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Senate Republicans Don't Understand Their Powers As Legislators

EatLeadCommie said:
Nice dismissal, but the fact is this has gone on for years in various forms by both parties, and in many cases in ways just as public. In Kennedy's case, it was all backchannel sneaky shit and not even public so that he could further his drunken Presidential ambitions. Then you had the "Dear Comandante" letter that heaped praise on Noriega. So when people are crying about the Logan Act and other some such nonsense, it shows they have short memories or are just flat out ignorant.

They shouldn't have prepped this letter. It was unwise and unnecessary.

Completely agree

But at least it isn't heaping praise upon Iran, nor is it attempting to give Iran any negotiating leverage. Those are not insignificant distinctions.

At the same time it is threatening them and completely gave Iran negotiating leverage. Which are not insignificant distinctions.

But the bottom line is you need to let the President do what he's going to do. If you don't like the agreement he comes up with and it requires ratification, don't ratify it.

This I totally agree with.
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I never understood this idea that countries with nuclear weapons should tell all others not to have them while we sit here thumbing our noses with thousands. Look at a country like Ukraine that had them and gave them up, no fucking way Russia is so bullish if Ukraine was sitting on a nice nuclear weapons supply. Also even more dumb is the ability to develop nuclear weapons, the process really isn't even that fucking hard its 1940s technology.
 
I don't see how it does. They just had Netanyahu give a spiel at a joint session and it is well known that the GOP is not game for any agreement with Iran. Obama knows this too, and thus he will negotiate what he wants that amounts to less than what we consider a treaty here in the US. Pubs will fume and may pass some meaningless resolution denouncing it. A few may even make noise about court challenges. That's why the letter is so pointless. It states the obvious, but in the process it comes off as condescending as fuck and is an unnecessary thumbing of the nose to Obama.
 
ThinkingWithMyDeac said:
I never understood this idea that countries with nuclear weapons should tell all others not to have them while we sit here thumbing our noses with thousands. Look at a country like Ukraine that had them and gave them up, no fucking way Russia is so bullish if Ukraine was sitting on a nice nuclear weapons supply. Also even more dumb is the ability to develop nuclear weapons, the process really isn't even that fucking hard its 1940s technology.
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Because as we get further and further away from 1945, the memory of their use and destruction also fades. Little shithole countries who behave like animals really have no business developing nuclear weapons. It does the world at large a favor to see that they don't get them, not just us.
 
EatLeadCommie said:
I don't see how it does. They just had Netanyahu give a spiel at a joint session and it is well known that the GOP is not game for any agreement with Iran. Obama knows this too, and thus he will negotiate what he wants that amounts to less than what we consider a treaty here in the US. Pubs will fume and may pass some meaningless resolution denouncing it. A few may even make noise about court challenges. That's why the letter is so pointless. It states the obvious, but in the process it comes off as condescending as fuck and is an unnecessary thumbing of the nose to Obama.
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All very true, but it gave the Iranians an excuse to walk away from the table and Russia and China to not support sticker sanctions when that happens.
 
EatLeadCommie said:
Because as we get further and further away from 1945, the memory of their use and destruction also fades. Little shithole countries who behave like animals really have no business developing nuclear weapons. It does the world at large a favor to see that they don't get them, not just us.
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I get that.

But we are the most war-starting motherfuckers out there. We are a warring people. Our whole culture is war-based. We war, that is what we do. So I get TWMD's point.

I don't want crazies getting the bomb either, but we are the crazies too. Kinds fucked up eh?

As 923 has pointed out, Iran just wants a seat at the table and you cannot blame them.
 
WakeandBake said:
I get that.

But we are the most war-starting motherfuckers out there. We are a warring people. Our whole culture is war-based. We war, that is what we do. So I get TWMD's point.

I don't want crazies getting the bomb either, but we are the crazies too. Kinds fucked up eh?
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We are also who the world looks to (and who the UN looks to) as the people who will actually step in and do something when shit goes down. It comes with being a superpower. As much as we would like to withdraw from the world, we can't (though we can pick our battles better). Better us than the Russians or the Chinese. We could become isolationist, but then one of those two steps to the plate, and I don't want that.
 
EatLeadCommie said:
We are also who the world looks to (and who the UN looks to) as the people who will actually step in and do something when shit goes down. It comes with being a superpower. As much as we would like to withdraw from the world, we can't (though we can pick our battles better). Better us than the Russians or the Chinese. We could become isolationist, but then one of those two steps to the plate, and I don't want that.
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When is the last time Iran started a war and invaded a foreign country?
 
EatLeadCommie said:
We are also who the world looks to (and who the UN looks to) as the people who will actually step in and do something when shit goes down. It comes with being a superpower. As much as we would like to withdraw from the world, we can't (though we can pick our battles better). Better us than the Russians or the Chinese. We could become isolationist, but then one of those two steps to the plate, and I don't want that.
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do what, kill people in the name of Western interests, right?
 
