Knee Jerks
Reading time – 42 seconds . . .
New York, July 14, 2015 – These exchanges took place on the Morning Joe program on MSNBC just moments after a deal between 6 countries and Iran to prevent nuclear proliferation had been announced and before anyone other than the negotiating parties knew its terms.
Mika Brzezinski: “Senator Lindsey Graham, have you seen the deal?”
S. Graham (R SC): “Ah, no.”
Seconds later he continued:
S. Graham: “We’ve ensured that [Iran will] become a nuclear nation, ensured that there will be a nuclear arms race . . . You have created a possible death sentence for Israel . . . This is a virtual declaration of war against Sunni Arabs.”
Later on the same TV program . . .
Joe Scarborough: “Senator [Tom Cotton, R-AR]*, you obviously heard the president’s speech. What’s your initial reaction?”
S. Cotton: “Joe, this proposed deal is a terrible, dangerous mistake that’s going to pave the path for Iran to get a nuclear weapon, while also giving them tens of billions of dollars of sanctions relief, even lifting the arms embargo at a time when they’re destabilizing the entire middle-east . . .”
JS: “Does [the aggressive inspection regime] satisfy your concerns about inspections?”
S. Cotton: “No, Joe . . . They will have weeks to delay, they’ll be able to decide which sites that we inspect . . .”
It’s most impressive that these men along with so many other Republicans seem to be clairvoyant, in that somehow they see all the danger embedded into an arms limitation agreement that they haven’t read and about which they are totally ignorant.
Actually, it is far more than sad that they have a knee-jerk rejection to anything President Obama supports and that they justify their rejections with fabricated facts. The reason it is more than sad is that they are willing – even eager – to counter the president even if their self-serving behavior leads to another avoidable war. They prefer dead soldiers and a plundered American treasury over resolving differences through diplomacy if diplomacy might give the president a “win.”
These knee jerks could reasonably be accused of treason.
* Senator Tom Cotton is the author of the letter signed by 47 Republican senators sent to the leaders of Iran. It indirectly instructed the Iranian leaders not to trust the President of the United States. That could reasonably be called treasonous, too.
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