Obama’s Swelled Head Hinders Hiding It In Sand On Iran, Hamas

Washington, May 6 – The Obama administration has been attempting to hide its head in the sand regarding the threats posed by Iran’s nuclear ambitions and by Palestinian militants, but the sheer size of the president’s ego-inflated cranium has made finding a sufficient quantity of sand unlikely.

With the help of Secretary of State John Kerry and several advisers, Obama has studiously tried to ignore Iran’s manipulation of Western powers and the UN’s nuclear watchdog agency, dismissing as exaggerated the Israeli protestations that the Islamic Republic is on track to threaten global interests within months. However, the ongoing crisis in Ukraine elicited several grand pronouncements from Obama that proved useless in keeping Russia out of the Crimea and exposing him to questions about his will and ability to defend other allies living in the shadow of a nuclear-armed Iran.

The administration’s swelled head also encumbered efforts to minimize the importance of the Fatah-Hamas unity deal, as earlier proud, unequivocal statements by the president and his spokespeople, to the effect that Hamas participation in Palestinian Authority governance would be a deal-breaker in American-mediated negotiations, were referred to, at the same time that Hamas – and even some Fatah officials, contradicting Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas – loudly insisted that Hamas would neither disarm nor recognize Israel.

Various figures in the government have attempted to help the president reduce the swelling. Several Republican leaders have tried injecting alarmist rhetoric about the Affordable Health Care Act and immigration reform efforts, apparently to no avail. One private citizen also gave shots – fired at people attending functions at two Jewish facilities in Kansas City, Kansas – that seemed to at least halt the swelling temporarily, but the president’s head returned to its previously inflated size within a day.

Other efforts have taken the approach of trying to find enough sand to cover Obama’s head, but continued inaction on climate change and the rise of the oceans has limited access to beach sand. Prolonged drought in California has produced abundant dry areas, but the type of soil and dust that has resulted is unsuitable for the purpose of hiding Obama’s head.

Failed ego-driven willful ignorance has important precedents, notably when Joseph Stalin ignored warnings that Nazi Germany was preparing to invade the Soviet Union in the spring of 1941. As result, the Red Army was ill-prepared to hold off the Wehrmacht. Stalin meddled incompetently in military affairs from the outset, believing himself a superior tactician, but several disastrous losses, accounting for more than a million dead and imprisoned in each encounter, finally forced him to concede military leadership to military minds.

Another prior instance involved the belief that Hitler’s territorial ambitions would be satisfied by annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938 and deterred by tough-talking, but ultimately impotent, France and Britain. Repeated failure to repulse the blitzkrieg led to the humiliating surrender of France and a hurried British flight at Dunkirk in 1940.