I’m beginning to think no-one has actually read the GOP Senate letter to Iran. Nowhere does it say “don’t negotiate with the US” or the President. Nowhere does it say lets start a war.
The clearest statement I’m getting out of it is “an agreement that includes Congress is much more durable than one that doesn’t.” But Obama has already told Congress that this agreement is none of their business, they have no place in it, and he won’t need them to consider it or take measures to implement it. So is the goal of this effort to pressure Iran? Or is the goal to pressure the president to include Congress in the process. Or to be less charitable, a group of Senators are impotently stamping their feet at the prospect of how irrelevant they are to the ongoing process of reaching an agreement.
Of course President Obama has clearly determined that there is no way he will be able to get any agreement he arrives at through Congress. Which isn’t necessarily a reflection of the general objection to anything proposed by the President. After all, it is not as if the only opponents of the proposed arrangement with Iran and the President’s plan to exclude Congress are Republicans.
Having said all of which we are still stuck with a situation in which the President and his core leadership team are committed to making significant changes to the U.S. relationship with Iran and are making no public effort to persuade, explain, or prepare the public in order to expand the potential base of support for the eventual agreement. Instead we are informed that the only alternative to whatever agreement is arrived at is war, (which represents a rather extraordinarily binary outlook) and that any discussion, dispute, or disagreement over the terms of any potential agreement undermines the President and is tantamount to treason.
This stance implies that there is only one possible negotiated outcome and that no alterations in negotiating positions or approaches could generate a different agreement that better addressed the concerns of the various involved or affected parties. It further implies that the President and his team have lost the capacity to recognise that even friends and allies may legitimately disagree about an issue. A recognition that lies at the heart of a functioning democracy or republic. In essence, a loyal opposition.
Proliferating Thoughts 