no one in the Obama administration has called it a "bad deal"
Of
course they haven't; I'll stipulate to that...
Neither Herman Munster nor Obama himself is going stand up and yell, "Hey look guys! We negociated a bad deal!"
Just look at the US opening position and compare that to where we wound up; the facts speak for themselves...
And their whole defense for this, whenever their challenged about it is "this is the best we could do"...
I watched Kerry's performance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier this week, and that was the gist of everything he presented...
BTW,
my go-to position has
never been to reflexively oppose every thing Obama does. When he first came into Office and Rush Limbaugh was saying he hoped he would fail, I
denounced that attitude, for the very good and sensible reason that if a POTUS fails, the country will fail...
The record will show that I gave Obama all props for getting Bin Laden, (which in retrospect stands out like a sore thumb versus every other foreign policy decision he has made) and throughout most of his first term, I had very little criticism for his foreign policy...
Because frankly I missed the way he sowed the seeds we have now come to reap; from the failure to put a force agreement in place in Iraq that would have given us the leverage to continue to be honest brokers with the Sunni Tribal leaders that was established under the Petraeus Doctrine, to the thumb sucker "we're
so incompetent, we can't figure out for three years who the good guys are so let's just do nothing" policy on Syria...
The combination of which played a
huge role in the creation of "ISIS"...
The WTF ? eye opener moment for me with Obama of foreign policy was the day he announced, (after having failed to get buy-in from the Brits) that he wasn't going to bomb Assad over his use of chemical weapons unless Congress agreed...
That was
totally unnecessary and made him look like weak-kneed amateur;
no one of significance in either party expected him to do that, (John Boehner had said publicly that he supported the action, and it would have been entirely within the President's prerogative; all Obama needed to do to was abide by the notification Provisions of The War Powers Act)
That was followed by two weeks of
painful to watch confusing tap dancing by Herman Munster talking about "incredibly small" attacks while the the White House was insisting "The United States does not do pin pricks"...
Which was
then followed by a deal brokered by Vladimir "You've Got To Be Kidding Me" Putin, which (as Gomer says, Surprise, Surprise, Surprise) has been
completely violated left and right ...
And it's been all down hill from there...With
that sequence of events, he made the US an international laughing stock...(much as Carter did)
Maybe that sorry episode made Obama "well liked" among French college kids, but when it comes to respect from the governments of our allies and our opponents, not so much...