me.

As for getting hold of the server:

In a letter provided to the committee, Kendall said Clinton would not be turning over the server to a third-party for review and that the emails no longer exist on the private server located in her New York home.

“There is no basis to support the proposed third-party review of the server that hosted the hdr22@clintonemail.com account,” Kendall wrote. “To avoid prolonging a discussion that would be academic, I have confirmed with the secretary’s IT support that no emails”¦..for the time period January 21, 2009 through February 1, 2013 reside on the server or on any back-up systems associated with the server.”

So of course, we need to take their word for it that there’s no possible way to recover them, and so there’s nothing there to see, move along. The funny thing (and I don’t mean “funny ha-ha”) is that most of the liberals/left will probably support this idea.

Take a look, for example, at the comments to the HuffPo article on the subject. Variations on the theme that I noted on a very quick perusal of the ones towards the top of the list: mockery of the GOP for caring, mockery of Trey Gowdy as a liar, saying Rice and Powell did it, too (used only a private server, and destroyed all emails after a subpoena??), saying the GOP is afraid of Hillary because she’ll win in 2016, and that they’re being especially hard on her because she’s a woman.

I think the saddest and most telling exchange is when one more reasonable commenter tentatively writes, “I agree Benghazi is a sham. But it’s hard to ignore the questions around this, if what he [Gowdy] says is even true.”

The response from the next commenter is, “it is NOT hard to ignore! You simply, well, ignore it.”

O’Brien explained how to do it to Winston Smith. It’s wasn’t easy at first, but Winston learned; he learned.

European hawks

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, not really hawks. But this is interesting, and I hope true:

In the Iran negotiations, however, it is France, implicitly supported by the UK and Germany, that is taking a tougher stance, advocating a longer timeline for the proposed agreement as well as stricter terms, while the Obama administration appears willing to settle for more generous terms in order to close the deal before the clock runs out. Suddenly it is the US that is from Venus and the Europeans are from Mars, to use the imagery of earlier debates…

First: Geography is a non-negotiable difference between Washington and the Western European capitals. Iranian nuclear capability combined with its growing ballistic missile arsenal is a threat more immediate to Europe than to the US…

Second: The pending deal with Iran, which ultimately will pave the way to an Iranian nuclear capacity, contributes to the on-going erosion of the non-proliferation agenda. This process has to be viewed in the context of the fate of Ukraine…

Third: At stake is not only a strategic competition between nation-states but also the threat posed by Islamist terrorism. England and France have both been victims of significant domestic terrorism, and both face the potential of ongoing radicalization and violence from fighters returning from the Middle East…

Fourth: The threat of a nuclear Iran emerging as the hegemonic power in the region has generated profound concern in the Arab world, which rebounds back to Europe, particularly with regard to the long-standing French ambition to maintain and expand Arab partnerships…

Fifth: European self-interest””both in the sense of the needs of the European Union as a whole and the national interests of the major European nation-states””emerges as a significant factor in international affairs, the more Washington pursues policies designed to reduce American leadership around the world…

Sixth: Domestic politics are pushing in different directions on both sides of the Atlantic…any appearance of knuckling under to demands from Washington would only prove to be a liability for European politicians.

The tone of the article is hushed and highly respectful of Obama, as though the policies he’s pursuing reflect some decision by the US rather than some decision by Obama and his handmaiden Kerry. But I’m quoting it because it offers at least a smidgeon of hope that Europe may hold Obama back from implementing his plans, a possibility I find intensely ironic.

What would a traitor president look like?

The New Neo Posted on by

What would he be doing, and what would he be refraining from? In what ways might it differ from what Obama has been doing regarding Iran, our enemy since 1979?

We are now overtly supporting our enemy, conceding to our enemy, abandoning a country that is that enemy’s enemy and has been our ally for over sixty years (Israel). We are doing this not because our hand is being forced by a military or economic defeat—au contraire—but because our president wants to do it. And although Obama has always said during campaigns that he favors talks with Iran, he has always said that he will not concede the very things he is getting ready to concede, and always pledged his support for Israel.

But now it is as though the two countries have traded places.

Those who have been paying attention are not surprised, because reading between the lines and looking at Obama’s pre-presidential history made it clear he was anti-Israeli (except when campaigns demanded otherwise). But who saw it and when is not really the issue now because now everyone ought to be able to see it, and practically everyone in the US ought to be highly alarmed.

That they are not speaks volumes.

But there do seem to be quite a few Democrats who are becoming alarmed. However, in order to stop Obama, 2/3 of Congress would have to be on board, either for some sort of legislative veto override, or for conviction in the Senate (2/3) after an impeachment in the House (majority). That 2/3 figure can only be reached by having a significant number of Democrats turn on Obama.

So if this deal goes through, we may have a moment of truth for the Democratic senators. I am pessimistic about the results, even though what Obama is doing is what monarchs do, or dictators. They say “L’état, c’est moi” (the state, it is I).

“Unprecedented” is the right word for Obama’s actions re Iran, but it’s not an intense enough word. The best precedent I can think of is the Hitler-Stalin pact, although it’s not really a good analogy—and even that was only a temporary strategic alliance on Stalin’s part. And both parties got quite a bit out of the deal:

For Hitler, the pact provided a guarantee that he could invade first Poland, then France and most of the rest of western Europe, without having to worry about any threat from the east. For Stalin, it allowed a breathing space in which to build up armed forces that had been severely damaged by the purges of the previous years, as his botched invasion of Finland showed. It also gave him the chance to expand the Soviet Union to include parts of the old Russian empire of pre-revolutionary times…The pact eventually extended to the economic sphere, with Germany providing military equipment in exchange for raw materials such as oil, grain, iron and phosphates… Stalin also handed back a substantial number of German communists who had taken refuge in the Soviet Union after the Nazi seizure of power; some of them, arrested during the purges, were taken directly from the Soviet Gulag to a German concentration camp.

That was Hitler and Stalin, two brutal dictators who could basically decide whatever they wanted by that time without any meaningful advise and consent from their governments or their people. Offhand I can’t think of any comparison in the realm of supposed non-dictatorships, where countries that have been enemies for forty-five years, in which the enemy (in this case Iran) has changed neither its rhetoric nor its behavior, and yet the other country (in this case the US) is reaching out the hand of alliance and friendship [I already dealt with the topic of Nixon in China already, here] and abandoning its ally (in this case Israel) in the process, in order to gain nothing whatsoever for itself. It seems that this would require a head of state who’s a mole or an agent. And for that head of state to remain in power and not be deposed afterward, it would require subjects or citizens who are anesthetized and/or unaware and/or overpowered, and a party or police forces or military afraid to challenge the monarch/tyrant.

I get frustrated when I read articles that indicate that Obama’s treatment of Netanyahu is just from personal enmity, or of some supposed change about the 2-nation goal. It’s none of the above, although Obama does hate Netanyahu and is angry. But that’s also a smokescreen, a way for Obama to justify to the public and to his party what he has long wanted to do anyway: sell Israel and the US out (as well as quite a few of our traditional Sunni Arab allies), to Iran.

Obama is not just angry at Netanyahu—he’s strategically angry at him. Obama’s anger serves a purpose, which is to break the bonds between the United States and Israel, and tie new bonds between the United States and Iran. It serves another purpose as well: to serve notice to the world that America’s alliances, previously extremely stable, are actually mutable. They are as insubstantial as air, and cannot be relied on, even after Obama is out of office. That will be one of Obama’s most enduring legacies, and it’s a beaut.