yustyoking

          Life offers us choices. What we do at the crossroads defines our future.

In 1999, I predicted that Al Gore would be a flawed candidate who would turn a clear electoral advantage into a cliffhanger. But even I could never envision the Decision 2000  mess of butterfly ballots, Pat Buchanan’s candidacy, hanging chads, Republican bullying and Al Gore totally caving. To spare us further agony, nice Al Gore let the Supreme Court hand the presidency to George W. Bush. This was a crossroads and America took the wrong path.

To err is human. An activist and ecologist, Al Gore would have made mistakes during his time in the White House. But they wouldn’t have been the Dick Cheney – George Bush mistakes. Hopefully, Al Gore would have seen the approach of 9/11. George W. Bush, appropriately named, spent August of 2001 thumbing his nose at the Washington press corps (and waving his butt at the cameras), ostensibly clearing brush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Al Gore certainly would not have used Osama bin Laden’s heinous attack as an excuse to go to war with… Saddam Hussein in Iraq?

The Iraq war— deposing, capturing and executing Saddam Hussein— has led directly to ISIS. There’s a reason Saddam was an iron-fisted dictator. Once destabilized, Iraq has proved a disaster. This was a crossroads and we chose wrong. There’s no putting this genie back in Aladdin’s lamp.

Meanwhile, Iran’s proxy Hezbollah blew up the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, Lebanon in 1983, killing 220 Marines and 21 other service personnel. They also bombed the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996, killing 19 U.S. servicemen and wounding 498 other people. And blew a hole in the USS Cole in Yemen in the year 2000, killing 17 sailors and injuring 39 others. Crying “Death to America!”, the Persians in Tehran cheered. No worries. Bush and Cheney responded by attacking… Iraq.

Crossroads.

In 2008, after winning more delegates in the primaries than Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton watched while New York Senator Charles Schumer and the so-called super-delegates— the party bosses— handed the nomination to Barack Obama. This was a crossroads and the Democrats went with the basketball player, the superstar. Never mind that Obama was a snake oil salesman, a childish man who snuck cigarettes and misled the voters with glorious promises of a bright new bipartisan future! Say what?

America chose wrong and Iran will get the bomb.

Following the agenda of a closet Muslim, Obama made overtures to Iran. Entering negotiations in Geneva, terrified of coming home empty-handed, Secretary of State John Kerry gave away the kitchen sink, desperately extending deadlines and conceding point after point. You and I could have negotiated a better agreement than Kerry’s!

Obama promised us that “no deal is better than a bad deal”— look it up!— and promptly reneged, proclaiming this hopelessly inadequate treaty to be the deal of the century. He insists that the only alternative is war!

The only alternative is to push the Iranians back to the negotiating table and forcing them to make a few concessions. Let’s get Iran out of the nuclear energy business before the world removes the sanctions. Has no one at the White House ever heard of a dirty bomb? Radioactive waste wrapped around a conventional explosive. Ka-blam!  Contaminating our cities in terrorist attacks. Making them uninhabitable. Well, duh! Doesn’t anyone in the White House have any security training at all?

We are repeating the mistakes of the 1930’s, with Iran taking the place of Nazi Germany. In order to make money, the G5+1 nations— the US, the UK, France, Germany, Russia and China— who are supposed to be in charge, are sacrificing world peace for cash on the barrelhead. Everybody is lining up to trade with Iran! A new market! And the Iranians have oil! Oh, goody! Totally short-sighted, we put trade ahead of world peace. This is the same mentality that had America selling steel to Japan before World War Two and IBM helping the Nazis with data processing, so they could create the extermination lists used to deport people to the concentration camps.

In 2015, Democratic Senators and Congresspeople are busy thumbing their noses at the Republicans and Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, supporting a nuclear agreement that will propel the world into war within a decade.

The Republicans are no better. Instead of a groundswell of bipartisan opposition to one of the worst deals in American history, the Republicans gathered the Tea Party Patriots on the west lawn of the Capitol, where they listened to the brilliance of Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. This is the Republican response to World War Three: Donald Trump.

We are at a crossroads and once again, mankind has chosen the wrong path. Favoring the Iranians— who still shout “Death to America!” and mean it— the Obama administration puts personal vanity, ego and greed before common sense. Paving the way to Armageddon.

Enjoy!