When Republicans play foreign policy
In his inimitable style,
The Rude Pundit gets to the core danger of the Republican letter to Iran. It's not about treason or overstepping authority or making the United States look bad. It's worse than that.
But let's look at the letter in another way. Because not once in it do the senators, led by freshman ass-licker Tom Cotton of Arkansas, say that the end result of this should be that Iran shouldn't build a nuclear defense program. Oh, no. In fact, what the letter does is tell Iran, "Fuck it. You better build some nukes fast or we're gonna bomb your ass."
Not that modern Republicans are known for their mental acuity, or even for being able to coordinate the functions of their cerebral cortexes, but while they're busy
trying to incite a war with Iran, they're also not considering what that war would look like. The good news is that Iranian leaders recognize the Republicans for the
idiots they are. But that doesn't excuse the Republicans for what the effect would be if the Iranians didn't. Because if the Iranians took the Republicans seriously, things would get very bad very quickly.
What would happen if the Iranians did take the Republicans seriously?
Everything you believed about Americans would be contained in it: that you can't trust us, that you would be giving up your own safety, that America's ultimate goal is to remake Iran with the same gusto it remade Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and... Yeah, you'd build a fuckin' nuclear bomb post-haste.
Let's put aside the overheated talk of treason. Let's not go down the rabbit hole of wondering what would have happened if a group of Democrats had done something like this to Bush. Instead, let's say that a group of Republican elected officials from the United States did the impossible: they made the repressive, fundamentalist government of Iran look like the reasonable ones.
It's becoming
a pattern. Some lessons in life are very clear: don't let children play with matches; don't let Republicans play with foreign policy.