195.5 - The 47 Senators who signed the letter to Iran are tying to provoke a war

The 47 Senators who signed the letter to Iran are tying to provoke a war

Okay, I have to address The Letter. You know the one I mean, the one signed by 47 wackos in the Senate and directed to "the leaders" of Iran. Not anyone in particular, no names were included, just "the leaders."

Positively dripping with condescension, it opens with "you may not fully understand our constitutional system" and proceeds through several paragraphs that boil down to "there is no point in your reaching an agreement with the US and other nations on nuclear issues" with the clearly implied tagline "so why bother?"

A Farsi version sent to Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif “in case you need a translation.” Just how deep is the wackos' grasp of the facts of the situation can be seen in the fact that Zarif moved to the US at age 17, has a Masters degree from San Francisco State University, and has a second Masters and a PhD from the University of Denver.

It's also safe to say that the Iranian leadership has a pretty good grasp of the US system, since Iran's current presidential cabinet has more members with doctorates from US universities than Obama's does.

Javad Zarif

Which is probably why Zarif felt no need to spare the sarcasm in his reply, in which he pointedly noted that, contrary to the wackos' letter, were a future president simply to ignore an international agreement reached at the executive level, even if it's not a treaty, it would be a violation of international law. Besides, he went on, the wackos' own argument would in fact render the great many of what the letter called  "mere executive agreements" into which the US has entered as meaningless and brand the US as untrustworthy.

But here's the point: None of that matters. None of it. The people responsible for this letter, the people who signed this letter, the people who say they support this letter even if they didn't sign it, they don't care. They don't care that they got the facts about executive agreements wrong. They don't care that they even got the Constitutional details of treaties wrong. They don't care because this has nothing to do with any of that.

Tom Cotton

The purpose of the letter is to discourage the Iranian government from agreeing to a deal, or, alternately, to push the White House into giving Congress the power to veto any deal - both of which would have the same result: destroying any hope of an agreement.

The people who signed this letter do not want an agreement. They want negotiations to fail. They want diplomacy to fail. They want this to fall apart. These people want a war. The closer it comes to where there may actually be a deal, the more rabid they become, the more obvious their desire, their intent, becomes, the more transparent their bloodlust becomes

You think that's overstating it? In January, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who organized the letter, told a conference hosted by the right-wing group Heritage Action for America that the whole purpose of Congressional action was to make negotiations fail. That the collapse of negotiations, quoting him,

isn't an unintended consequence of congressional action. It is very much an intended consequence. A feature, not a bug.

He compared the international negotiations with Iran to the appeasement of Nazi Germany in the 1930s (Godwin's law strikes again) and said the goal should be "regime change" in Iran - because, after all, that worked out so well in Iraq.

I mean, they're not even pretending any more. They will not be satisfied until the blood flows freely in the Middle East. Their bloodlust is palpable and I have to say that I think that at least for some of them it's because they think such a war will bring on the apocalypse and thus the second coming of Jesus, that they really do think these are the End Times. (And, of course, that they are among the saved.)

Even if I'm wrong about that, maybe I am, hopefully I am, it doesn't change anything about the rest. The people who signed this letter are bloodthirsty warmongers who will not be happy until the piles of burnt bodies and shredded limbs are too high to see over and the wails of the wounded drown out the drones. They are despicable.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.aol.com/article/2015/03/09/gop-senators-warning-over-us-iran-nuclear-negotiations/21151149/
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/03/10/Iran-Pushes-Back-Against-Senate-GOP-Letter
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/09/senate-iran-deal_n_6832706.html
http://crooksandliars.com/2015/03/backstabbing-republicans-publish-open
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/09/tom-cotton-iran_n_6831328.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_time