Iran Nukes? Thank Neocons - By Michael Tomasky
This senators letter is poisonous, but not out of character. The no-diplomacy posture is exactly what has brought matters to this point.
I have probably written many times in the past that Republicans hit a new low, but as of this week you can toss all those. This Senate letter is the definite low of all time. I didnt think these people could shock me, but this one genuinely was shocking in so many waysnot least the dishonor it brings on the United States Senatethat every other nutso thing theyve done drops down one notch on the charts.
Treason, as the Daily News blared? I dont know for sure about that. But I know to a certainty that if a group of Democratic senators had done this to a Republican president, Republicans and conservative pundits would be screaming the T-word and demanding the Justice Department investigate the senators.
Imagine if, say, 47 Democratic senators had written an open letter (a moral cop-out that permits the senators to say that it wasnt really a communication to Ayatollah Khamenei) to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1986 assuring him any treaty Ronald Reagan signed with him could and quite possibly would be altered or abrogated by them. Or worse stillimagine that 47 Democratic senators had written an open letter to Saddam Hussein in the fall of 2002 reminding him that only Congress could declare war and that most of them would long outlast President Bush, while closing on the breathtakingly cloying note of being happy to have enriched Saddams knowledge of the constitutional system. There seems to me no doubt whatsoever that some Republican senators and members of Congress would have been baying for Logan Act prosecutions.
Much as part of me might savor it, I dont think we ought to go there. A far better punishment for these disgraceful intriguers would be for the letter to backfire and increase the likelihood of a deal being struck. And it might well have that effect: If the mullahs genuinely want a deal, then surely a threat like this from the Senate would make them more anxious to pursue one while they can, and then hope that Hillary Clinton, whos indicated shed support a deal, becomes the next president and can make it stick.
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