The Great Unraveling of American society continues unabated this week. As promised, the House of Reprehensibles gave a hero’s welcome to Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, who spent the first minutes of his speech praising President Obama, and then raking him over the coals to the final sentence. It was an unprecedented move, clearly designed to derail the nuclear negotiations between the state department and Iran.
But Republicans weren’t done; freshman Arkansas Senator Tom (wish I was in the land of) Cotton took it upon himself to pen a letter to the ruling mullahs of Tehran, warning them in advance that any deal cooked up by Kerry and co. would be dead on arrival in Washington. Forty-seven GOP senators signed the document, another first in the annals of diplomacy. The Senate has now declared itself the chief architect of foreign policy, reducing the executive branch to figurehead status. President Cotton then left to meet with defense contractors to prepare for the inevitable war-to-come.
It was another example of the dysfunction of the federal government, which is now deceased for all intents and purposes. The only thing that matters now is the continuing war of words leading up to the 2016 elections. There will be no permanent solutions to any of the pressing issues confronting the nation, only bandages to stem the bleeding until one side or the other emerges triumphant.
Of course, anyone whose brain hasn’t been eaten knows that this will never happen. We might as well start referring to the old south (and midwest) by their preferred title: The Confederate States of America, a graveyard of dead ideas.
If I may. Actually “the annals of diplomacy” have seen more than plenty of impetuous surrogate diplomacy from Democrat members of Congress during Republican presidents’ tenures. This afternoon Steve Hayes of the Weekly Standard laid out a list of them longer than you arm that included Pelosi’s most recent hugging match with Syria’s Assad during Bush2’s administration that gave that murderer much sought after political cover and fortitude to stay the course that he is still on.
Nevertheless, I agree with Krauthammer that the Repubs’ letter would better have been composed and publicly directed at the President spelling out the imbroglio he would have with Congress should he accept the desperate agreement that Kerry appears to be cobbling together with Iran. Stand by for a nuclear armed klatch of Arab countries when the terms of the current agreement are announced. To think that the present letter will drive the Iranians from the negotiating table is beyond naïve – they have everything to gain and nothing to lose.
I saw Steve Hayes and I agree that Democrats are no shrinking violets when it comes to messing with another president’s foreign policy. There was quite a bit of opposition to Reagan’s Central American interventions, and as I recall, they weren’t too happy about him talking to the Ayatollah. Everybody knows you can’t deal with Iranians.
Still, the Republicans have taken it to another level in my opinion, and if you really believe they can wait until the Democrats give up or get voted out of office in numbers big enough to give the GOP a workable majority, I’ve got a slightly used bridge in Oakland I’d like to sell you.
How much for the bridge?
The sad truth is that the gulf between left and right is so wide that it would take a bridge long enough to reach Hawaii to rejoin the two parties. They can’t even agree to fix the bridges they have, much less build a new one. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/03/09/the-single-most-depressing-paragraph-you-will-read-about-american-politics-today/?postshare=5721426003906394
Hmm… The President has been usurping congressional powers and Congress responds by usurping presidential powers. Imagine that!
Jon Stewart nailed it (again) with video of both parties hypocrisy on this subject, but I haven’t found the clip online yet. My point is that the well is poisoned, no matter who owns it. The federal government only exists to destroy itself. Congratulations, assholes.
Now Republicans are saying it was “just a joke.” http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/10/republicans-admit-that-iran-letter-was-a-dumb-idea.html
Bob, I think your 836pm nailed it. Repubs see any such wait as being intergenerational in length. Therefore, if they want to have a say in foreign policy till then, they have participate from Congress 😉
Here’s the Daily Show clip. Stewart gets around to skewering the Democrats toward the end… http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/11/daily-show-gop-under-miner_n_6847568.html
I just gotta’ wonder how much of what we’ve been told is actually truth, and how much is a bunch of think-tank crapola? I’ve seen clips from as far back as 19 years ago of Netanyahu claiming that we must attack Iraq and Iran, and that “time is running out.”
