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Obama record shows Iran violations of deal won’t bring retaliation

Pennsylvania Sen. Robert P. Casey’s decision to back the Iran nuclear deal recently was one of the tipping points in President Barack Obama’s marshaling of enough affirmative votes to override a likely veto of the deal by Congress.

In backing the deal and helping create a blockade to its defeat, Sen. Casey, considered a swing vote on some Senate votes, reasoned that there are enough checks and balances in the deal to merit his support.

Much has been made of the fact that Iran has control of the process meant to assure that it is not developing nuclear power for weaponry reasons. Sen. Casey said that he is confident that if Iran violates any of the provisions of the deal that President Obama will exercise the military intervention portion of the agreement.

We respectfully want to know what the president has shown in the first seven years of his tenure to make Sen. Casey have any confidence whatsoever that the president is willing to use full military force on behalf of this country and its allies in the Mideast and elsewhere.

There was the line in the sand that Syria was not supposed to cross and then crossed without retaliation.

There was the announcement of heavy air strikes meant to strike down ISIS – and the subsequent drip-drip execution of those strikes with no long-term impact.

There was the apology tour upon taking office, with mea culpas for previous military actions, many of which safeguarded our country and the rest of the world.

And there is the president’s general approach to foreign policy, which seems to center on his own impression that he can talk anyone into anything, even if the entire track record of a country and its leaders shows that’s not possible.

It would be comforting if Casey’s interpretation was correct, but there is nothing in the president’s track record to suggest he is anything but loathsome of military might, even when it is the correct action.

President Obama has his revisionist view of this country’s military history and he’s not giving it up, no matter how much track record and present-day reality with which he is confronted.

There’s nothing to suggest his posture will change with regard to the Iran nuclear agreement.

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