Iran deal done – now must come the reckoning
The deal didn’t create fissures, it exposed them.
The Iran nuclear deal, which is so bad in so many ways explained here so many times, is a done deal.
Democrats now have enough votes in the Senate to prevent an override of an Obama veto of a resolution of disapproval, if it even gets to a vote given Democrats are close to the votes needed to filibuster.
Partial blame belongs to Republicans in the Senate for agreeing to a procedure that required passage of a resolution of disapproval by a supermajority, rather than approval by a supermajority, or even a majority. But at least Republicans opposed the deal, which means that majorities in each house of Congress are against it.
Whatever procedural mistakes Republicans made are dwarfed by the substantive embrace of the deal by most Democrats in Congress. That despite the fact that the deal is hugely unpopular overall, and is at best a split decision even among Democrats not in Congress.
It is not an exaggeration to say that loyalty to Obama was the overriding factor. Democrats in Congress were the main targets of Obama’s demagoguery — be with Obama or be for war; be with Obama or be for the monied lobbyists. The message was clear: Be with Obama or be a traitor.
So the deal will not fail. To say that it “passes” is inaccurate.
There will be calls once the votes are taken to heal. To make Israel, once again, a matter of bipartisan consensus.
To that end, sure. But not with the Democrats who voted for or supported this deal. Or who sat on the sidelines until their “No” vote was meaningless. (Credit to Chuck Schumer for casting his opposition when it mattered.)
They have burned the bridges. They must be primaried by Democrats. Or voters in the general election will do it for them.
Bipartisanship, yes. Forgetting what happened, no.
Same goes within the Jewish community. There will be calls to come together again, to repair the fissures that have emerged, to make up with those — almost entirely on the left — who not only supported but also lobbied hard for the deal. No thanks. Those fissures weren’t created by the Iran deal, they were exposed, and they shouldn’t be papered over with platitudes.
This all reminds me of when Democrats passed Obamacare.
Nancy Pelosi and congressional Democrats smugly marched to the Capitol with oversized gavel in hand, relishing their pending thin victory. Passage in the Senate was as thin as could be and only due to historical quirks such as Republican Senator Ted Stevens wrongly having been convicted months earlier on charges that later would be thrown out due to prosecutorial misconduct.
Democrats rubbed their victory in the faces of the defeated. Yet they actually did so in the faces of majority of American amid growing voter opposition to Obamacare’s passage.
It was a triumph of arrogance and disdain for the American people. The reckoning came in the 2010 mid-terms, when opponents of Obamacare turned that disrespect for the voters into a historic victory at the polls, retaking the House and eviscerating a generation of Democratic congressmen.
While Obama’s force of personality and campaign apparatus was enough to salvage the 2012 campaign, 2014 saw Republicans take back the Senate, a continued reckoning of the Obamacare legacy.
And so too, expect a victory lap with survival of the Iran deal, and the claim that this is the end of “the Israel Lobby.”
Yet the Israel Lobby is the American people, who overwhelmingly and by increasing margins support Israel, and oppose this deal.
The implicit and sometimes explicit anti-Israel messaging used as part of the campaign for the deal was an affront not so much to Israel, but to the American people.
There needs to be another reckoning. It needs to come from within the Democratic Party, or it will come from outside. Democrats can clean their house, or the voters will do it for them again in a general election.
And within the Jewish community, this is a reckoning that has been a long time coming. And it needs to happen.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
What Barracula perhaps fails to get is that this deal is another stake in the heart of the Collectivist candidate for 2016.
We will need to elect a POTUS who will burn this “agreement” and convince Iran we will burn IT, too, if pushed too far.
The handwriting is on the wall. You cannot say you were not warned and you did not see it coming.
You have 5 to 10 years to prepare for nuclear war in the Middle East. It will not involve Russia, China or the USA. So, plan accordingly.
How will you feed your family when the economy craters and gasoline reaches $10 a gallon? What are you going to do to survive?
