Weren’t the neocons terrible? Well, they still are, and they’re still running things at both Bloomberg and the New York Times, and they still think it’s “smart” to lie to their readers. Eagle-eyed substacker Daniel Larison brings the sad but unsurprising news on both. First the Bloomberg folks have the “great” idea that President Biden should make any nuclear agreement with Iran an official treaty. Say the Bloomberg crowd with a perfectly straight face:
The smarter course for both sides is to hold out for a treaty, sanctioned by the U.S. Senate.
“This is not a serious proposal”, says Dan, which is Dan talk for “meretricious bullshit rendered with malice aforethought”. As Dan explains, now that we’re living in the world of Trump, treaties are no more than piecrusts, made to be broken, to coin a phrase:
The Treaty on Open Skies and the INF Treaty were both ratified by the Senate by overwhelming majorities, they had been very successful agreements that benefited all parties, and then on the pretext of some Russian violations Trump pulled out of both of them.
What is worse, the Biden administration has made no effort to revive them. “[N]o but no matter what you think about those decisions it is obvious that there is nothing magical about a ratified treaty that guarantees that it will survive presidential whims.”
But the hypocrisy doesn’t end there. In fact, it’s just beginning. As the Bloomie boys well know, in today’s maximally partisan climate, there is zero chance of any Democratic treaty proposal winning the required two-thirds majority in the Senate, particularly one involving Iran. Which is precisely why they are proposing it. I’ll let Dan fill out the rest of the argument here:
Insisting that important agreements have to be submitted as treaties is the same as saying that you think that the U.S. should abandon diplomacy entirely. The fake treaty fetishists don’t respect treaties more than anyone else. On the contrary, they are usually the first ones to seize on the smallest violation as an excuse to get rid of existing treaties. They want an agreement with Iran to be submitted as a treaty to guarantee that there will be no agreement. Lockstep, unanimous Republican opposition to any agreement that Iran might conceivably accept makes it a certainty that a treaty vote would fail. The Bloomberg editors know this, and that is why they are making their bad faith argument.
Hypocrisy, thy name is Bloomberg!
Oh, yeah, I also mentioned the New York Times, didn’t I? Well, one vent at time. The Times is playing exactly the same game with regards to Iran as Bloomberg: make “helpful” suggestions that will do nothing but sabotage the whole deal. The Times has a great idea!1 Make the whole Middle East a permanently nuclear-free zone! Except for Israel! Then everybody’s happy! Gags Dan
Talking about a nuclear-weapons-free zone while leaving Israel’s arsenal untouched would be like saying that you successfully denuclearized the Korean Peninsula except for those pesky North Korean nuclear weapons.
Conversely, talking about a nuclear-weapons-free zone for the Korean peninsula while leaving North Korea’s arsenal untouched would be like saying that you successfully denuclearized the Middle East except for those pesky Israeli nuclear weapons. Neoconnies like the Times are always pushing for a “better” deal with Iran—meaning “better” for us—ignoring the fact that we should be the ones offering a “better” deal to Iran—the onus is on us to prove our bona fides, since we are the ones who kicked over the table in a fit of adolescent “rage”.
Hypocrisy, thy name is New York Times!
Afterwords
If you have $60 burning a hole in your pocket, and you are a serious foreign policy masochist, you could certainly do worse than spending it on a year’s subscription to Danny’s rap. I mean, if you’re going to be depressed anyway, wouldn’t you want your fears to be rationally grounded?
1. The Times headlines their jive “One Way Forward”. What they mean, of course, is “One Way Nowhere”. Talk about your fake news!
