There have been many labels attributed to the actions of a cocky freshman senator with two months of experience and his war-hungry cohorts after their open letter to hardliners in Iran. Obviously, they intended to inform Iran that America is inherently deceitful and can never be trusted to abide by any agreement between the United Nations P5+1 and the Islamic Republic. The GOP47 have been called traitors and seditious for their “stunning breach of protocol,” but besides deliberately attempting to subvert Barack Obama’s Constitutional authority to use diplomacy over acts of war for Israel, a new label seems incredibly definitive. It is particularly apropos since the Iran letter’s originator campaigns for political office on his military bona fides.
As a military veteran, Arkansas freshman Senator and Bill Kristol sycophant, Tom Cotton, should know something about the chain of command; he obviously knows nothing about the U.S. Constitution or how American foreign policy operates. A real American who does know about the military, and the chain of command, retired Major Gen. Paul D. Eaton stopped short of calling Cotton and 46 Republicans traitors. As a career military man Eaton used the appropriate label for Cotton’s lack of ethics and knowledge of his place as a congressional representative.
General Eaton said “I would use the word mutinous. I do not believe these senators were trying to sell out America. I do believe they defied the chain of command in what could be construed as an illegal act.” However, since it is unlikely there are no precedents to prosecute the miscreant 47, one seriously wishes that Cotton and his coup-cohorts were active military so they could be summarily arrested and court marshaled by a military tribunal for mutiny and face the harshest possible military punishment.
General Eaton explained why, as former military, he had no reservations asserting that Cotton willingly violated more than protocol or the Logan Act. Eaton said “What Senator Cotton did is a gross breach of discipline, and especially as a veteran of the Army, he should know better. I have no issue with Senator Cotton, or others, voicing their opinion in opposition to any deal to halt Iran’s nuclear progress. Speaking out on these issues is clearly part of his job. But to directly engage a foreign entity, in this way, undermining the strategy and work of our diplomats and our Commander in Chief, strains the very discipline and structure that our foreign relations depend on, to succeed. The breach of discipline is extremely dangerous, because undermining our diplomatic efforts, at this moment, brings us another step closer to a very costly and perilous war with Iran. I think Senator Cotton recognizes this, and he simply does not care. That’s what disappoints me the most. I expect better from the men and women who wore the uniform.”
Eaton is right, but he also assumes that Cotton and his mutineers actually serve the best interests of the United States as defined in the Constitution; something they clearly do not care about doing. They serve higher powers than their nation and its Constitution. They serve a foreign entity’s leader, and a clear and present danger a former Republican president and military man, Dwight D. Eisenhower, warned Americans against; the military industrial complex.
There is much more to Cotton and cohorts’ actions than simply undermining diplomatic efforts and attempting to subvert the constitutional authority of the nation’s Commander in Chief; they are, and have been, subverting the Constitution and attempting to set up their own independent government with an Israeli foreign policy apparatus conducting America’s war effort in the Middle East.
After all, it already worked once to great effect and embroiled America in a decade long war in Iraq by allowing Netanyahu to frighten America into supporting Bush’s Iraq debacle. It is important to belabor the point that regardless what Republicans say, or which foreigner they bring to lobby Congress for war, in no way, shape, or form, does any chamber of Congress have any constitutional right to set American foreign policy; that is why General Eaton is correct in labeling the GOP47’s letter an act of mutiny.
What Senate Republicans are doing is mutinous in that they are attempting to “operate their own independent nation on Capitol Hill;” something Dana Milbank labeled “the State of Republicania.” However, it is more appropriately “an Israeli colony.” One with a powerful military and unlimited defense budget taxpayers willingly support to wage war on Israel’s behalf. That is all the last couple of week’s dangerous GOP mutiny was about and nothing more; Netanyahu knows it, Republicans know it, Iran knows it, the P5+1 knows it, and the Obama Administration knows it. The American people as a whole are likely too ignorant and too terrified of Israel to comprehend it.
Republicans claim that scuttling the P5+1 Iran negotiations through stronger American-only sanctions will pressure Iran into doing Israel’s will, but they know America on its own cannot pressure Iran through stronger sanctions and will instead resort to war for regime change. It is why the Obama Administration joined with an international group made up of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. With the added economic clout of England, France, Germany, China, and Russia; three of those America’s staunchest allies, there is a real opportunity to negotiate from a position of strength that does not include the threat of a war on Israel’s behalf. Netanyahu ran his mouth while addressing Congress and said, Israeli can and will stand alone, but he lies or he would not have lobbied Congress to wage war on Israel’s behalf.
Republicans still persist in claiming, ignorantly and errantly, that President Obama is negotiating a bilateral arms treaty between America and Iran so they can assert their imaginary authority to block a treaty on behalf of their inspirational war leader Netanyahu. But as has been noted ad nauseum; it is not a treaty and there is nothing Netanyahu or the mutinous GOP47 can do to stop a United Nation’s Security Council agreement with Iran; an agreement still being negotiated.
Netanyahu, as de facto leader of the ‘breakaway’ neo-con shadow government, will do anything to involve its North American colony in, as General Eaton warned is, “a very costly and perilous war with Iran.” It is precisely what neo-cons have panted for since the genius war president George W. Bush declared Iran was part of an “axis of evil,” and the only reason Speaker John Boehner summoned Netanyahu to lobby Congress. It is also why the GOP47 issued the mutinous ‘open letter‘ to Iranian hardliners to start, as Tom Cotton admitted, another American regime change war in the Middle East.
Of all the labels going around regarding the GOP47 as traitors, seditious, or Logan Act violators, General Eaton’s is likely most accurate. Republicans have, as a group, spent six years attempting with little success to mutiny against both the Constitution as law of the land and the government they purport to serve. It is shameful there is no recourse to prosecute them for what General Eaton said “could be ‘construed’ as illegal acts,” but if they hate the Constitution and America to the point they are openly mutinous, they should renounce their citizenship, emigrate to Israel, and go fight Iran with their demigod Netanyahu leading the charge. Throughout this whole sordid love-fest for Israel and mutinous push for war with Iran, it has never been more apparent that the GOP47 hate everything about America; it does not make them traitors, it makes them anti-American.
h/t @CapehartJ
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn't look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
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