Good think the Obama Administration invented the term “snapback” so adaher has a name for what he thinks they aren’t going to do!
I haven’t assumed they won’t do it, I’ve just been asking a simple question that hasn’t gotten an answer yet: if Iran fails to keep any significant part of the agreement, such as refusing inspectors access to a site they agreed to allow them into, or fails to ship their uranium out, do our sanctions automatically go back into place, or do we have to talk with our allies first?
It’s been answered a bunch of times. It’s clear that you’re arguing against no one and wondering why no one is arguing with you.
So sanctions do snap back as soon as Iran violates any part of the agreement and we do so unilaterally if necessary? Okay then.
One more time: it is a framework. By definition, a “framework” is not a detailed settlement, with specific sets of agreements as to responsibilities and consequences. It may be, in the fullness of time, that leaving the toilet seat up will result in an immediate embargo on Nutella. It may be that in the next book, Tyrian Lannister buggers a dragon and rules the world. Don’t know. Hasn’t been written yet.
Henry Kissinger does get to have opinions becuase he’s good at foreign policy. On the contrary, moral but ineffective diplomats, like the one currently negotiating this agreement, don’t get to have opinions.
I didn’t care much for Kissinger’s Iran op-ed, but he can at once be a scoundrel and war criminal AND be capable of producing insightful analysis. The idea that he doesn’t get to have opinions on foreign policy is silly. Even sillier is the notion that John Kerry or Obama don’t “get to have opinions.”
Dammit, ‘luc’, you flippant SOB… I cannot endorse this post.
It’s Tyrion.
Other than that, your point is spot on (as it has been all the previous times it’s been made in this thread).
adaher, all parties, including Iran, have agreed in principle to the concept of “snap back” whereby any material breach of the agreement will result in the reinstatement of some or all sanctions by some or all signatories to the agreement. However, since the details of that principle have yet to be negotiated, published and signed, it’s pure speculation as to what would constitute a breach, how that would be established to the satisfaction of participating governments and through what processes the relevant sanctions would be re-imposed.
You should continue to feel free to make assumptions about the willingness of each particular party to comply with the letter of an eventual agreement, but as the potential for breaches of agreements always exists, it just isn’t a valid argument against negotiations per se. It’s merely an argument for competence in drafting the final agreement to include the necessary details. Which is hardly insightful.
Kissinger supported the Iraq war (though he now recognizes that he was mistaken). He’s not as good as you think he is.
However, Kissinger does have a long track record of understanding foreign policy. No one bats 1.000. Those who opposed the Iraq war, how many supported the surge again? Some, like Kerry and Clinton, had the dubious honor of being wrong TWICE. Kerry three times actually, since he opposed the liberation of Kuwait. Guess who is in charge of negotiating this agreement? Can you think of any major contested foreign policy issue on which Kerry has ever been proven right? Wasn’t he also a nuclear freeze guy in the 80s?
No, the Surge was still wrong. It might have been good tactics in killing terrorists, but it also resulted in more dead Americans and more wasted money – pulling out of Iraq prior to the Surge (or at any point earlier) would have been better strategy to avoid more dead Americans and wasted money for nothing.
The Iraq war was one of the worst blunders in American history, and every subsequent action that got us further entrenched was just a continuation of that blunder. The only correct strategy would have been to unilaterally withdraw combat troops. Thousands of Americans dead and hundreds of billions spent for a worse result and worse instability than before.
Kerry was right on the Iraq surge, he was right in trying to end the Iraq war, he was right on the futility and mistakes of the Vietnam war. He’s been wrong a lot too. Recently, Kissinger has been wrong a lot.
When analyzing if someone is wrong about something, you focus on results, and you also focus on what they said about the policy. The result of the surge, whether or not you credit the surge for the result, was that we finally got control of the insurgency. Meanwhile, Democrats called it an “escalation”. They were wrong.
Except they didn’t support that policy either. Kerry and Clinton consistently followed a middle course for political reasons that ended up being wrong pretty much all the time.
Secondly, you can’t absolve yourself of errors when you own a policy started by someone else. Maybe Henry Wallace was right and we should have been more conciliatory to Stalin, but even if you think that it’s no reason to wash your hands of Cold War policy for the next 40 years. Barack Obama, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton all wanted the job of managing the Middle East policy they inherited. That means they take responsibility for the decisions they make and their results. If our pullout made Iraq vulnerable to ISIS, that’s a decision made by that team. Would more troops have died if we’d stayed there? Yes. And that would be owned by whoever made that decision. Well guess what? troops are back in Iraq. So we get the worst of both worlds and once again we’re seeing a middle course that will probably fail.
In regards to Iran, this is especially true, since if they are close to a breakout that’s entirely on the current President. Iran was known to have a program during Clinton and Bush’s tenure and their policy was that all options were on the table if Iran got close. So if Iran is now close, why did we take force off the table? I’m not saying that’s a bad policy, just that Obama and Obama alone is responsible for the decision, as is John Kerry. Iran got close and they opted for negotiations instead of force or continuing current policy. If Iran gets a nuke, Obama/Biden/Kerry own that. There was nothing wrong with the Bush/Clinton Iran policy. Obama chose to make a change and he has to be responsible for that change.
