You ought to get a load of U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton’s response to the negotiated release of four Americans held in Iran.
He said he was elated. He said it was shameful.
The blindly enraged Obama-despisers among you suspect I’ve contrived such a vivid contradiction on the boy-senator’s part.
So let us quote Tom in full from his weekend statement:
“Today the four Americans who have been unjustly held in Iran are finally returning home, and we welcome them with open arms. They and their families have been through unspeakable pain and suffering, and their freedom brings relief to not only them, but the entire country.
“But in our elation over their safe return we must be careful not to forget the dangerous circumstances of their release. President Obama has appeased Iran’s terror-sponsoring ayatollahs, this time with a ‘prisoner’ swap to secure the overdue release of four innocent American hostages in return for which Iran gets seven lawfully convicted terrorists and criminals, 14 terrorism prosecutions halted, $100 billion in sanctions relief, and an industrial-scale nuclear program — and Iran gets to keep Americans Siamak Namazi and Robert Levinson to extract future concessions.
“While we exult in the return of American hostages, one must also wonder how many more Americans will be taken hostage in the future as a result of President Obama’s shameful decision to negotiate with these terrorists.”
As I said …
Let me be as generous as possible to Cotton’s position: It is that these hostages never would have been taken if they and not Obama-ists had been in charge, in which case they would not have been talking to Iran but unilaterally threatening — no, promising — to kick that rogue nation’s sorry behind, thus reducing it to a cowering and compliant ash heap of whimpering. But, since the wussy Obama-ists messed everything up in the first place in a way that they never would have, being tail-kickers and name-takers, not ayatollah-appeasers, then we should celebrate as we deplore the return of these hostages.
As for Cotton’s assertion that we agreed to release seven “terrorists” in exchange, that would be true only by an imprecise extension.
The seven to be released actually were charged with violating the economic sanctions against Iran. These weren’t direct warriors. You can call them terrorists only by rhetorical shorthand and embellishment — only on the premise that doing economic business with Iran aided a terrorist nation in terrorist activities.
That’s arguable. But it leaves a deliberately false impression that we turned loose direct killers, not businessmen functioning as indirect benefactors of a nation that kills.
Cotton and the Republican presidential contenders also say we paid ransom for these releases. They refer to the easing of economic sanctions on Iran. But that is another imprecise extension.
The easing of economic sanctions was for the nuclear-reduction agreement. The ability to talk and reach agreement to get our people out of detention was a byproduct of the dialogue that Cotton and the Republican presidential contenders deplore.
It’s the same for the detained and expeditiously released sailors, over whom Cotton apparently was ready to invade.
By much more precise and logical extension, Cotton’s position means that the United States never should have talked with the evil-empire Soviets, or made any nuclear-weapon agreements with them, or committed Richard Nixon’s lily-livered appeasement of the historic opening of relations with China.
Cotton’s most egregious general affront is to avoid altogether any honest and pragmatic confrontation with reality: There were hostages, and you can’t prove they wouldn’t have been taken if you had been in charge with your belligerence and bellicosity.
There was an Iran posing a potential nuclear threat. There were options to consider and decisions to be made in that actual real world.
The Obama administration decided to talk, to open a dialogue, to negotiate, to seek an agreement by which Iran would vow to scale back its nuclear threat in exchange for lifting sanctions, and to reserve the right to restore those sanctions and abandon the agreement if Iran violates it.
The thing about the deal is that it can be voided. A mushroom cloud is a little harder to undo.
Thus the Obama administration pursued a simple and time-tested practical concept: Diplomacy ought to be tried wherever and whenever possible, and as long as it offers hope, because the perfect should never be the enemy of the good; in the most delicate and dangerous situations, we should emphasize our national interest over our national philosophical purity, and war — especially in that region amid that madness — is best avoided if at all possible, though, sometimes, it is the only and last resort and, in that somber event, must be fought.
Cotton says we shouldn’t talk. We shouldn’t negotiate. We shouldn’t compromise. We should isolate, not engage, our enemy. We should be pure to American exceptionalism, not practical about any differing interest. We should threaten at the outset to fight, and then presumably go to war when others don’t acquiesce to our unyielding unilateral dominance.
All Tom is saying is give macho a chance.
But, just the same, let’s have a party now that those folks are coming home.
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers’ Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.