George F.—“F for Fabulous!”—Will has his definitive take
on the proposed nuclear agreement with Iran. Like 97% of George’s columns, the real point here is not to say anything substantial about anything, but rather to allow George to look down his presumably Georgian nose at his inferiors, said inferiors, of course, being just about everyone and most definitely including President Barack Obama.
George rambles on about this and that, including Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism, Woodrow Wilson, and the median age in Iran (29.5 years, in case you’re interested) before announcing that “the best reason for rejecting the agreement is to rebuke Obama’s long record of aggressive disdain for Congress.” In other words, the best reason for rejecting the agreement has nothing to do with the worth of the agreement, which, George awkwardly admits, is probably actually a good one: “Critics who think more severe sanctions are achievable and would break Iran’s determination must answer this: When have sanctions caused a large nation to surrender what it considers a vital national security interest?”
Having more or less stepped on his own dick while trying to kick the president in the ass, Georgie comes up with the following hilarious passive-aggressive contrary to fact fantasy:
“The Iran agreement should be a treaty; it should not have been submitted first to the United Nations as a studied insult to Congress. Wilson said that rejecting the Versailles treaty would “break the heart of the world.” The Senate, no member of which had been invited to accompany Wilson to the Paris Peace Conference, proceeded to break his heart. Obama deserves a lesson in the cost of Wilsonian arrogance. Knowing little history, Obama makes bad history.”
Sadly for George, the Iranian agreement is not a treaty, and Barack won’t have his heart broken by the Senate. But, if George is lucky, his arrant stupidity and boisterous vanity, so amply displayed on this occasion, won’t be remembered as well as his similar outburst when President Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty with the Soviet Union back in 1987. Moaned George, in his best neo-Spenglerian tones, “Reagan has accelerated the moral disarmament of the West—actual disarmament will follow.” Guess you got that one wrong, didn’t you, Georgie?
Afterwords
Daniel Larison subjects George’s stupidity to withering analysis here: “It is somewhat encouraging that the arguments against the deal are consistently so weak and unpersuasive. That reflects the bankruptcy of the opponents’ position. But it is also dismaying that so many people on the right are only too willing to repeat and endorse such incredibly weak arguments.”
