1. Throughout the negotiations for the apparently now completed Iran nuclear deal, all I could think about is how it would have made my old negotiation professor, the late Adrian Fisher (who negotiated the SALT treaty) throw up. He taught his negotiation class at Georgetown Law Center, where he was the Dean, that no advantageous negotiation can occur unless your side is willing to walk away from the table. It has been clear from the beginning that the Obama Administration was desperate for this deal for political purposes, not national security, which the treaty does not assist in any way.
Dean Fisher—and his frequent guests, like Averill Harriman— taught his class that deadlines were essential in the negotiation process, both as a tool to force the other side to make tough decisions, and as a demonstration of resolve. In this negotiation, the U.S. repeatedly allowed “deadlines” to pass, with no consequences. That tells the Iranians all they need to know about the U.S.’s likely response when they violate the terms of the agreement, as they are certain to do, at least as long as this weak, feckless, posturing and irresolute President is in office.
Of course, to be fair, the Iranians had plenty of evidence on that score already, as did we all. “Red line,” you know.
2. The administration admits that it does not trust Iran. GOP Senator Lindsey Graham, who opposes the treaty, stated that Iran has never kept any international agreement or promise,, and thus cannot be trusted to keep this one. Nobody is seriously disputing that. Under such conditions, the whole concept of the deal is irresponsible. Who signs a treaty that it seriously doubts the other side will obey? Graham called this is the equivalent of making a deal with “religious Nazis.” The comparison is apt, except that the Obama arrangement with Iran is in some ways even more reckless than the one Neville Chamberlain made with Hitler. At least Chamberlain believed—stupidly, naively—that Hitler wanted peace. The Iran deal is what the Munich treaty would have been if Chamberlain was pretty sure Germany would invade Czechoslovakia and Poland anyway.
Chamberlain’s “peace in our time” was a pathetic hope. Obama’s is more like a lie.
3. The fact that Iran was not required to release four Americans it is currently holding and to agree to stop supporting terrorism abroad as conditions precedent to the lifting of sanctions is, all by itself, justification for rejecting this treaty, and proof that the U.S. negotiation was incompetent, desperate, and irresponsible in negotiating it.
4. Despite the fact that John Kerry gave lip service to the important principle that the deal would either be a good one, or there would be no deal, the supporting rhetoric for the agreement from the administration’s spokespersons and even such knee-jerk Obama toadies as The Daily Beast’s Peter Beinart is that the treaty’s primary virtue is that it is better than nothing.
5. They are doing it again. CNN just did a quick spot on how the treaty immediately burnishes Obama’s achievements because he reached a deal. This is the minimal goals, low bar, low-expectations delusion that has been the hallmark of the lazy assessments of this President’s performance from the beginning.. The achievement is passing a healthcare law, whether it is any good or not. The achievement is removing the troops from Iraq, even if the consequences are catastrophic, as they have been. Reaching the nuclear deal with Iran is only an achievement if it is a good one. Chamberlain could say that he reached an agreement at Munich too. Was that an achievement? By the logic of the Obama administration and its cheerleaders, yes.
Meanwhile, this morning I have heard multiple commentators state that the deal “keeps Iran from developing nuclear weapons.” That is factually false. The agreement doesn’t keep Iran from doing anything. It is an exchange of promises, and one party never keeps its promises. The other never enforces promises others violate.
6. The openly partisan and biased Carol Costello is smirking on CNN that Republican critics have no alternative to such a treaty. Sure they do: no deal. This is a regime that has pledged to wipe out the West, and embraces violent, apocalyptic Islamic cant. Accepting reality, uncomfortable as it may be, is always a more responsible course than pretending there are better options.
7. There is no reason to trust Iran, and there is every reason not to trust President Obama’s leadership judgment and the competence of his appointees. This is especially true in international matters, where it has an established record of dithering, poor judgment, incompetence, miscalculations and failure.
8. The last resort of administrations when they have made irresponsible decisions is to cite the polls, and the Obama flacks are doing that this morning. The public always is in favor of avoiding conflict., even when conflict is unavoidable, even when delaying conflict is dangerous. That’s why we do not run foreign policy by polls.
That is, it is why we shouldn’t.
Ethics Alarms 
I think the Chamberlain phrase was “peace FOR our time,” but, that aside, bullseye. Obama is now what you get when you cross Chamberlain with Wilson: a clueless, feckless, frankly cowardly academic who is so certain his way is the right way that no one can tell him anything.