Will the last member of the Democrat Party please flush the toilet when they leave their bunker………….
‘But at least Republicans opposed the deal, which means that the majority in each house of Congress are against it.’
Absurd conclusion. Rather than treating this treaty as the treaty it is, or allowing Obama’s plan to go naked, Corker and McConnell colluded to authorize Obama’s plan with no possibility for the treaty to be defeated.
right … it was not a procedural mistake, it was intent to hide evidence, that they had surrendered to ANY deal months ago. They wanted the cover of “oh we tried but couldn’t stop it”.
That is why the tea party hates the dishonest Republican establishment. I caught a little of Rush today … talking about how R establishment never embraced the huge grass roots tea party movement. Instead they worked against them/us, as we see clearly with Boehner and McConnell.
Then tonight O’Reilly is on acting like … gee, those conservative extremists won’t go out and vote (Romney) even after the establishment tries to compromise with them. I think Laura Ingraham wouldn’t have let him get away with that crap … but he was with the Cheneys.
That is a flagrant lie. There was no way to stop it. 0bama doesn’t need Congress’s consent, or that of 2/3 of the senate (which are the two ways to turn a deal like this into law), because he already has the power to implement it on his own. He doesn’t need it to have the status of a treaty, and he knows he can’t get it anyway, so he chooses not to even try. The senate saying “if you had asked us to ratify it we would have refused” would change nothing; it would be like telling someone “if you were to propose to marry me I would refuse you”, after they’ve already told you they have no intention of proposing.
Your mistaken.
This treaty violates the nuclear non-proliferation treaty which is US law and requires treaty status to go into effect,
Take a look at the constitution. It’s is up to the Senate to decide what is a treaty requiring their consent. McConnell could easily kill this treaty by asserting that it is a treaty requiring the consent of the Senate and holding a vote. This would kill this treaty as there is no way that it would get 2/3’s of the Senate to approve it. The real problem is that McConnell and the RINOs in the Senate are traitors working for Obama and the progressive fascist cause.
The Boehner at al. rigged it from the start with the procedural approval/disapproval maneuver. They are either idiots or did it on purpose.
They did it on purpose. Even those fools are not that idiotic.
They knew exactly what they were doing.
That is completely wrong. The president never needed any approval for the deal; the only way there ever was to stop him was to pass a law forbidding him from doing this, and get it past his veto.
I wonder if Iran plans to give terrorists crossing the Mexican border material for a nuclear bomb? I wonder if Israel is going to bomb Iran to stop it’s obtaining a nuclear bomb? I wonder how many ME countries, other than Saudi Arabia, are going to start building their own nuclear arsenal? I wonder what the half-life is of the material Iran is using, and how long a bombed area will be uninhabitable?
How long until were Hiroshima and Nagasaki were rebuilt?
Not long at all. Hiroshima was hit by a typhoon a month after the bomb, which did almost as much damage, but they started rebuilding almost immediately. Neither city was completely destroyed; it’s not as if they had to start again from nothing.
As I have said before, Israel has no choice but to hit Iran to stop its nuclear program. Russia is about to send Iran a sophisticated anti-warplane defense program. I don’t know whether Israel can defeat this air defense program. But Israel has ICBMs which cannot be stopped. However, ICBMs carrying conventional explosives will not be very effective and Israel does not have enough of them to make much of a difference. If you support Israel, you must understand that Israel has no choice but to use nuclear weapons to destroy Iran’s nuclear program. I hope Israel is redesigning its older nukes to be bunker busters. If they do this, they have enough nuclear stuff to take out all the main production sites. All of the main sites should be hit again after they are destroyed with a small dirty nuke that will keep the site uninhabitable for a thousand years. This would set Iran back at least 20 years. Israel also must use several small EMPs to knock out Iran’s ability to retaliate. You may need to read up on these things. This all sounds horrible but if you love Israel, you must realize that a country with a little over 5 million Jews can’t go toe to toe with a country of almost 80 million whose leaders have vowed to create another holocaust. Be a mensch and support the only democracy in a sea of unfathonable religious craziness. The Jews have given us more in the way of science, culture, medicine, and entertainment and so many other things than any other people on Earth. We need to support them and protect them.
