Tip: calling on your political opponent to "courageously" do whatever you tell them to do is the laziest possible type of punditry. People who engage in it
should be laughed at.
Mitt Romney says President Barack Obama could silence critics like him by walking away from a nuclear agreement with Iran, arguing in a USA Today op-ed published Friday that it would be “courageous” and “right.”
We already know what Mitt Romney thinks about these things. He and the other fellow had debates in which they both gave their visions of what American policy ought to look like, and America picked the other fellow because they thought his ideas were better. That isn't to say that Mitt Romney has to forever shut up about these things, but it should be noted that Mitt Romney has no expertise in the matter that makes his particular demands any more compelling than those of the hundred other Republicans deeply put out that the sitting administration isn't listening more closely to them, either.
Unfortunately for Republicans, the nation is still viscerally aware of what Republican foreign policy ideas are and how Republican foreign policy ideas work out when acted upon. We have very much done that. Recently. To effects so horrific that the president who set his administration to the task of doing all the Republican think-tank foreign policy ideas has had his name systemically scrubbed from Republican conversation. We also know that Republican reflex is to presume every last policy endorsed by their political rivals is, in fact, a secret plot to make Republicans look bad.
“The Iranian pooh-bahs would appear tame and responsible. The president would look, well, presidential,” Romney wrote, adding that an agreement would also be a boon for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential prospects—“achievement by association.”
Please head below the fold for more on this story.
You know, I really do not believe that our national effort to curb further nuclear proliferation in the world is merely or even partially related to rigging the 2016 elections to make Republicans look bad in comparison. Mind you, I am a profoundly cynical person, but even I am not so cynical as to suspect that negotiations to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons is all just a plot to something-something Hillary Clinton. That sounds a bit deranged.
We are currently negotiating with Iran over their nuclear capabilities for several very good actual foreign policy reasons. We do not want more nations to have nuclear weapons. We especially do not want nations in unstable regions of the world to have nuclear weapons. On the other hand, we do not want to manufacture for ourselves another looming war, because we have already spent our looming war budget for the next hundred years, what with the Iraq debacle, and we very rightly are wary about leaping into the next one so quickly, especially based on the say-so of the precise same characters who so vigorously endorsed the last one.
The other half of the problem is that Iran as a nation would be insane not to consider building a nuclear weapon, given each lesson we in America have throttled into the world. We overthrew the Iraqi government, which had no nuclear weapons, but have taken a conspicuously more cautious approach to the monstrous but nuclear-enabled dictatorship of North Korea. We have already demonstrated to Iran a willingness to meddle in their own self-governence, on account of how America previously did precisely that. We have our own pundits on the teevees who freely fess up to wanting to do the same thing again, and who get rather spittle-flecked when imagining how we would do it, and no matter how corrupt or dismal the current Iranian regime the primary post-Cold War foreign policy lesson each nation has learned is that having nuclear weapons is the surest way to prevent America and/or ambitious neighbors from bringing "freedom" to your nation by paving over the parts of it they don't like.
And so we are at an impasse. America does not want a nuclear Iran because there are already enough only-marginally stable nuclear powers in the world, thank you very much. Iran would like to have a nuclear weapon because they believe, for some uncanny reason, that America poses a distinct threat to them that can only be diminished by becoming a nuclear power. The negotiations are an attempt to assure Iran that they can indeed agree to a permanent or semi-permanent status as non-nuclear nation and still retain their sovereignty, an effort that continues to hit bumps as myriad hawks on our side of the globe mutter that no matter what America promises Iran right now, there is no need for future Americans to feel similarly constrained even a mere two years from now.
Do we want a nuclear-free Iran? One would think so. Is it worth negotiating with them over how that could be achieved, other than a military bombing campaign and/or invasion? It certainly seems worth discussion. Is it all right if the current administration engages in those talks, even though the current Congress does not like the man and is in all other instances singularly obsessed with undoing his every action?
Yes. Yes it is. There simply is no other credible way to answer that question.