That said, as anyone who has some kind of working knowledge of history should know, those opposed to this had a choice almost a century ago, when the GOP Senate sent the Treaty of Versailles, and Wilson, packing when he tried to force it through on the basis of personality and popularity, and they have a choice now. This treaty is going noplace unless a substantial number of GOP senators vote for it, and there’s no reason for them to. In fact there are a lot of reasons for them not to, both political and real-world. Obama is no longer wildly popular if he can be said to still be popular at all, so he can’t play that card. He is also going to be GONE in eighteen months, and so can’t threaten to wait the Senate out. He has frankly nothing to trade the Senate for approval.
This deal would seal, not peace for our time, but the illusion of peace for a few years, while the mullahs happily ignore it, then a fait accompli when they have the bomb and are ready to use it. Israel, as we all know, DOES have the bomb, and rockets than can reach Iran. I honestly believe that the current leadership there would not hesitate to hit Iran before it could launch a bomb, and it’s not in anyone’s best interest that the world wake up to the fact that four or five nuclear bombs hit either Iran or Israel last night.
Both are correct:
http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/peace-in-our-time
If the Oxford people don’t have this right, I give up.
Right, it’s become part of the lexicon. I think the new joke should be what do you get when you cross a coward (Chamberlain) with a clueless person (Carter) with a dogmatist (Wilson) ?
Darn it, you sucked me in on this tangent. Apparently the British PM”s official web site would disagree with your Oxford people:
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130109092234/http://number10.gov.uk/history-and-tour/neville-chamberlain-2/
Two things I found fascinating: 1) Chamberlain’s phrase alluded to Disraeli’s speech after returning from the Congress of Berlin in 1878 (who remembered the Russo-Turkish War of 1877?), which evidently was ultimately no more successful in solving its assigned problem than the Munich agreement.
2) I’ve watched Chamberlain’s return from Munich where he waves ‘that paper’ around (what if it had blown away?) and, he doesn’t actually use the phrase during that speech. Evidently it was uttered after his return to 10 Downing St. when he made a speech from the balcony there.
New things are there to be learned every day.
Yes, but WILL the Senate wield their power? It really is anyone’s guess, if the last couple of years are any indication.
It’s anyone’s guess what the Senate will do. McConnell and his Rino clique are the swing voters there and their level or courage and competency is forever in question.
You don’t have to be an Adrian Fisher to see the incredible haywiredness of this act of pseudo-diplomacy from beginning to end. Every logical principle of negotiation has been violated in favor of a false domestic political victory. With the bulk of the press echoing Kerry’s claims, many Americans will never realize that we’ve enabled our worst enemies to obtain the means to launch nuclear attacks on us and our allies while, in the meantime, recovering their economy. The Obama administration is so narrowly focused on their power grab at home that they can’t or won’t acknowledge that there are people out there who hate them as much as they do traditionalist Americans and would kill us all, given the means. They’ve just been handed the tools to do just that.
In Chamberlain’s defense, it was just twenty years that so many young men from England lost their lives in the trenches.
We Americans did not experience something similar within the past forty years.
But that’s no excuse. The price of freedom is high; the fact that you are suffering from sticker shock is not an excuse for a responsible leader not to pay it. Even though the Iraq casualties were less than some single Civil War battles, today’s public can’t tolerate that price even when there is no choice but to pay it. That’s what competent leaders are for.
Today’s public has been taught not to tolerate ANY casualties. It doesn’t help that the media has forgotten how to do heroes and focusses on our military either as victims who kill brown people for a hobby, or victims whose blood is on the hands of the GOP.
I wonder how our media became so anti-American.
The media was always liberal, although in the days of Edward R. Murrow et. al, 1) they and the government were on the same side in WWII, 2) at least they had some kind of integrity. Then they discovered in Viet Nam that they could make policy rather than simply reporting it, and Woodward and Bernstein succeeded in bringing down Richard Nixon. Since then every reporter has been trying to duplicate that feat. Dan Rather almost succeeded in 2004, and only avoided getting fired outright because of his status.
We think we did. A day doesn’t pass where we don’t here how we lost so many in Iraq for nothing, never mind that we didn’t HAVE to have it be for nothing, but Obama decided to withdraw so he could add that to his platform for 2012. America wants a return to normalcy, where NYC doesn’t feel like it’s under a state of siege and we aren’t getting daily reports of American soldiers getting shot in the back or blown up by roadside bombs. I think to some degree we were ready to go back to war in 2001 because things had been quiet for a decade. Maybe in another decade we’ll be ready to face up to another major foe.
Saw a piece saying that the theory behind the pact is, essentially, that if we are nice to Iran they will be nice to us. Pathetic. That’s as stupid as starting out with where you want to end up. Great idea, it just doesn’t work.
