Posted on Jan 18, 2016
The GOP Presidential Contenders Are the Ones Who Are Clueless About Foreign Policy
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"Wherever your stance on the political spectrum, there’s no point listening to Republicans rail against President Obama’s policies. No matter what he does, his foreign policy is feckless, clueless, or downright treasonous according to GOP talking points.
A case in point is the past week’s diplomatic feats with Iran. First, a crisis over the seizure of two U.S. patrol boats, which had trespassed into Iranian waters, was settled peacefully in a day. Then, the Iranians were declared in compliance with the nuclear deal that was signed in July, as a result of which decades-long economic sanctions were lifted. Finally, five Americans were released from Iranian jails as part of a prisoner exchange.
And yet the leading Republican presidential candidates denounced these deals—which would be impressive achievements in any commander-in-chief’s record-book—as signs of weakness, cowardice, and worse.
In August, when Obama was making a strong pitch for the Iran nuclear deal, he told a group of columnists in an on-the-record session, “If I presented a cure for cancer, getting legislation passed to move that forward would be a nail-biter.” That understates what the response would be in today’s eve-of-Iowa frenzy. The row of GOP contenders would denounce the cure as a jobs-killer (all those nurses out of a job at Sloan-Kettering) and an aggravation of the housing crisis (all those people, who should have died, crowding the market)."
The GOP is a cancer on this country. Good citizenship is the cure.
Walt
A case in point is the past week’s diplomatic feats with Iran. First, a crisis over the seizure of two U.S. patrol boats, which had trespassed into Iranian waters, was settled peacefully in a day. Then, the Iranians were declared in compliance with the nuclear deal that was signed in July, as a result of which decades-long economic sanctions were lifted. Finally, five Americans were released from Iranian jails as part of a prisoner exchange.
And yet the leading Republican presidential candidates denounced these deals—which would be impressive achievements in any commander-in-chief’s record-book—as signs of weakness, cowardice, and worse.
In August, when Obama was making a strong pitch for the Iran nuclear deal, he told a group of columnists in an on-the-record session, “If I presented a cure for cancer, getting legislation passed to move that forward would be a nail-biter.” That understates what the response would be in today’s eve-of-Iowa frenzy. The row of GOP contenders would denounce the cure as a jobs-killer (all those nurses out of a job at Sloan-Kettering) and an aggravation of the housing crisis (all those people, who should have died, crowding the market)."
The GOP is a cancer on this country. Good citizenship is the cure.
Walt
The GOP Presidential Contenders Are the Ones Who Are Clueless About Foreign Policy
Posted from slate.com
Posted 9 y ago
Responses: 2
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Obama’s Hard Diplomatic Work Was Quietly Vindicated This Week
The tempest in a teapot over Iran’s seizure of two American patrol boats on Tuesday, followed by their uneventful release on Wednesday, offers well-tim ...
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"The events of the past week reveal a few things about the Republican critique of Obama’s foreign policy. First, it is completely uninformed on substantive grounds: The jeremiads against the nuclear accord in particular reflect a deep-seated ignorance of what’s in the nuclear deal. Second, it is completely uninformed on procedural grounds: The candidates know nothing about the diplomatic back-and-forth that produced the nuclear deal, the prisoner release, or the release earlier this week of the 10 U.S. sailors who’d somehow crossed into Iranian territorial waters. Trump rails against the “stupid” deals concocted by “political hacks”: If the deals were what he says they are, he might have a point. But they aren’t, and he doesn’t. (We are still awaiting the list of his advisers on these issues; he says that, as president, he’d appoint “brilliant people,” “the best people,” but who are they?)"
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