Look at this deal from the Israelis perspective. If the deal goes as planned, which considering Iran’s past cheating on every agreement they have signed is dubious, Israel can react to a nuclear threat that will have had ten years to prepare for an attack and beef up their defenses. Or they can attack Iran within the next year before Iran gets all the new money and air defense systems from the lying cheating Russians. Either way all of the Demorats in the Senate, who voted for it, and the idiot in the WH will have caused the next world war.
Worst Republican “leadership” in history. This is actually happening with those morons controlling the House AND Senate.
And they will both be re-elected. I am so tired of “politicians”.
Control of the House and Senate lets you not pass laws the president wants, but it doesn’t let you pass laws the president doesn’t want. And that’s what was needed here. A law forbidding the president from implementing this deal. The Republicans can pass it, but they can’t override the veto.
Reading this made me think of this. I’m not sure why.
I think somehow Israel will sing in the end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ46Ot4_lLo
This is a “deal” but absolutely is NOT a “Treaty”. There’s an enormous difference. The next POTUS can, on his on word, simply renounce it, impose sanctions, even bomb their nuclear program.
This is not, in any way, binding law for the United States the way a ratified treaty is. Obama is using his authority as POTUS to lift sanctions and is agreeing, personally, not to re-impose sanctions if Iran violates the terms of the “deal”.
Congress passed, pre-emptively, a law stating that they would abide by whatever terms Obama came up with unless they voted 2/3 to strike it down. <— that's just bizarre, btw, since when did have we ever conducted foreign policy like that.
That is NOT a Treaty. Treaties require, under the Constitution, that "… provided two thirds of the Senators present concur". That hasn't happened here, and won't happen. They aren't even trying to make it happen. There's been no 2/3 vote on anything related to this, much less a specific vote to ratify an actual Treaty that's been presented to Congress to debate and vote on. They aren't even trying to pretend its a treaty.
Sanctions irreparably destroyed, 150 billion dollars released to fund Iranian military adventurism and terror, America brought to her knees before radical islam for all the world to see.
This is the legacy of Obama, Clinton, Kerry, McConnell, and Boehner. Treaty or not, it is an Era of Infamy, Cowardice, and Incompetence unmatched in the history of our nation.
Incompetence unmatched in the history of the universe.
It is not incompetence. It is evil.
Wrong. It’s the legacy of 0bama, Kerry, and the Democratic Party. No Republican had any hand in it.
This is a “deal” but absolutely is NOT a “Treaty”. There’s an enormous difference. The next POTUS can, on his on word, simply renounce it, impose sanctions, even bomb their nuclear program.
This is not, in any way, binding law for the United States the way a ratified treaty is. Obama is using his authority as POTUS to lift sanctions and is agreeing, personally, not to re-impose sanctions if Iran violates the terms of the “deal”.
That’s exactly right, and it’s what I’ve been trying to explain to people. I just want to correct one point: even if it were a treaty, ratified by the senate, the next president would still be able to abrogate it. But until then it would be US law. This isn’t.
Congress passed, pre-emptively, a law stating that they would abide by whatever terms Obama came up with unless they voted 2/3 to strike it down.
That is wrong. Congress never said it would “abide by whatever terms Obama came up with”. It isn’t being asked to abide by it. I don’t even know what you mean by “abide by it”. What do you think Congress will do or not do because of it? The whole point is that the deal doesn’t depend on Congress. It doesn’t require Congress to do anything. If it did, the the Republicans would refuse to do it, and that would be the end of it. But it doesn’t, so there’s nothing they can do to stop it. The only way to stop it would be to pass a law forbidding the president from going through with it, and that’s what they were trying to do.
