IN a space of one week, U.S. Republican law makers in Congress acted most disrespectfully to President Barack Obama in particular, and the White House in general. First, it was Speaker John Boehner’s undiplomatic snub when he unilaterally invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress, without the courtesy of informing the White House about the invitation.
Of course, the prime minister who currently faces an uphill re-election campaign at home readily accepted the invitation and used the speech opportunity to attempt to the add some spice to his not-too-promising re-election bid at home. He all but told President Obama that he was a day-dreamer to think that the on-going talks with Iran over nuclear issues would yield any tangible result.
No sooner had Netanyahu left the podium than a group of U.S. senators decided it was time to give the White House a piece of their mind, still on the same nuclear talks with Iran. Forty-seven of them appended their signature on a letter to Tehran, lecturing Iranian authorities on how the U.S. system works, and letting them know that Obama was powerless over any international treaty unless Congress supported him. They reminded the Iranians that sooner than later, President Obama would bow out of government, but they would be around for a very long time.
One of the perhaps unintended but symbolic things about the number, 47, is that it is reminiscent of what former Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, told his millionaire financiers at a private dinner in the last presidential election. He had told them that he really did not care about the “47 percent” of less fortunate Americans he knew would never vote for him. For added pun, Romney was born in 1947. The letter to the Iranian government was as cheeky as it was ill-advised. It said in part that “It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system.”
The great wonder about this ill-advised letter is that it was written by Tom Cotton, a rookie senator from Arkansas. But the greater point of bewilderment is that Cotton managed to get old-hands in his party to sign it. One of them is Senator Rand Paul who is nursing the ambition to contest the presidency on the platform of his party. Another is Senator John McCain of Arizona who needs no lecture on what is appropriate when it comes to the conduct of foreign policy. Senator McCain has since made a tactical “withdrawal” from this embarrassment. He told reporters that “maybe that wasn’t the best way to do that, but I think the Iranians should know that the Congress of the United States has to play a role” in such nuclear talks.
Other Republican senators who did not sign the letter did not hold back in saying that it was just a misguided thing to do. One of them is Senator Bob Coker, who is the chairman of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee. He put his objections this way: “I didn’t think it was going to further our efforts to get to a place where Congress would play the appropriate role that it should on Iran. I did not think that the letter was something that was going to help get us to an outcome that we’re all seeking, and that is Congress playing that appropriate role.”
As expected, the Democrats who are now in the minority in the U.S. Senate are not impressed with the idea and tone of the letter to Iran. Senate minority leader, Harry Reid, bluntly stated that “The judgment of my Republican colleagues seems to be clouded by their abhorrence of President Obama. It’s unprecedented for one political party to directly intervene in an international negotiation with the sole goal of embarrassing the president of the United States.”
Humiliating the president
With a history of trying to humiliate the president at every turn, what Senator Reid said about his counterparts may not be far from the truth. Perhaps, no U.S. president has been heaped with such disdain as President Obama has endured in the hands of compatriots who do not believe that he should be in the White House.
While explaining the rationale behind the letter, its author, Tom Cotton, said this: “Our goal is simple: to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon…. I do not take my obligations as a senator lightly. Nor do those who are signatories to the letter. If the president won’t share our role in the process with his negotiating partner, we won’t hesitate to do it ourselves.”
If the first-term senator believes that his letter is what is needed to have Iran panic and abandon its nuclear ambitions, then that goal is not only simple, as the senator said, but just simplistic. The Iranian government will not quaver because a young and inexperienced U.S. senator wrote a “simple” letter and got his colleagues to sign it, regarding a matter that is important to Tehran.
VANGUARD
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