Iran Treaty And Decepticons

All War All The Time, We Like War

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – “What’s really going on here is there has actually been some diplomacy and some negotiation and the war hawks don’t like that.  That might lead to peace.  We don’t want peace.  We like to bomb people.  We like to have our constituents and our supporters perpetually on a war footing, perpetually thinking, preaching, living, sleeping, calling talk radio shows, and advocating never-ending war, never-ending conflict.”  Check out today’s transcript for the rest….

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Daniel Larison at American Conservative Magazine, in a related story, “The U.S. and Al Qaeda Are on the Same Side in Yemen.”  You want to talk about this?  Fine, let’s talk about it.

[reading]

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Saudis’ proxies in Yemen are fighting alongside Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).  [Mike: Gee, how convenient.]

“Meanwhile, Saudi-backed militias are spearheading efforts to roll back Houthi gains and reinstate the government that the rebels drove into exile in neighboring Saudi Arabia. But they have turned to Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, for help, according to local residents and a senior Western diplomat. This puts the U.S.-allied Gulf kingdom on the same side as one of the world’s most notorious extremist groups.”

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Mike: But yes, let’s obsess over ISIS.  Meanwhile, there’s a war going on and the United States is allied with the Saudi Arabians, who probably helped create ISIS in the first place.  What are we doing?  Aiding and abetting.  What are they doing in Yemen?  Again, we’re justifiably outraged and saddened over the tragic murder of those Marines.  No one is arguing that.  You can blame whoever you wish.  At the same time that we are saddened by this, you know what our buddies, our allies are doing (Saudi Arabians) with al Qaeda in Yemen?  They’re killing civilians.  They’re not even going after military targets.  They take civilians out.  Larison has been making this point over and over and over again.  Apparently I’m the only one who reads and then checks to see whether or not he’s got his facts right, and he does.

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The U.S.-backed Saudi intervention has been boosting AQAP for months as it has targeted one of their main local enemies and left them free to seize new territory and weapons. Now the Saudis’ local allies are relying on AQAP’s support in their fight with the Houthis. It may have seemed that the war on Yemen could not get worse from the perspective of U.S. interests, but now it has. AQAP is not just the beneficiary of a dangerous U.S.-based attack, but it is now siding with Saudi-backed forces. The U.S. and AQAP are effectively on the same side in Yemen. [Mike: How do you like that?] The latter lend aid to the same campaign that the U.S. backs, and U.S. client governments rely on American weapons, refueling, and intelligence as they attack the enemies of the jihadists.

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Mike:  You want more?  I’ve got more.  Patrick J Buchanan, “The GOP’s Iran Dilemma.”

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From first reactions, it appears that Hill Republicans will be near unanimous in voting a resolution of rejection of the Iran nuclear deal.

They will then vote to override President Obama’s veto of their resolution. And if the GOP fails there, Gov. Scott Walker says his first act as president would be to kill the deal.

But before the party commits to abrogating the Iran deal in 2017, the GOP should consider whether it would be committing suicide in 2016.

For even if Congress votes to deny Obama authority to lift U.S. sanctions on Iran, the U.S. will vote to lift sanctions in the U.N. Security Council. And Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, all parties to the deal, will also lift sanctions.

A Congressional vote to kill the Iran deal would thus leave the U.S. isolated, its government humiliated, unable to comply with the pledges its own secretary of state negotiated. Would Americans cheer the GOP for leaving the United States with egg all over its face?

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Mike:  It depends on what Americans you’re talking about, Pat.  The war hawk, war lust, bloodthirsty “USA! USA! War! War! Kill! Kill!” Americans?  Oh yeah.  The rest, not so much.

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Would the party campaign in 2016 on a pledge to get tough and impose new sanctions? “Coercive diplomacy,” The Wall Street Journal calls it.

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Mike:  What’s really going on here is there has actually been some diplomacy and some negotiation and the war hawks don’t like that.  That might lead to peace.  We don’t want peace.  We like to bomb people.  We like to have our constituents and our supporters perpetually on a war footing, perpetually thinking, preaching, living, sleeping, calling talk radio shows, and advocating never-ending war, never-ending conflict.  Therefore, peace is anathema.  It’s death.  Paul Pillar writing at The National Interest:

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Completion of the agreement to restrict the Iranian nuclear program put into sharp relief the choice for anyone who weighs in on the topic and especially for the U.S. Congress, which will have an opportunity to accept or reject the deal. Gone is any meaningful kibitzing on how well the negotiators are doing their jobs. Gone are endless speculative permutations of how different issues might be resolved. Gone is conjecturing about how the outline that was the framework agreement announced in April will be fleshed out with detailed terms. The question has been stripped down to a simple and easy-to-understand form: it is a choice between the agreement that has just been announced, and no agreement at all about the Iranian nuclear program.

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Mike:  Most people listening to this show right now don’t want any agreement.  Most people that call themselves “conservatives” don’t want any agreement.  Most people demand that Republicans vote accordingly.  Pillar and others, and I concur with them, believe that that is shortsighted.  If you have a deal, take the deal.  If they dishonor the deal, then dishonor the deal.

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What’s so hard to understand about this?  [mocking] “We didn’t get a perfect deal.  We’re not taking it.”  Whatever happened to Russell Kirk saying that the perfect should not be the enemy of the good?  This used to be Republican mantra.  Not anymore, not when it comes to war, baby.

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It has always been a fantasy that a “better deal” than what emerges from these negotiations would somehow be possible. The long, arduous, deadline-extending nature of the negotiations that ended in Vienna makes the notion that something “better” could have been wrung out of the Iranians seem all the more phantasmagorical. Awareness that five other countries besides the United States and Iran are parties to this agreement, and that some of the most recent hard negotiations have taken place within the P5+1, ought further to dispel this notion.

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The alternative to the agreement—i.e., no agreement—would mean no restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program beyond the basic obligations that apply to Iran as a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. It would mean that Iran could spin as many centrifuges as it wanted. It would mean Iran would be free to enrich as much uranium as it wanted, to whatever level of enrichment it wanted. It would mean Iran could configure nuclear reactors however it wanted no matter how much plutonium this produced. It would mean an end to unprecedented levels of international monitoring and inspection. It would mean discarding the most restrictive regimen that any state had ever negotiated to be placed on its own nuclear program.

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Mike:  Let me ask you a question.  When was the last time the UN weapons inspectors visited our weapons depots?  We’re the only ones that have actually ever detonated a nuclear device on a civilian population.  We should be suspect number one.  [mocking] “Yeah, but Mike, we’re God’s chosen nuclear incinerating innocent people living in monasteries in Nagasaki chosen ones.”

End Mike Church Show Transcript