President Obama today seeks to cast the Iran deal as the most momentous foreign policy decision since the vote to authorize the 2003 Iraq war or Cold War efforts at diplomacy with the Soviet Union. He argued that those who advocated for military action to unseat Saddam Hussein cannot be trusted in their opposition to the Iran deal. The problem with this, of course, is first that Vice President Joe Biden and his Secretary of State John Kerry also argued for the Iraq war before momentum shifted, at which point they believed it political expedient to change their minds. The alternative they did not choose was, of course, to dedicate themselves to once again seizing momentum and then winning. The second problem with Obama’s logic is that he conflates the initial goals with the State Department-led emphasis on nation building that came after.

But put aside Obama’s twisted logic. The analogy Obama seeks to make is telling, because it exposes his major blind spot. Take the Cold War conflict with the Soviet Union: The root of the conflict, both for Democrats and Republicans and, for that matter, among labor unionists and manufacturers, was a defense of liberty. Americans enjoyed freedom and sought to defend it; the Soviet Union sought a more totalitarian answer. That is not hyperbole, as any Soviet refugee can attest. While numerous presidents pursued arms control with their Soviet counterparts, most also understood what the fight was about. They sponsored media outreach into the Soviet Union and spoke about human rights. That’s what, in part, the Helsinki Accords were about. That’s what was at the heart of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment was about, and that’s why Ronald Reagan called upon Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.

Historians can and do still debate the motivations behind Operation Iraqi Freedom. Certainly, there were many: There was a real fear after 9/11 that the United States could not risk weapons of mass destruction (WMD) falling into the hands of terror sponsors. Intelligence with regard to the extent of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s WMD program was faulty, but policymakers did not know that at the time. Among neoconservatives, especially, but also more broadly within the State Department as well, there was also an argument that if conflict was going to occur, no longer should one dictator or general replace another; that there should be a concerted effort to install democracy. Some diplomats and analysts considered that naïve, but it is impossible to level criticism about democratization without also recognizing the concurrent debate about transformative diplomacy that occurred during the first term of the George W. Bush administration. Likewise, proponents of the Iraq war also sought to right historical wrongs with regard to the suffering of the Kurds and the Shi‘ites under Saddam Hussein. Obama can continuously re-litigate the Iraq war, but to deny that human rights concerns impacted the debate is to deny reality.

Now, consider Obama’s Iran deal: Against the backdrop of the post-election Iranian unrest in 2009, Obama was largely silent. When President Hassan Rouhani oversaw a massive increase in public executions, Obama was not only silent but called his Iranian counterpart a moderate. Then, of course, there is the persecution of gays and religious minorities. Again, Team Obama is largely silent. More recently, there has been nationwide labor action by Iranian teachers. Silence. Perhaps because Rouhani sees silence as invitation to persecution, the Iranian government in recent days has detained Ismail Abdi, secretary-general of Iran’s Teachers’ Trade Association. While Obama was once a neighborhood organizer and continues to speak about and cultivate organized labor, he ignores its persecution in Iran.

Therein lies the difference between the Iran deal, versus other episodes of U.S. interaction with rogue regimes and authoritarian adversaries: In the past, a desire for liberty and freedom colored U.S. action; today, Obama dispenses with any notion of liberty and freedom as guiding principles. The United States has lost its way.