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« Reply #1 on: October 17, 2017, 04:30:22 PM » |
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The Patriot Post Digest 10-16-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Leftmedia punditocracy wasted no time shifting into maximum outrage mode, with some even offering their views33 on what Iran should do to out-fox the president. The New York Times opined34 that withdrawing “would be the rashest, most foolish act of the Trump administration to date.” Others claimed35 that there were no benefits to withdrawing from the JCPOA.
The three European nations that have been indispensable in the ongoing 14-year effort to block Iran’s nuclear aspirations — France, the UK and Germany — all registered their displeasure, stating bluntly that they support maintaining the JCPOA. On the other side of the fence, Israel and Saudi Arabia both welcomed President Trump’s decision. Israel has long been wary of Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile advances. Saudi Arabia meanwhile has been in a shooting war with Iranian proxies in Yemen for nearly three years, and understands better than most the malign influence of Iran in the Middle East.
Trump unquestionably has sole authority in providing or withholding his certification to Congress. The Review Act calls upon the president to certify four specific issues: Iran’s full, transparent implementation of the deal’s terms; whether or not Iran has committed a material breach of the deal; that Iran is not acting in ways that would advance its nuclear weapons capability; and whether the suspension of U.S. sanctions called for in the JCPOA remains in the best interest of the United States. The last provision is the one most clearly immune to arguments about technicalities of Iranian compliance or what is known about their nuclear weapons program, and it is also the one that opens the door to considering Iran’s overall behavior since the JCPOA took force.
Refusing to certify Iran’s compliance will not by itself take the United States out of the JCPOA. In a must-read examination of the possible outcomes, The Weekly Standard’s Reuel Marc Gerecht suggests36 that the best-case option could even be to de-certify the deal while continuing to waive sanctions, and then working to influence our European allies to ramp up economic pressure on Iran in an effort to get Tehran to accept modifications to the deal. He also makes a key point often left out of recent discussions of the Iran deal — namely the absolute need for a credible threat of military force as a last resort. Without that threat hovering in the background, Iran probably would think it could weather economic pain and wear down its western adversaries with endless go-nowhere talks. After all, the mullahs successfully ran out the clock on the Bush administration with that approach, and they know that President Trump, like George W. Bush before him, won’t be in office forever.
We fully support the president’s effort either to rectify the JCPOA’s serious deficiencies or to begin the process of withdrawing from it. But no one should ignore the very difficult, focused effort that must be put forth over the coming months and even years to bring about rectification, and neither the president nor the Republican Congress have distinguished themselves of late in the focus department.
Supporters of the JCPOA — and there are many of them — will deny its flaws and argue that it remains the best way to prevent Iran getting nuclear weapons. Our international relations with friends and allies may suffer in the short term. As we said at the time37, Barack Obama inflicted a double injury to the United States with the Iran deal, first with the deal itself and second with the need for some future president to undo it and damage our relation with European allies. But whatever the short-term fallout, the Unites States must begin the work of correcting the worst foreign policy blunder of the Obama administration.
North Korea has demonstrated what a determined adversary can achieve, in both nuclear and missile capability, if given enough time. Fourteen years have now elapsed since Iran’s nuclear program came to light. In less than that amount of time many of the JCPOA’s restrictions will come to an end, and Iran will be free to establish an industrial-scale nuclear fuel cycle. So we urge the president and like-minded members of Congress not to let up in their efforts to deal with this problem. Time is not on our side.
For more of today’s memes, visit the Memesters Union38.
MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST
All the News That’s Fit to Suppress39 — Sharyl Attkisson says, “Every day … stories are killed because powerful people know how to get them killed.”
Trump Pulls the U.S. Out of UNESCO40 — This particular UN organization has done little more than stoke the fires of anti-Israel bias.
For more of today’s top cartoons, visit the Cartoons archive41.
BEST OF RIGHT OPINION
Peggy Noonan: The Culture of Death — and of Disdain42
Edwin J. Feulner: Growing Threats, Weakened Forces43
George Will: Trump Is Turning and Turning in a Widening Gyre44
Burt Prelutsky: Sexual Harassment45
For more of today’s columns, visit Right Opinion46.
OPINION IN BRIEF
Peggy Noonan: “Why do Americans own so many guns? Because they don’t trust the protected elites to protect them. … I think a lot of Americans have guns because they’re fearful — and for damn good reason. They fear a coming chaos, and know that when it happens it will be coming to a nation that no longer coheres. They think it’s all collapsing — our society, our culture, the baseline competence of our leadership class. They see the cultural infrastructure giving way — illegitimacy, abused children, neglect, racial tensions, kids on opioids staring at screens — and, unlike their cultural superiors, they understand the implications. Nuts with nukes, terrorists bent on a mission. The grid will go down. One of our foes will hit us, suddenly and hard. In the end it could be hand to hand, door to door. I said some of this six years ago to a famously liberal journalist, who blinked in surprise. If that’s true, he said, they won’t have a chance! But they are Americans, I said. They won’t go down without a fight.”
SHORT CUTS
The Gipper: “In an ironic sense Karl Marx was right. We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis, a crisis where the demands of the economic order are conflicting directly with those of the political order. But the crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West but in the home of Marxism- Leninism, the Soviet Union. It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history by denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens.”
Upright: “In America we don’t worship government — we worship God.” —Donald Trump
For the record: “The Affordable Care Act granted the executive branch a fair amount of leeway. It was written in a way that, in my view, moves too much policymaking authority from the legislative to the executive branch. Given that the law was written this way, though, I’m in favor of Trump’s using that leeway in the interest of better health policy.” —Ramesh Ponnuru
Demo-gogues: “He [Trump] has shown an uncontrollable personal need to pour disgusting liquids on anything associated with President Obama.” —Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA)
The BIG Lie: “That’s what black athletes kneeling47 was all about. That’s not against our anthem or our flag. Actually, kneeling is a reverent position. It was to demonstrate in a peaceful way against racism and injustice in our criminal system. … I think it would be a grave error for Democrats to recede from those fights, so therefore we have to stand up, fight back, resist.” —Hillary Clinton
Alpha Jackass: “If [Republican viewers are] so turned off by my opinion on health care48 and gun violence49 then, I don’t know, I probably wouldn’t want to have a conversation with them anyway. Not good riddance, but riddance.” —Jimmy Kimmel on GOP viewers tuning out of his show
Profiles in courage: “I found out about Harvey [Weinstein] about a year ago, and I am ashamed that I didn’t say anything right then. … I was not that bold. Because, I guess, it hadn’t happened to me, and so I didn’t feel it was my place.” —Jane Fonda
Braying Jenny: “The Republicans have been stacking the courts for decades now including the Supreme Court of the United States and they have moved it to a much more pro-corporate court that really crushes the rights of individuals, crushes women’s rights, the rights of those who want to challenge big banks in court.” —Elizabeth Warren
“If there’s a full reckoning of Hollywood, there are not going to be a lot of survivors.” —Frank J. Fleming
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Managing Editor Nate Jackson
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