Two weeks ago, Big Media and the left made a big deal over the fact that three dozen retired admirals and generals signed a joint letter supporting the president’s nuclear deal with Iran. [Wednesday], more than five times that number sent a letter to Congress urging opposition to the deal.

One hundred and ninety retired admirals and generals told congressional leaders that removing sanctions on Iran threatened Middle East peace. They warned that far from cutting off all pathways to a bomb, the deal “allows all the infrastructure the Iranians need for a nuclear bomb.” They wrote that the agreement, with its secret side deals, was “unverifiable.”

They are right on all counts.

In addition, Dennis Ross and Gen. David Petraeus, both of whom served in the Obama Administration, wrote a joint op-ed in the Washington Post this week. According to Ross and Petraeus, the deal allows Iran to expand its nuclear program, adding that it treats Iran “like Japan or the Netherlands — but Iran is not Japan or the Netherlands when it comes to its behavior.”

They state that “deterrence is the key” to making sure the Iranians do not attempt to develop nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, deterrence doesn’t seem to be in the president’s vocabulary. Every time he insists that our only options are this terrible deal or war, he makes it clear that the military option is off the table.

But Ross and Petraeus have a solution:

“While some may question whether we would act militarily if the Iranians were to dash to a bomb, no one questions whether the Israelis would do so. … Providing the Israelis the MOP [bunker busting 30,000-pound massive ordnance penetrator bombs] and the means to carry it would surely enhance deterrence.”

All Lives Matter

No doubt you have heard about the terrible shooting of two journalists and a woman they were interviewing in southwest Virginia. The murderer, Vester Lee Flanagan II, cited the Charleston shootings by Dylann Roof as his motivation. But he is just like Roof in many ways.

Both Flanagan and Roof are haters. Both wanted a race war. Both murdered innocent people. Both were evil. Roof sat with church members and studied the Bible with them before he murdered them. Flanagan stalked his victims and, just like ISIS, he videotaped his assault to make sure it was seen far and wide.

The murders in Charleston were quickly used by the left to excoriate the South, conservatives and people who support the Second Amendment. That is where the similarities end. Flanagan was black, a homosexual, an over-the-top Obama supporter, who was reprimanded for wearing Obama buttons during his reporting on Election Day.

The president’s statement [Wednesday] said nothing about racial hatred on the left. There was nothing about the left examining its rhetoric to see if it contributed to this tragedy in any way. Just more restrictions on guns.

A few weeks ago we reported on Louis Farrakhan’s speech in Florida calling for ten thousand volunteers to rise up and murder white people. Perhaps Mr. Flanagan was answering Farrakhan’s call to jihad against white people.

This sad event is a reminder that all lives matter — black lives, white lives and, yes, if we are ever to restore respect for the sanctity of all life, even the lives of unborn children.