Republicans considered Reagan to be Chamberlain too.
Republicans opposing President Obama's proposed nuclear deal with Iran must explain explain
how their proposed approach would not repeat their same failures in Iraq. I know the U.S. press generally operates with amnesia, but this could get ridiculous.
The Republican party triumphantly opposing diplomacy, and posturing with flexed muscles, just conducted a grand and failed experiment of their approach in trying to contain the supposed nuclear ambitions of a tyrannical regime located right next door to Iran. Surely that must raise at least three relevant questions for interviewing Republicans:
1. Why do you believe that continued or stronger sanctions can work against Iran when you argued that thirteen years of far harsher sanctions, a "no fly" zone, and an effective partition of the country did not, and could not, prevent Iraq from obtaining nuclear, chemical and biological weapons?
2. If you now believe that Iraq experience showed that sanctions could work [and thus the Iraq War was a mistake], wouldn't we nonetheless be faced with the same problem that we could not know whether the sanctions were working? As Condi Rice said as to Iraq: "The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." What is different about Iran and sanctions?
3. The Iraq War formally lasted eight years, and is still continuing, cost roughly $1.7 trillion, and resulted in approximately 145,000 coalition deaths or casualties. Iran is much bigger geographically, 2 to 2.5 times larger in population, has a more modern army, has naval, air and missile assets, and has allied fighting forces in neighboring countries. Please describe how much more risk and sacrifice an Iran war would pose to the U.S. Unlike Iraq, would you agree to vote for a draft and tax increases to fight this war? Why not?
I'm not saying that these three questions resolve the debate. I am saying that it is journalistic malpractice if you have a discussion of this Iran issue and not at least ask Republican opponents to address some variation of these questions.