In one constitutionally dubious, unilateral action after another over the years, President Barack Obama has shown that he thinks the U.S. government is him, him and--wait, a minute, is there a third party, maybe? Yes, it is him.
Now, it turns out that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is coming to Washington in early March to talk to that abused legislative branch called Congress about ways to keep Iran from going nuclear and wiping his country off the map, and guess how the president feels?
That's not OK.
Some of us looking on from afar think it is in fact more than OK, that the president was out of line not to have invited this ally to come by the White House, and that an anonymous White House source should have his mouth taped for having said that Netanyahu "will pay a price" for this visit.
The really scary thing, though, is why the trip is necessary. It's the fear that this bumbling administration will negotiate a nuclear agreement with terrorist-aiding Iran with insufficient safeguards to prevent its proceeding happily on its weapons-of-mass-destruction path or fail to get any agreement at all because of no ill consequences mapped out for stonewalling.
Understand that there is no reasonable doubt that Iranians have been pursuing nuclear weaponry--we would not otherwise even be talking to them--and that the only way the United States and other involved countries could get them to discuss the matter in the first place was by threatening to wreck the Iranian economy with sanctions.
During the talks, though, our side has let up on the sanctions, and Iran's economy has been traipsing toward happy days again. Meanwhile, according to knowledgeable voices, laxity on the part of America and its partners has been such that Iran has gotten closer than ever to bomb-making capability.
Congress has responded sensibly--it wants tough new sanctions against Iran if it does not agree to something clearly and lastingly keeping its leaders from their worst ambitions. Obama has said he would veto any legislation to that effect, warning it could lead to a war, and Republican House Speaker John Boehner invited Netanyahu to bring his contrary powers of persuasion to a joint session on March 3. Some people are making a big deal of Netanyahu standing for election a couple of weeks after that, and a New York Times editorial is among the voices saying, hey, a vote for sanctions could "sabotage" a successful deal.
Some have also lambasted Republicans as total jerks in all of this even though some of the toughest stances have been taken by such Democrats as Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, who said Obama seemed to be getting his "talking points" from Teheran. He and some other Democratic senators, however, are agreed on holding up a vote until near the end of March--several months before the third and final negotiating deadline--to see if Iran has conceded enough by that time to make breathing easy again.
I think a delay is wise enough, but to say there should be no threat of sanctions in the case of Iran refusing to do the right thing is absurd. The only deal such sanctions would sabotage would be a weak deal far more likely to end up in war than a strong deal.
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Jay Ambrose is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service.
Editorial on 01/29/2015