Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Life in the Bubble

The standard-bearer of the "reality-based" community:

"There is a reason why 99 percent of the world thinks it’s a good deal -- it’s because it’s a good deal," Obama said during a joint press conference with Ethiopian prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn in the capital Addis Ababa.

"The good news is that I’ve not yet heard a factual argument on other side that holds up to scrutiny," he added.

Let's see, Iran will get a lot of money to foment unrest in the Middle East, including their client Assad in Syria.

Iran will be free to buy conventional weapons in a relatively short time.

In a little longer, they'll be freed from restrictions on ballistic missile technology (in case they want to fling cheap and clean nuclear-generated electricity to far lands).

We've crippled enforcement of the deal with bad provisions and nonpublic side deals that give Iran too much control over the process.

Iran--if they abide by the deal--will have a free path to nuclear weapons in a decade.

Iran will learn a lot about the nuclear process during that decade.

Iran could cheat on the deal, and since Iran gets so much up front, the ability of the West to punish violations will be non-existent.

Russia and China will shield Iran from Western efforts to rein them in.

If Iran has another path to nuclear weapons outside the terms of the deal, Iran can go nuclear without technically violating the deal.

The deal will prompt a conventional arms race in the region as we sell weapons to settle our Arab allies and as Iran builds up their own arsenal.

The deal will encourage Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt to consider their own nuclear weapons.

The deal leaves the nutball Iranian regime in charge of Iran and crushes the hopes of dissidents that they might gain help from an America that just blessed nutballs with nukes.

And that sets aside the damage to our system of checks and balances by effectively bypassing Congressional treaty powers and granting the UN Security Council that job.

Oh, and Kerry will get a wholly undeserved Nobel Peace Prize for the deal. And you think he's insufferably arrogant now?

As any parent of any teenager would tell President Obama, if 99% of the world was jumping off a cliff, would you do it, too? If he can't see that there are good arguments against his deal, well, Matthew Henry had something to say about that.

UPDATE: But no, Captain Oblivious thinks we have a true, reset partner in Tehran. Thank God the Tea Party isn't in charge of Iran! Otherwise that might be eliminationist rhetoric!