Congratulate Obama, and never forget the 47 Republicans Who Tried to Sabotage The Iran Deal

[Editor's Note: This was supposed to have been published on April 2, 2015. I never published it] President Obama should first of all be congratulated on this historic deal with Iran. If Paul Craig Roberts believes this has thwarted the efforts of the Neocons, then I am happy.  As Roberts put in a recent post titled "Massive Defeat For US Neocon Nazis and Israel’s Crazed Netanyahu":

The neocon scum and crazed Israeli government have worked for years, together with the idiot Republican Party to create a false reality about Iran and nonexistent nuclear weapons program in the hope of starting a war with Iran.

Now these war hopes are defeated by the nuclear energy agreement worked out with Iran by Obama and Putin.

What will the crazed Netanyahu, the neocon scum, and the crazed John McCain do now? Will they create a false flag event? Will they somehow start a war anyhow?

The world will not be safe until the warmongers are removed from the American and Israeli governments.

With that said, the 47 Senate Republicans, including Senator Rand Paul -- no, especially Senator Rand Paul! -- should be thoroughly condemned for signing that blasphemous letter to the Iranians saying that the next president -- and by this they mean Republican president because it is inevitable that you mindless American lemmings will swing back to the Republicans in the next election -- can scrap whatever peace deal President Obama makes with the Iranians.

As the New Yorker put it:

The G.O.P. did everything that it could to scuttle this deal. Forty-seven Republican senators sent a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader that will go down in the annals of diplomatic sabotage, and made it harder for American negotiators to demand a deal that the White House itself would find acceptable. They did so even though their ostensible goal—keeping Iran from becoming a nuclear power—was the same as the President’s. 

Of course, all of that bible-thumping from Republicans goes out the window when it comes to issues of foreign policy. Blessed are the peacemakers and the Golden Rule go out the door when Iranians don't bow down to the number one purveyors of violence in the world.

And I am not a "liberal" nor a "pacifist" at all. Nor am I naive when it comes to foreign affairs. I am more realistic than so called "foreign policy realists." 

It makes me think this is the same Republican party that booed Ron Paul for citing the golden rule in the 2011 Presidential debates in the most religious state in the country -- South Carolina! That was an exaggeration, but only slightly. 

Please read the New Yorker article for an explanation of the deal.

Good job, Mr. President

Photo courtesy of the Associated Press. President Obama on Thursday, April 2, 2015 in the Rose Garden at the White House.

[Editor's Note: This was supposed to have been published on April 3, 2015. I never published it] If Phyllis Bennis, Justin Raimondo, David Stockman and Paul Craig Roberts -- four of my favorite independent foreign policy thinkers (a progressive, two libertarians, and the third hard to classify) -- are all celebrating the Iran deal (the latter believes the neocons have been defeated, and Raimondo even said the president sounded like a "true statesmen" in his articulation the deals details), then so am I.

Good job Mr. President!

Now, all we have to do is remain vigilant against possible Republican efforts to repeal the deal.

And while this is an unarguably good thing, we must realize that the Obama administration is still economically Keynesian, and we will always be in the economic doldrums until those Keynesian policies are reversed.

Click here to read David Stockman's April review of the deal.

[Editor's Note: August 4, 2015 Update] David Stockman again weighs in on the deal. He nearly says what I say above in the last paragraph:

I have rarely found anything President Obama has done to be praiseworthy, and believe his domestic policies of Keynesian borrow and spend and incessant statist intervention in capitalist enterprise to be especially deplorable. But finally he has stood up to the War Party——and that could mark a decisive turning point in rolling back Washington’s destructive interventionism and imperial pretensions in the Middle East and, indeed, around the world.

Click here to read David Stockman's July assessment of the Iran Deal.