There will be war. There will be death in the millions. The blood is on the hands of BOTH parties. May justice be done, not mercy, but justice.
Even before/without “war”, there are huge changes as Iran becomes part of the nuclear club, and develops missile tech. Obama surrendered everything we’d won, as was his intent from the start.
As with health care, immigration, etc., he governs against the will of the people. But he lies constantly about his intent as he “fundamentally transforms” America AND undermines our position in the world.
Part of the outcome of his surrender in Libya and Iraq is seen in the fleeing refugees flooding into Europe. Not only is Obama breaking America apart, but Europe as well. But Europe and the bureaucratic “globalists” seem to have approved that destiny, in the face of the middle class Europeans fighting to maintain their culture.
The current “war” we are losing is the culture war, as somehow in the name of diversity, malicious bureaucrats demand we surrender our western civilization to hordes of invaders from the failed third world.
That would be “billions” because Communist China will be in the thick of it.
No, the blame and the blood is entirely on the hands of the Democrats. No Republican helped in any way. This is entirely on the Ds, and the whole world must know it.
“Partial blame belongs to Republicans…”
“But at least Republicans…”
“Whatever procedural mistakes Republicans made are dwarfed…”
If you replaced Republicans with “electrician,” would you ever hire that electrician again?
“If you replaced Republicans with ‘electrician,’ would you ever hire that electrician again?”
No, because I would be electrocuted.
It was not a “procedural mistake”. It was a classic Republican trick – vote when it mattered for the Democratic outcome, and take a second vote you know you’ll lose to brag to your Republican constituents about.
Sen. Corker and those who allowed this to happen by circumventing the constitution have to face a reckoning. This should never have been allowed to happen. He got snookered by Obama et al and had to see it coming. The blood of the Jewish people are on their hands and at the end of the day they have made the world less safe. Certainly, this is not what they were elected to do.
Nobody was snookered, and the constitution has not been circumvented. You really have no idea what you’re talking about. Corker made things slightly better. Not a lot better, but slightly better, and certainly not worse. All he achieved was to buy some time to try to put together a veto-proof majority; OK, that failed, but at least there was time to try. Without Corker-Menendez there would have been no time; 0bama could have waived the sanctions as soon as the IAEA gave the OK. (Of course we don’t know when that will be.)
“And within the Jewish community, this is a reckoning that has been a long time coming. And it needs to happen.”
It isn’t coming, and it won’t happen.
Nadler may appear to be a Congressman from Manhattan, but 60% of his district is actually in Brooklyn. He was selected in 1992 by distict leaders only from Manhattan because he was selected first to replace Ted Weiss in hois old district.
The Jewish community in Brooklyn helped elect a Republican as a replacement for Anthony Weiner (Queens was important too there and two thirds of Weiner’s district had moved in Queens) and elected a Republican as a replacement for State Senator Carl Krugar (both with the based on the 2000 Census districts) and now a part of Nadler’s district has as a State Senator a Republican Democrat – someone who runs as a Democrat but aligns himself with the Republicans in the State Senate.
Should anybody actually mount a serious campaign, there’s real danger for Jerrold Nadler.
In 1984, a not very strong campaign that didn’t really permeate the entire 13th Congressional district of that time, cut down Rep Stephen Solarz’s margin from about 82% to 66%. That’s when they found out the Jewish vote in Brooklyn is not really reliably Democratic, even though little else happened for another twenty eight years, but I think they’ve known how fragile it was all this time.
Of course things may depend a little bit on how the Iran deal looks next June or November.
Obama knows…that much of Europe wants this deal to go through and for economic security reasons alone. Europe does not want to deal with austerity measures and wants to feel no pain. Just give Europe their thirty pieces of silver to pay for pensions and pleasure. They’ll hang themselves later.
Europe, the envy of Obama-ites, is an amorphousness of faint-hearted, nihilistic Epicureans.