It was an “escalation” of US involvement. The better strategy would have been to pull us out. More dead Americans and more wasted money is not good strategy. The Democrats were wrong in a lot of ways (and the Republicans were usually even more wrong), but opposing the Surge wasn’t one of those ways. It was a huge mistake, as was every decision not to end the war.
They were much close to the ‘correct’ strategy than their opponents.
Troops aren’t dying in Iraq right now. If we increase involvement and they start dying, then that will be a big mistake. This problem (ISIS) cannot be fixed with the American military. Our pullout was the right strategy because Americans stopped dying for nothing and we weren’t wasting as much money. Pulling out was worth it even with the formation of ISIS (which was inevitable unless we stayed for generations).
Who said we took force off the table? Obama’s never said this (though I hope we never actually use force). “Iran getting a nuke” would be bad, but “ground war with Iran” would be far worse and wouldn’t even eliminate the chance of Iran getting a nuke unless we stayed for generations.
If Iran wants a nuke badly enough, they’ll get one. And stopping them (or delaying them for decades) is not important enough to throw away tens of thousands of American lives. What we’re doing right now is the best of many bad options, but I still think it’s quite possible that Iran is not particularly interested in nuclear weapons, but rather the bargaining power they gain by being close to nuclear weapons.
So Obama is responsible for the changes to American policy, and those policies have been pretty uniformly better for America.
The surge bought Iraq some time and finally helped calm things down over there. If Iraq’s government has taken advantage of that calm intelligently we wouldn’t be where we are today. And no, it was not an escalation, any more than the initial pullout of troops after the invasion was a deescalation. That was just a word choice Democrats chose for political reasons.
Given that their strategy was a slow pullout of troops in the wake of a near total meltdown in the security situation over there, I’m not sure how you can say that. It would have been a Saigon embassy-style exit. And how does a slow drawdown work in a country with no security? There were only two options in Iraq in 2007: put in more troops to try to get control of things, or get the hell out with all possible speed. Bush, for all his faults, understood in his rather black/white mind that you either do something or you do another thing. “Sophisticated” politicians like Clinton, Kerry, and Obama think that doing a little of this and a little of that, mainly to appease political constituencies, is a smart way of conducting a war.
At least you get it, bugging out was a viable course of action. But you’re not a politician and Democrats were scared stiff of sounding like they supported “surrender”. So they made up dumb names like “Strategic redeployment”.
Maybe. We won’t know who was right on that one for many years. But the current strategy is another example of a compromise strategy. You just can’t wage war halfway. Either do it or don’t do it.
We don’t need a ground war with Iran. And true, the President hasn’t totally taken force off the table. And if the agreement is at least plausible, then maybe he’s right and his critics are wrong. We’ll see. My worry is that he seems so desperate to avoid the use of force that he’s limiting himself to just making sure Iran doesn’t get a bomb on his watch. Kick the can down the road.
Iran is a very dangerous regime and we cannot predict how they will use a nuclear deterrent.
Those policies have been neutral to this point, at least on Iraq and Iran. If ISIS gets a working government going over there and becomes a launching pad for attacks on US targets, and Iran gets a bomb, we are not better off. He’ll go down in history as Carter-like.
It was a bad strategy. Who cares what words we used – the Democrats’ strategy was to at least start to get us out, and that was much close to good strategy than the surge. More Americans dead and more wasted money for nothing.
Slow pullout still would have been much better than the surge (if not as good as a quick pullout). It would have resulted in fewer dead Americans and less wasted money. There weren’t “only two options” – and more troops wasn’t one at all. More troops was always the wrong move. Dead Americans and wasted money for nothing. It really is that simple, in terms of Iraq. A massive blunder complicated by every decision not to get out.
Dumb politics, but still not as dumb as getting into (and staying in) Iraq.
No, just don’t do it. And this strategy is much, much better than full involvement.
That’s almost all any president can hope for – Iran will get a weapon eventually if they really want one.
Yes, so what? Still not worth a ground war.
For Iraq, they’ve been much better than the alternatives offered by his opponents.
That’s a lot of “ifs” (no chance ISIS can ever actually govern), but even these results would be much, much better than ground war in Iraq or Iran.
If Iran is intent on attacking the US directly, they will do it. What we will do in turn is wage war. The issue is whether we’ll be waging that war with them possessing a nuclear deterrent or not. That’s why I think they want it. So they can step up their campaign and believe themselves immune from retaliation. They are wrong. But it will sure be costly to both of us if they make that calculation. Better to just keep them from nukes by any means necessary.
At least we aren’t the only ones with control over the situation. There’s another nation with the guts to do what it takes. They took care of Iraq and Syria when no one else would. And unlike US politicians of both stripes, Israel has tended to be very smart about when they fight and when they don’t fight.
I think many would question that last statement, including many, if not most Israelis.
Well yeah, if they ignore things like results. 2 for 2 on eliminating nuclear threats.
Ancient history (and dubious, regardless).