It might seem clever to bait the president by casting him as submissive to Iran, but goading him to prove the opposite is just plain irresponsible.
By Norman Solomon / The Hill
The doubletalk coming from many congressional Democrats in response to President Trump’s peace initiative with Iran has been a political wonder to behold. While correctly declaring that Trump should not have started the war, they’ve routinely gone on to condemn the memorandum of understanding that offers a process to end it.
Instead of supporting peace efforts that could move the Middle East toward genuine diplomacy instead of nonstop warfare, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) opted for partisan sniping. He quickly decried the memorandum. “It is so bad,” he said, “that even Republicans who cringe and knock their knees before criticizing Trump have no choice but to say what a bad deal this is.”
Other Senate Democrats have gone over the top while taking aim at the set of sensible steps outlined in the memorandum of understanding.
Denouncing what he called “a disgraceful deal” and “unconditional surrender,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) vowed that “anything like this deal will be dead on arrival in the Senate.” Not to be outdone in throwing cold water on the peace scenario, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) slammed it as “a dangerous giveaway.” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said that it is “hard to imagine a more thorough capitulation.”
Even Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) — who has a long record of advocating for peace and disarmament — participated in this race to the militaristic bottom. He swiftly announced his flat-out opposition to the emerging Iran deal, tweeting, “Congress must review and reject this deal immediately.”
Markey is facing a challenge for his Senate seat in the Massachusetts Democratic primary from Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), who claimed that the “terrible deal” was “basically a surrender document from Donald Trump to the supreme leader of Iran.” Not to be outdone with hyperbolic rhetoric, Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.) described the memorandum as “the most humiliating national security episode since the British burned the White House.”
For its part, the Democratic National Committee lost no time sending out a denunciation of the agreement as a “weak and shaky ‘deal’ with Iran.” The DNC approvingly quoted several Republican hardliners, in effect making common cause with some of the most hawkish Republican members of Congress. Such a tacit alliance could strangle the nascent peace effort in its cradle.
When Democrats claim that the memorandum of understanding amounts to surrender, they are playing with fire. Trump is already abruptly swerving between rational overtures for diplomatic dialogue and new bombastic threats. It might seem clever to bait the president by casting him as submissive to Iran, but goading him to prove the opposite is just plain irresponsible.
All of this is bad news for a world beset with the grim impacts of war, from carnage and refugee crises to spiking energy prices, trade disruption and environmental damage. It is also bad politics for the Democratic Party.