Preening for war
by digby
I wish I understood why everyone is so ok with this:
For months Obama resisted attempts led by Republicans and some Democrats to open an agreement with Iran to congressional approval. On Tuesday he backed down in the face of mounting bipartisan support for the bill, which gives Congress at least 30 days to review a final deal during which time Obama would be unable to waive or suspend many U.S. sanctions.
Negotiators for Iran and six major powers are trying to ensure Iran does not acquire an atomic bomb by securing an agreement by June 30 under which Iran would curb its nuclear program in exchange for relief from international sanctions.
“If I were an Iranian negotiator, I would walk into that room and say ‘you told us all along you were going to stop legislation,'” said Richard Nephew, a former U.S. negotiator with Iran now at Columbia University.
“‘How can you guarantee us that we’re not going to have this problem when we bring the deal forth?'”
“Will it be fatal? No,” he added. “It’s going to make things a lot harder, a lot more complicated, a lot more difficult for the (U.S.) negotiating side.”
Basically, the Democrats stabbed him in the back and it’s fairly obvious they did it under pressure from outside groups who want to scuttle this nuclear arms deal. They surely will say that it’s because they think that it’s important that congress preserve its prerogatives but congress has never before insisted on announcing its prerogatives in advance of agreements such as these and it’s bullshit anyway. This is a nuclear arms agreement the success of which could prevent WWIII. Are their prerogatives are more important than that?
The president caved on this because a big Senate spectacle was the last thing they needed. And the truth is that the bill doesn’t seem affect the agreement substantially. But it makes the negotiations harder for no good reason. (And this excuse that the president “needed” some hardliners so he could make a better deal is just fatuous nonsense.)
I’m not a huge fan of unilateral executive power in the abstract. But when we have a bunch of warmongering neanderthals running the Senate and the president is using his power to negotiate a peace agreement I tend to be fairly utilitarian about it. War is the wrong option and should be prevented however it can be prevented. The Senate’s prerogatives aren’t really of primary concern in that equation.
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