But to my actual observations; Iran is a signatory of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, Israel is not. Iran allows IAEA inspectors on their soil, Israel does not. And Iran is helping us fight ISIS in Iraq, Israel is not.
I ain’t saying that Iran are the good guys, but there’s a whole lot of things that I see that don’t match up to what I hear. Maybe Iran should do what Israel did to get their nuclear arsenal started: steal 600 pounds of enriched uranium from a plant in the US. Then, they could skip all this treaty talk.
What I am unwilling to do, as Bibi has been calling for, for near twenty years, is attack another of his neighbors in the name of peace. If he wants to subject his neighboring countries to the same treatment he’s giving the Palestinians, let him do it himself. I don’t think anyone can argue, at this time, that it isn’t the tiny, theocratic city-state of Israel that is the nucleus of religious unrest in the Middle East, which has spilled over into the streets of every other country.
One thing is for sure; Netanyahu’s prophecy that the toppling of Saddam “will have a profound positive effect on the Middle East” certainly has proven to be one of the most idiotic quotes of our time. Perhaps Congress should take his words with an historical grain of salt, rather than writing “Dear Mullah” letters.
The mocked becomes the mocker… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDocnbkHjhI
Bob,
Here is a visual of US Military Bases surrounding Iran. I have laid it out over at Rebane’s a number of times. Links and government documents stating intentions of gas/ oil pipelines of getting to India, Caspian Sea, and Western Europe in the case of Russia who is teaming up to make the BRIC nations to challenge US global currency and energy dominance. Brazil, Russia, India, and China. We have a geo political chess match going on and it has WWIII implications. The winner takes all the oil, water, and global currency. And when I say winner it is large corporate conglomerates that control most of the interests these governments are representing.
https://img.4plebs.org/boards/pol/image/1396/28/1396288394329.jpg
The main purpose of both the Democratic Party and Republican Party are to divide and distract the American public from the real issue, who controls the two parties!
It seems very simplistic but that is the whole enchilada at this point. I have no way of proving this next statement but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if- the leadership of both the D’s and R’s met behind closed doors to choreograph this whole episode to distract us from the ultimate goal going on here. Senator Cotton being a freshman and all probably got called into some unaccountable big wig in the Republican Party giving him the angle and encouragement the young and dumb freshman Senator needed to write the letter. Meanwhile the leadership of the D’s with the help of the R leadership worked out the fake indignation response therefore hoodwinking the Democratic faithfuls in to backing the unbelievable idea that nuclear non proliferation treaty signatory Iran needs to give concessions to a non existent nuclear weapon program while the Republican faithfuls get to do their usual saber rattling for war.
On Iran, an Unsmoking Nongun
Nuclear report doesn’t say what media want it to
http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/on-iran-an-unsmoking-nongun/
The question is who benefits most from this strategy? It isn’t the people of the US and it most definitely isn’t the people of Iran.
An excellent article showing, once again, how the American press has become the mouthpiece for the agenda of those with economic, political, and religious motives, with preconceived conclusions.
But, one must ask, why Iran? Most certainly, they were an undeveloped country in the days when only a few American businesses were privy to the fact that their oil fields were so vast, and they were, for the most part, friendly to those who would exploit them. And when events elevated enough to make them appear headstrong, our country used it’s power to impose our own puppet on their throne, (the Shah).
Then, after years of supplying Hussein in Iraq with various weapons, including the gas he later used on the Kurds, (which later became the WMD’s of Bush2), in their war with Iran, and for meddling in their affairs; they took our Embassy and hostages.
American businesses’ unending boner for Iran, aided by Israel’s Netanyahu and Republican political posturing, has resulted in a group-think that pushes us ever closer to a war with a country that steadfastly refuses to knuckle under to American imperialism, even as they allow IAEA inspectors, bend to our economic sanctions, and continue to fight the ISIS faction in Iraq that we created.
Meanwhile, politically, the right has painted itself into a corner that, if a conservative is elected to the Presidency, it will not have the ability to resist the greed, religious fervor, and propaganda machine we call a press, that wants yet another war.