Joe HonickNo doubt there will be much jubilation when the final congressional combat ceases, and the “best deal we could get” with Iran is a reality…taking its place in what is touted as President Obama’s array of legacies.

But…

It will be little more than reflective of the real chance we had to show we care about humanity as we so often proclaim….and lost.

The evidence of our lost opportunity is sadly present daily as countless boats and ships of all sizes with overloaded crowds of men, women and children fleeing what used to be their homes, hundreds of thousands of which had been in Syria, for whom our new international partner, Iran, has been and continues to be the chief patron…with little comment from the so-called free world.

After all, there are many more important challenges before us, right? Why, here in the US, we have a cast of incomprehensible challengers for the nation’s presidency, nearly all of whom don’t want to know anything positive about a category called “immigrants” despite out own history of the crowd that founded this great country. While something representing a campaign for leadership continues, boatloads of those fighting to find some sense of freedom, or, at the very least: livable life, continue to make their ways in virtually any direction that might take them to their goals.

And, at such a time that presented us a huge opportunity to demonstrate real world leadership that would buttress the PR value of “the best deal we could get” with Iran, we have lost it. We lost it because the designated Leader of the Free World could not even find it in his oratory even to bring up the plight of those in Syria and elsewhere as an additional reality that needed and needs the same powerful efforts as reduced nuclear development.

So, when the Congress, by whatever necessary votes, proclaims the reality of “the best deal we could get”, perhaps the same Congress could append a humanitarian wish for American leadership to join other nations (so far without us) who are struggling to find ways and means to help those desperate souls since we have actually lost the role of leadership itself on the issue.

Were we at the very least to project a powerful measure of simply caring, it might help to confirm what we really meant by the words on the Statue of Liberty:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

When we hear so much about American “exceptionalism”, it could only have meaning if it confirmed we are the same nation that has profited and grown by letting those “yearning to breathe free” get the respiratory help they fight for today.

Unless the President of the United States AND the Congress append some measure of those thoughts to passage of the “deal,” much of what fills our chests with pride will find the air let out rapidly in the eyes of the world.

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Joe Honick is president of GMA International in Bainbridge Island, Wash.