European allies are joining the Obama administration in criticizing Republican congressional interjection into nuclear negotiations with Iran, saying that an open letter from Republican senators to Iranian leaders has been counterproductive and comes at a particularly sensitive time in the talks…
The letter warned Iran that any nuclear agreement signed by Obama could be revoked ‘by the stroke of a pen’ by any future president, and that Congress could modify its terms ‘at any time.’
(Washington Post, March 13, 2015)
People of all stripes are criticizing this letter to Iran. Most notably, the above-cited edition of the Post quotes retired Major Gen. Paul D. Eaton damning it as “mutinous.”
Yet few are mentioning what is most egregious and misguided about this letter, which is the utter contempt its signatories showed for leaders of the other P5+1 countries (i.e., the United Kingdom, Russia, China, France + Germany). After all, these leaders are indispensable parties not only to the ongoing negotiations, but also to the economic sanctions that forced Iran to the table in the first place.
That said, it still speaks volumes that the only sign of bipartisanship in Washington these days is the criticism conservatives/Republicans and liberals/Democrats are hurling at the forty-seven Republican senators who signed this letter.
It’s hardly surprising, of course, that liberals are denouncing it. What is surprising is that conservatives are matching their outrage – with the editorial board of The Plain Dealer summarizing the prevailing criticism on March 11 as follows:
The magnitude of this disgraceful decision shows the degree to which partisanship has gobbled up rationality on foreign policy.
Mind you, many of the conservative commentators criticizing this “disgraceful decision” are on record hailing the Republican leadership’s equally disgraceful decision to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress on Iran two weeks ago.
What’s more, the sole purpose for writing this letter is the same as it was for inviting Netanyahu: to defy or marginalize Obama’s presidential authority. This, notwithstanding that doing so would only clear the way for a march of folly into Iran that would make the war in Iraq seem like a mere skirmish.
The point is that some of us have been decrying the partisanship that has been gobbling up rationality among Republicans, on practically all of Obama’s policies (foreign and domestic), since day one of his presidency. Even among the conservatives now venting outrage over this letter, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone explaining why so many Republican senators – who knew or should have known better – signed it.
It’s all too understandable that a Tea-Party senator like Tom Cotton of Arkansas took it upon himself to write this letter. He and fellow upstart Republicans, like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, seem to think they were elected only to pander to neo-con warmongers and right-wing nutjobs.
Interestingly enough, Secretary of State John Kerry dismissed his letter and chastised him by noting that Cotton has only been in the Senate for sixty days. This is why it’s so stupefying that he got so many seasoned and putatively rational Republicans to co-sign, including no less a person than Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
But here is why I think they did:
So irrational is their purpose that one could also be forgiven the suspicion that their dark ulterior motive is to see America become so dysfunctional and humiliated under Obama’s leadership that Americans would not even consider electing another Black person as president for at least another 100 years.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has declared repeatedly, and quite unabashedly, that, ‘The single most-important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.’ (National Journal, October 23, 2010)
That, folks, is what this is all about – not about creating jobs, or reducing the national debt, or maintaining America’s AAA credit rating, [or preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons].
(“S&P Downgrades U.S. Credit Rating,” The iPINIONS Journal, August 8, 2011)
There’s also no denying the mutinous common cause between upstart (or Tea-Party) and establishment (or Grand-Old) Republicans: The former want Obama to fail to vindicate their rhetoric about the incompetence of the big government they think he personifies. The latter want him to fail to vindicate their rhetoric about the incompetence of Obama himself. Or, to call a spade a spade:
No less a person than (Black) Attorney General Eric Holder insinuated that only one word explains why Republicans would rather see their country fail than see Obama succeed: racism
(“Obama Trumpets Obamacare Success … Despite Republican Sabotage,” The iPINIONS Journal, April 15, 2014)
Granted, partisanship is nothing new in American politics. But no president in modern times has been subjected to more wanton congressional disrespect than Obama. After all, as much as Democrats hated Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, no Democratic congressman ever heckled them during their formal state of the union address; and no Democratic leadership ever invited a foreign leader to address a joint session of Congress in a manner designed to make the sitting Republican president seem irrelevant.
More to the point, I dare anyone to point to a time in U.S. history when politicians so blindly and blithely abandoned long-held policy positions, to say nothing of common sense. Yet Republicans have done this, over and over again, in a vain effort to make Obama “a failed president” – the welfare of the country be damned.
Hell, nothing demonstrates this quite like McConnell touting his experience and seniority as virtues during his re-election campaign last year, only to discredit both, and abandon his leadership position, by co-signing this plainly ill-conceived and ill-advised letter.
And don’t get me started on Senator John McCain. He is arguably the most distinguished and respected Republican in Congress. Yet he excused his irrational decision to co-sign as follows:
I saw the letter, I saw that it looked reasonable to me and I signed it, that’s all. I sign lots of letters.
(Politico, March 10, 2015)
Meanwhile, there’s the “lamestream media.” You’d think at least one reporter would have the journalistic balls to challenge Obama’s critics to explain why they’re more qualified to ensure Israel’s national security than:
- The Israeli defense ministers who are on record (as noted in my February 23 commentary above) declaring that Obama has done more to ensure Israel’s national security than any other president in U.S. history.
- The 180 Israeli ex-military chiefs who held a news conference (as reported in the March 1 edition of the Washington Post) not only to denounce Netanyahu’s congressional address as a brazen strategic blunder, but also to support Obama’s efforts to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran.
Beyond this, Obama’s critics should be forced to explain if they think the leaders of Russia, China, Germany, France, and the UK are just as naïve, incompetent, and untrustworthy as they insist Obama is for negotiating this deal. After all, his critics would have you believe that Obama is so desperate for a deal to seal his presidential legacy, he’d have no compunction about striking one even if it “threatens the survival of Israel” – as the eschatologically paranoid Netanyahu maintains.
Never mind that Obama is “leading from in front” by rallying these world leaders to endorse his strategy for preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. This, ironically, is the kind of leadership that makes him finally worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize he won years ago.
Which raises these four (damningly rhetorical) questions:
- Do Netanyahu and his band of enablers in the U.S. Congress believe that Putin of Russia, Xi of China, Merkel of Germany, et al. are doing so just to ensure Obama’s presidential legacy … or to threaten Israel’s national survival?!
- What makes Netanyahu and his band of enablers in the U.S. Congress think that they can torpedo this deal and then get these world leaders to endorse their ill-fated plan to either sanction or bomb Iran into oblivion?
- Why was it okay for Reagan to negotiate a deal with the Soviet Union not to use its nuclear weapons, but not okay for Obama to do so with Iran not to develop them?
- Why would anyone on planet Earth believe that these congressional yahoos — who couldn’t even negotiate a gun control agreement with the president of the United States — would be able to negotiate a nuclear weapons agreement with the grand ayatollah of Iran?
In any event, for the record, I can assure you that:
- A future president will revoke foreign aid to Israel before she revokes a nuclear deal with Iran.
- Congressional Republicans will have about as much success modifying the terms of such a deal as they’ve had modifying the provisions of Obamacare (i.e., none whatsoever).
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