EPSTEIN
page 6 / 454 . OCR, unverified
resolutions. Suspend uranium enrichment and we will talk.
At least that stops the clock. Anything else amounts to being played.
And about the Khamenei agent who charms but declares enrichment an inalienable right, who smiles but refuses to
shake the president's hand. When asked by NBC News whether the Holocaust was a myth
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/president-rouhani-iranians-should-be-free-subject-to-protection-of-our-
national-identity/2013/09/19/83bcaad0-2120-11e3-adla-1a919f2ed890_story.html> , Rouhani replied: "I'm not a
historian. I'm a politician."
Iranian moderation in action.
And, by the way, do you know who was one of the three Iranian "moderates" the cake-bearing McFarlane dealt with at
that fateful arms-for-hostage meeting in Tehran
chttp://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/09/20/irans_new_president_has_a_fan_club_in_us_intelligence_vets>
years ago? Hassan Rouhani.
We never learn.
Article 4.
The Washington Post
Obama's myopic worldview
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Jackson Diehl <http://www.washingtonpost.com/jackson-diehl/2011/02/24/ABccMXN_page.html>
September 26, 2013 -- "The world is more stable than it was five years ago," Barack Obama assured the U.N. General
Assembly on Tuesday. This transparently self-serving but otherwise baffling claim came at the beginning of a long and
dense address chttp://www.whitehouse.govithe-press-office/2013/09/24/remarks-president-obama-address-united-
nations-general-assembly> aimed at answering the critique that he lacks a coherent foreign policy, particularly
regarding the Middle East.
Judging from the widely varying <http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ej-dionne-obamas-diplomatic-outreach--
to-americans/2013/09/25/c8498ce6.2615.11e3-ad0d-b7c8d2a594b9_story.html> reactions he inspired
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trouble-at-the-core-of-us-foreign-policy/2013/09/25/b7d2652a-2608-
11e3-b7Sd-5b7f66349852_story.html> , Obama didn't end the confusion about what he stands for. But his boast that his
presidency has calmed the globe opened a window on his peculiar outlook on foreign affairs — and why it has led him to
mismanage the most important crises on his watch.
So: Why, according to Obama, is the world better off than in 2008? Well, the global economic crisis has abated. But
that's not all: "We've also worked to end a decade of war," the president said, by withdrawing U.S. and NATO troops
from Iraq and Afghanistan and "shifting away from a perpetual war footing." Here's where you could almost hear the
head-scratching in the Iraqi and Afghan delegations: Violence in both of those countries
chttp://www.longwarjournalorg/threat-matrix/archives/2013/07/taliban_step_up_operations_in.php> is considerably
worse than it was five years ago, in part because of the U.S. withdrawals.
Also, as Obama half-acknowledged, al-Qaeda is more of a threat in more places — Kenya, Nigeria, Mali, Libya, Syria
<http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/timeline-unrest-in-syria/207/> — than it was in 2008. And then there
is the region stretching from Morocco to Iran, which is experiencing not stability but an epochal upheaval, one that has
brought civil war or anarchy to a half-dozen countries and spawned the greatest crimes against humanity since the turn
of the 21st century.
It's easy to dismiss Obama's claim on factual grounds. More interesting is to see what prompted it: a soda-straw view of
the world in which only the president's inauguration-day priorities are visible. His aim then was to bring home U.S.
troops, end the "endless war" of George W. Bush, defend the homeland from al-Qaeda and step back from the quagmire
of the Arab Middle East. He did all that; ergo, the world is more stable — and from the attenuated perspective of an
American who mainly wishes the world would go away, perhaps it is.
This definition of stability, however, requires ignoring all that would disturb it — anything that might demand new
military commitments or deeper U.S. engagement with Arabs and their seemingly endless conflicts. And so Obama
spelled out four "core interests" for which he would use "all elements of our power, including military force": preventing
the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, stopping attacks on the U.S. homeland, defending allies and ensuring
the "free flow of energy." All else, including promoting democracy and preventing genocide, was relegated to a lesser
category, in which his administration will act only in concert with "the international community." And maybe not even
then.
It's worth noting that Obama has not always been so small-minded, at least rhetorically. In May 2011, after the NATO
intervention in Libya that he reluctantly joined, he delivered another major address <http://www.whitehouse.govithe-
press-office/2011/05/19/remarks-president-middle-east-and-north-africa> on the Middle East. He started by listing the
same core priorities. Then he said: "We must acknowledge that a strategy based solely upon the narrow pursuit of these