Neville Chamberlain was way before my time but John Kerry is essentially a contemporary and he sure strikes me as a knucklehead. A Brahmin and married to a Ketchup heiress, but still, a knucklehead. Do you suppose the Iranian negotiating team would go to youtube and watch those goofy home videos of Kerry playing soldier in Vietnam when they wanted to have a laugh during a break in the “negotiations?”
Watching Obama having his legacy “burnished” is getting really depressing.
It needs burnishing so he can campaign for Hillary next year.
Kerry: “Good morning and welcome to JIHADI PRICE IS RIGHT where the US govt negotiates with sworn enemies of the US for cash & prizes. With us, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei and Iran’s President Mahoumoud Ahmadinejad. Gentlemen, thank you – what brings you here?
Ahmadinejad: “Basically, an intense hatred for everything the US and Israel stand for.”
Kerry: “Wow, super, thanks for being here.”
(turns off stage to asst – “how’s my hair?”)
(then turns to A.K.)
“How about you, The Supreme Leader of all Muslims -…the “Can’t Containme Khamenei” – what brings you here?”
A.K: “Hezzbollah, Hammas and and the doom of the Zionists.”
Kerry: “Cool, cool…what do you crazy cats like to do for fun?”
A.K.: “Well, AJAD and I recently purchased millions of dollars of Jewish symbols in the form of pavement murals and then we trampled them to some funky goth music.”
Kerry: “Right on…sounds like a stone cold groove. Ok, who’s ready to play JIHADI PRICE IS RIGHT!”
(crowd cheering)
(the “negotiation game” is played and the boys slay it!)
Kerry: (excitedly) “You guys just won 100 billion dollars!…that’s fantastic, how are you going to spend all of that money – more Jewish murals and flags to stomp?”
AHAD: (laughing) “No, no, we are going to play nice for while and not so secretly spend our windfall securing weapons grade capability.”
(crowds shouting: “death to America – death to the Great Satan”)
Kerry:(confused) “Huh, not more anti Semitic art? You mean “ballistic missiles, nuclear warheads…really? Then what???”
A.K: (smirking) “Then we put President Obama’s red line test to the test ”
Kerry: “I’m so confused, I helped coin that term”
AHAD: “It’s a great line. We watched you host the Negotiation Game with Ukraine and Syria…the infamous red line tests – Fantastic!”
AHAD/A.K.: (chanting) “death to America – death to Zionists”
Kerry: (backslapping) “Ha ha, very funny…that’s all the time we have…”
pan out/fade to black
Awesome.
Well done, Carl.
What I would really like to know is, will there be a light show made of the White House tonight, that includes some orange-ish shape of a mushroom cloud? Nah – Barack will just pre-empt the All-Star game with a speech.
In Iran’s defense, they have no reason to trust America: http://jneilschulman.rationalreview.com/2015/05/why-wont-iran-make-an-arms-deal-with-obama/
It seems to me that neither side has reason to trust the other, and they both know this, so the whole negotiation is a sham.
I am sure that eventually the Israeli’s will solve this problem.
The history of the west in Iran – and the region – certainly does not open up any avenues of trust.
To all appearances, we have decided to side against the Sunnis in the current Islamic Civil War. We are bowing to Iran’s wishes in all things. This is going to cause an even bigger mess in Iraq, where we are supporting the use of Iranian militias (Shiite) to retake ISIS held, Sunni areas. For some bizarre reason, President Obama seems to be trying to replace our historical relationship with Turkey with Iran and Assad’s government in Syria. We are supporting Iran’s claims to be the leader of the Middle East and undercutting Turkey’s claim.
Why in the world would we do such a thing?
Complete and utter stability within particular regions isn’t necessarily a national strategic goal…
One thing that America must maintain FOREVER if we hope to keep the kind of *relative* peace that the World has enjoyed since WW2 ended is for America (and it’s immediate allies) to have 100% domination of the blue water oceans. Our enemies can control their coasts and that’s it.
One thing that can threaten our ability to completely dominate the blue water oceans is for any one enemy nation to become so stabilized on land OR to become so secured on it’s landward frontiers that it can begin devoting its cultural energies to developing its own blue water navy.
It’s almost a law of physics: Two enemy navies CANNOT occupy the same parts of the oceans at the same time.
In short: Keep the middle east destabilized *enough* that Iran (our enemy), Saudi Arabia (at its roots, our enemy, which would become immediately manifest is the Saud regime collapsed), or even some of the other nations, are compelled to siphon off their cultural energies securing their frontier and pacifying their insurgent populations. But not so destabilized that it becomes a haven for truly ugly messes like ISIS.
This is where, in Obama’s insurmountable ineptitude he failed in keeping the balance of “just enough instability” but “not too much”.
Oh, but don’t you know that that’s not FAIR in the minds of the left, all that domination.