Europeans will pay a huge price for their lay-down decision: a tinderbox nuclear Middle East and millions of escaping Islamic immigrants who want to recreate Europe in their own Islamic image.
If they are running away, I don’t think they want to re-create the places where they came from.
They are creating Islamic “Zones” in France.
Who are? The people coming as refugees now?
There could still be a little problem, but these people are ot likely to want to aid terrorists or Islamic supremacists.
They could actually gain informants if they tried.
When teens and twenty somethings leave Briton and France to join up with ISIS in Syria what do think is happening in the local mosques?
“In hundreds of French “no-go” zones — neighborhoods where neither tourists nor cops dare enter — poor and alienated Muslims have intimidated the government into largely ceding authority over them, prompting fears that the kind of jihad that gave rise to last week’s attack in Paris is festering unchecked.”…
“These ‘no-go’ zones are essentially breeding grounds for radicalism, and it’s a very big problem,” Soeren Kern, a senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, told FoxNews.com. “These are areas where essentially the French government has lost control.”
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/01/12/paris-attacks-prompt-fears-france-muslim-no-go-zones-incubating-jihad/
Europeans diplomats are said to have warned members of Congress that they would not re-enegtiate it.
This is nonsense:
Either Iran would accept the deal even without the endorsement of the U.S. Congress, without the lifting of whatever sanctions disapproval would prevent, in which case it wouldn’t be re-negotiated with the Europeans, but the U.S. would have strong leverage to force Iran to agree to more. We’d pocket whatever the deal gave and ask for more.
Or Iran would tear up the agreement, and that would prevent the lifting of the sanctions, and they would have to try to renegotiate it or let Iran go ahead without trying prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon and violate UN Security resolutions as well.
And if the latter was the case, then that probably also would mean they would let Iran violate the deal, so there is no deal in the first place.
The truth of the matter is some countries went along with the sactions because they wanted to prevent a U.S. attack.
I have a copy of The Economist of May 6-12, 2006, with a picture of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the cover and a rocket going up in the background, with the words printed in red
and in black, below it:
The Leader (editorial) on page 13 says diplomacy should be tough now to avoid military force later. There’s also aspecial report, and a related artivle on page 25-27.
The issue also contains an obituary of John Kenneth Galbraith and an artivle on quantum computing. It says computing is about to hot a problem. Within 15 years a fundamental limit wll be reached.
Pages 29 and 30 deal with protest marches by illegal aliens in the United states. That seems to have gon e away as does the Sensenbrenner bill, HR 4437, which passed the House of Represenatives, and would have criminalized anyone helping an illegal immigrant, placed stiff fines on employers and made illegal residence a crimninal offense.
Partial blame belongs to Republicans in the Senate for agreeing to a procedure that required passage of a resolution of disapproval by a supermajority, rather than approval by a supermajority, or even a majority.
No blame belongs to them for this. They didn’t “agree” to it; it was the only path ever available. The president already had the power to waive the sanctions, so the only way to stop him was to pass a law, over his veto, taking that power away from him.
That’s what Corker/Menendez was originally supposed to be; a bill removing the president’s power to waive sanctions, so that when and if he came up with a deal he’d need to come to Congress to implement it, either as a treaty or as a statute. But they couldn’t get a veto-proof majority for that. What they did get 0bama to agree to was to give up his power to waive sanctions for a limited period, 60 days from when the deal was presented to Congress, plus 10 days from his veto, to give opponents time to put together a veto-killing majority.
The idiots in the Senate could still kill this treaty by invoking the Senate’s power of consent for treaties. All McConnell has to do is assert that this “agreement” is a treaty and hold a vote on ratification. It would be rejected and there is nothing that Tyrant Obama the Liar could do.
Someone should ask the Traitor McConnell why he is betraying is party and the country by helping the Tyrant ram this treaty down our throats.
Furthermore, as this agreement violates the nuclear non-proliferation treaty which is US law it requires ratification by the Senate in order to go into effect.