Rhetoric in Decisions

President Obama is currently facing one of the toughest challenges of his presidency. The conflict with Iran has grown to a point where he must make Iran believe that we are both willing and committed to go to war with them if they don’t sacrifice their nuclear weapons program. This is a very difficult time for the United States military. We are trying to sever all military ties with Afghanistan, the country’s moral support for its armed forces continues to be at an all-time low, and worst of all, the federal government is cutting back its monetary support of the military. In such difficult economic times, everyone’s spending has to cut back, including that of the military. All of these factors are contributing to Iran’s belief that the United States is actually fearful of another war, and therefore Iran feels that they can continue to pursue their own nuclear ambitions without constraint. This scenario is why President Obama is facing one of the toughest challenges of his presidency. He is charged with making Iran believe that we will strike militarily, despite all evidence to the contrary. He has to convince Iran that we are dedicated to engaging in a new war during a time when we are backing out of an existing military situation. Even though I am a Republican, I believe that President Obama has done an acceptable job with a bad situation. Even though the end result is not yet clear, he has shown that American intervention is sometimes inevitable as was apparent in Libya and Egypt. Although President Obama is not yet committed to putting down a ground force, he has become the first president to really establish the presence of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). This is a critical new aspect of warfare because it allows the United States to “fight” in other countries without having to give a body count back home. This means that public morale for a war is not always necessary, as seen in the Vietnam War. This, as well as his recent speech in which he threatened Iran with war if they shut down the Strait of Hormuz, are critical examples that President Obama can and will  show that the United States will not back down. Obviously the crisis is far from over, and President Obama will have to use more rhetoric if he hopes to get Iran to back down from its current development of a program of mass destruction.