GOP fails to see common ground
Let’s see now. American prisoners released. Sailors released. More than 12,000 centrifuges shut down. Concrete poured in plutonium reactors. Enriched uranium shipped abroad. What a catastrophe! Just like the GOP predicted! The mind reels in imagining how today’s GOP will spin this to further vilify the Obama-Kerry Iran Treaty.
Perhaps they will “make us great again” by duplicating Reagan’s Iran-Contra scandal and again secretly and illegally sell millions of dollars of military weapons to Iran - or simply carpet-bomb them. These bang-bang boys seem to have an aversion to peace and diplomacy.
Even though some positive results have been realized, it is naive to think that the United States has reached a détente with Iran. As long as Iran continues to support state-sponsored terrorism and maintain a poor record on human rights, the U.S. must continue to treat Iran as a geopolitical foe in the Middle East. So recently the Obama administration has again placed lesser sanctions on Iran for test-firing a ballistic missile.
Every day we deal with countries whose interests don’t precisely, and sometimes remotely, align with ours. Diplomacy is the art of finding those common grounds and gives us the potential of expanding the common ground.
Unfortunately the GOP has shown recently they have common ground with no one, and not just in international affairs. The Obama presidency brought all their vapidity and venom to the surface, which the GOP systematically cultivated.
Now we have Donald Trump, who has thrived on exposing in a loud and clear voice years of GOP covert coded language and dog whistles, as well as revealed the extreme fissures on the American right (Read latest National Review). The chickens have come home to roost.
Beware! These bulls are waiting in the wings, anxious to enter the china shop and smash up everything.
Tom Propps, Myrtle Beach
This story was originally published January 27, 2016 at 10:08 PM with the headline "GOP fails to see common ground."