Allah:
The first in what’s bound to be an awfully tough series targeting red-state Democrats like Jon Tester and Joe Manchin. They’re the obvious place to start for the GOP in finding 67 votes in the Senate to block Obama’s Iran deal, but it tells you a lot about Democratic solidarity on this that even Manchin, the most “mavericky” member of the caucus, has said he’s leaning“strongly” towards voting with O.
Hawks have tried to persuade them. Now it’s time to shame them. Via Iowahawk, according to one estimate, the deaths of more than 500 U.S. troops in Iraq can be directly linked to Iran.
The group, Veterans Against the Deal, was founded last month as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, and it does not disclose its donors. Its national campaign starts today, including television ads in states whose members of Congress are undecided on the Iran deal. Lawmakers will vote on it in September…
[Executive Director Michael] Pregent said his campaign will point out that U.S. soldiers who were victims of Iranian bombs aren’t inclined to ally with Iranian hardliners. The group has recruited U.S. service members who were victims of the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, when 241 U.S. troops were killed by Iranian-backed Hezbollah forces. Their efforts will also feature parents and children of service members who were killed in the war in Iraq.
“Do they fall into the category of those aligned with the hardliners in Iran,” Pregent asked, “because they oppose this deal?”
They’re not attacking the specific terms of the nuclear deal, in other words, but the basic premise of releasing $100 billion in sanctions relief to a regime that, by Obama’s own admission, will inevitably spend some of that money to promote its lethally anti-American agenda abroad. That cuts right to the heart of O’s argument over the weekend that GOPers who oppose the Iran deal on principle, because they don’t want any bargains with a country that’s already targeted Americans, are making common cause with Iranian hardliners. So is Sgt. Bartlett, I guess. Good luck to Democrats with that talking point.
They’re going to come back with two arguments against this, I’d guess. One is that the reason they made the deal in the first place was to make sure that other U.S. servicemen don’t suffer the same fate he did. Without this deal, Obama assures us, we’ll be at war with Iran soon enough, with U.S. airmen asked to risk their lives to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities and Americans at home and abroad targeted for reprisals by Iranian agents. That’d be a fine argument if the deal actually dismantled Iran’s bomb program instead of merely postponing Iran’s enrichment process for 10 years. As it is, we’ll be back in this same position 10 years from now, with the president forced to choose between war and acceptance of Iran as a nuclear state — except Iran will have more diplomatic leverage to continue its program by then, and maybe new ICBM technology to help deliver its weapons. How are there fewer Americans at risk in that scenario?
And to think there are leftists who post here who will accuse SSG Bartlett of not being a real Soldier because he criticized Obama’s deal just like they accused the SEAL’s who criticized him in 2012 of not being real SEAL’s. A pathetic bunch if there ever was one.
There was a historical context for this, wasn’t there? We invaded Iraq, overthrew their government, and disbanded their military. There was a prolonged military resistance to the subsequent occupation which Iran—a neighboring country that we have also been hostile toward—supported. They probably had concerns about our intentions.
The United States also has a history of taking sides in conflicts and providing support to the factions we favor. For example, in 1953 both the U.S. and Great Britain supported the military coup that overthrew Mohammad Mosaddegh, the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran. Members of his government were subsequently tortured, tried, and executed by firing squad. Mosaddegh—a popular figure—was imprisoned, and then kept under house arrest until his death in 1967. As a result of our actions Iran was immediately transformed from a democracy to a country ruled by an authoritarian monarch—a dictator with a crown. It was all about keeping control of the nation’s oil. Democracy in Iran had threatened foreign oil company interests.
What I’ve noticed is that efforts to consolidate public opposition to the nuclear deal with Iran are relying on appeals to preexisting attitudes and to emotion, while avoiding the facts and any logical arguments involving them altogether. If you’re an intelligent person, that should tell you something. This is how stupid decisions are made.
@Greg:
How laughably convenient that you completely leave out the fool Carter throwing the pro-Western Shah to the Ayatollah’s jihadist wolves – following the EXACT opposite interests of the US, and giving us the premier international fomenter of world muslim terrorism.
And now you want us to.support Iran getting nuclear weapons….
Contemptible leftist anti-American stupidity.
I think killing the nuclear deal with Iran is the quickest route to Iran having nuclear weapons, as I mentioned in another thread. There would be no reduction in the number of enrichment centrifuges, no removal of most of their existing stockpile of enriched uranium, and no alteration of the plutonium reactor at Arak. Without those concessions they could build a bomb in a year, and they’ll have no incentive not to do so.
You think I’m stupid? Then me how the deal’s opponents intend to stop them. None of them are saying, because they don’t have an alternate plan.