By Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
It has been an Iranian tradition since 1979 to end Friday
prayers with chants of “Death to America!”
In a purely rational world, that would be all one needed
to know that Iran is not a reliable negotiating partner. Alas, we do not live
in such a world. But there’s more evidence. Iran, according to our State
Department, has been the chief exporter of terrorism for the last three
decades. It has worked closely with al-Qaeda, facilitating its attacks on
America and our allies. Most of the September 11 hijackers traveled through
Iran with the help of the Iranian government. U.S. judges have ruled that Iran
was an accomplice in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa and the
September 11 attacks. During the Iraq War, Iran was responsible for numerous American
deaths.
And it’s not like any of this is ancient history. Indeed,
in 2012, the Treasury Department designated the Iranian Ministry of
Intelligence and Security as a major promoter of terrorism and violator of
human rights.
Right now, via its brutal proxies, Iran is manipulating
events on the ground in four Arab capitals — Baghdad, Beirut, Damascus, and
Sanaa. Whatever success there has been against the Islamic State in Saddam
Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit has been thanks to Iranian advisors operating in
Iraq and the Shiite Muslim militias they control. On Sunday’s Meet the Press,
retired admiral Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said
he fears Iran more than Islamic State.
So, obviously, the greatest villain in the world today is
. . . Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.). He led the effort to get 46 other senators
to sign a letter to the Iranian government explaining that any deal with Iran
would require congressional approval.
The New York Daily News branded them all “TRAITORS” on
its front page. Isn’t it amazing how even vaguely questioning the patriotism of
liberals is an outrage beyond the borders of acceptable debate, but branding 47
GOP senators “traitors” is treated as at least forgivable bombast? Retired
major general Paul Eaton told the Washington Post they aren’t traitors, they’re
merely “mutinous,” revealing Eaton’s shocking ignorance of our constitutional
structure. Yes, Obama is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, but he is
not the commander-in-chief of the co-equal legislative branch.
Petitions are circling to have the senators carted off to
jail under the Logan Act — which bars unauthorized citizens from negotiating
with foreign governments — a ridiculously antiquated law that would never
survive Supreme Court scrutiny today.
Moreover, if the Logan Act were taken seriously, many of
the lions of the Democratic party, including Ted Kennedy, Patrick Leahy, Nancy
Pelosi, and Robert Byrd, would have ended their careers behind bars. Why, John
Kerry — who recently denounced the Cotton letter as “unconstitutional” — could
show Cotton around the federal penitentiary, given Kerry’s egregious meddling
in Nicaragua during the Reagan administration.
Now, I should say that I think the senators made a
mistake. They should have written an open letter to President Obama. The
Iranians would still have gotten the message, but the White House and the
punditocracy would have found it more difficult to rationalize their insane hissy
fit. And contrary to countless outlets reporting that the Republicans “sent”
this letter to the ayatollahs, they didn’t send it anywhere. It was posted on
Cotton’s website.
The more important point here is that no one disagrees
with the content of the letter because it is accurate. The White House had to
admit that Cotton was right; the deal as it stands would be a “non-binding”
agreement. And, therefore, as the letter explains, “The next president could
revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen.”
(In fact, Obama did pretty much exactly that with an
agreement struck between Israel and the United States about settlement growth
in Palestinian territories.)
This premature admission is politically inconvenient for
the Obama administration because it wants to get the United Nations to approve
the deal, making it a fait accompli. It hoped to get to that point without
anyone noticing.
The Cotton letter is not mutinous or traitorous or
unconstitutional. It is inconvenient, and apparently being inconvenient in the
age of Obama is all it takes to be called unpatriotic.
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