EatLeadCommie said:
Because as we get further and further away from 1945, the memory of their use and destruction also fades. Little shithole countries who behave like animals really have no business developing nuclear weapons. It does the world at large a favor to see that they don't get them, not just us.
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I don't have a great answer to this whole issue because the nuances are really deep and the competing interests are "turtles all the way down". For example, just to spur discussion, let's take the "little shithole countries who behave like animals" rule and apply it to Iran. What have they done, objectively speaking, that is so much worse than all the crap the US has done since it became nuclear power? We've invaded how many countries, a dozen or so (not even counting special ops and drones)? Iran has invaded 0. Iran has waged proxy wars by supporting really nasty people like Hezbollah. The US has done the same with some really nasty people like the Contras, the Iraqis (vs. Iran), the South Vietnamese regimes, the Afghan mudjahideen (vs. USSR), etc. They have tried to spread their ugly ideology to other countries. We managed to spread the idiocy of the War on Drugs around most of the world, causing untold needless human suffering in the process.

Our internal politics are prettier, granted. We do a lot of good around the world, with foreign aid and keeping the sea lanes safe, granted. But as far as our international behavior, it's certainly not a black and white case that Iran has acted like animals and we have not.

Our basic advantage is we get to determine where the lines get drawn, because we're bigger, richer, and we got nukes first. I'm glad I live in the country that gets to set the rules, but I can put myself in the shoes of the average Iranian and understand why they might say "who the hell are they to boss us around?" There aren't any black and white lines here, there are only national interests. It's in our national interest to prevent Iran from getting the bomb, but I'm not so naive as to think that it's because we occupy much of a moral high ground (to be clear, I am not suggesting that you think that either).
 
Not to mention that Iran as it exists today is largely a byproduct of the U.S. and UK's intervention in the first place when the UK didn't want them to nationalize their oil.
 
"Nationalization" is nothing more than code for "We are going to steal that from you." Countries may opt to do that, but there are consequences to such actions. If, for example, the US opted to nationalize a part or all of my 401(k), I would hope there would be armed revolt. Similarly, if it is going to null and void existing contracts for oil in a money grab for its government (which is really just a money grab for the few in charge), then it should expect consequences. Anytime the word nationalization was even uttered in the context of the Cold War, it was like the secret commie handshake. I cannot justify every action we took in the midst of the Cold War that was driven by Cold War politics, but you can't look at those decisions in a vacuum. Maybe things got bad after our interference or several years down the road after our interference. What we don't know is how much worse or better it would have been without our interference.
 
A nation was going to steal from the UK the oil which was within their own nation's borders? Well let me stop you there.

If you're interested on the topic read All the Shah's Men. It tells a pretty compelling story about how the UK lied to the US about the Communist influence in Iran and got us to support (and generally provide a lot of leadership through the CIA) covert action in the nation. They went from being on the very close edge of democracy to being an insular, extremist Islamic nation. I've read a good amount of literature on the topic and time period and most evidence indicates that Iran would be a very different nation without the US/UK involvement to protect UK's oil interests.
 
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Deacon923 said:
I don't have a great answer to this whole issue because the nuances are really deep and the competing interests are "turtles all the way down". For example, just to spur discussion, let's take the "little shithole countries who behave like animals" rule and apply it to Iran. What have they done, objectively speaking, that is so much worse than all the crap the US has done since it became nuclear power? We've invaded how many countries, a dozen or so (not even counting special ops and drones)? Iran has invaded 0. Iran has waged proxy wars by supporting really nasty people like Hezbollah. The US has done the same with some really nasty people like the Contras, the Iraqis (vs. Iran), the South Vietnamese regimes, the Afghan mudjahideen (vs. USSR), etc. They have tried to spread their ugly ideology to other countries. We managed to spread the idiocy of the War on Drugs around most of the world, causing untold needless human suffering in the process.

Our internal politics are prettier, granted. We do a lot of good around the world, with foreign aid and keeping the sea lanes safe, granted. But as far as our international behavior, it's certainly not a black and white case that Iran has acted like animals and we have not.

Our basic advantage is we get to determine where the lines get drawn, because we're bigger, richer, and we got nukes first. I'm glad I live in the country that gets to set the rules, but I can put myself in the shoes of the average Iranian and understand why they might say "who the hell are they to boss us around?" There aren't any black and white lines here, there are only national interests. It's in our national interest to prevent Iran from getting the bomb, but I'm not so naive as to think that it's because we occupy much of a moral high ground (to be clear, I am not suggesting that you think that either).
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And again, our role is completely different from Iran's by virtue of being a superpower. Iran isn't so they do proxy wars and battles. They fund and foment the hate that leads to all the fucked-up-edness in the Middle East. And in their case, you can't really go back to 1945 when we dropped the bomb and do a side by side comparison. It's more appropriate to look at actions since about 1979, proxy or otherwise. They aren't going to bomb Israel because they know there will be consequences. But they'll give money to see that it's done. They fund attacks on Israel. They fund attacks on our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just because they hire hitmen and we do the killing ourselves doesn't somehow make them better. We're stronger. Of course we are going to act in a way that is more public and brings more criticism. There is absolutely no moral relativism to be applied to Iran simply because they're smaller than us. To use that as justification for letting them go nuclear (granted, they'll get there eventually anyway) is just absurd. A nuclear Iran is in no way a good thing.
 
The US privatizing your 401K versus Iran nationalizing their own resources to help provide for their citizens is pretty different.
 
You need to go back well before 1979 to figure out what went wrong in Iran. Wouldn't have needed to depose the Shah if we hadn't gotten involved two decades earlier. I mean we overthrew their democratically (in the true sense of the word) elected prime minister.
 
No offense, but reading your last couple of posts indicates to me that you don't know very much about the specific Iran situation.
 
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