photo: whitehouse.gov |
Mr. President, you really mean the most powerful nation on this earth just had to leave a negotiation table satisfied with the “best we could get?" And then proclaim we have achieved a great “diplomatic victory?"
At the gym this morning, a locker room buddy who knew my feelings on this issue asked simply: “If the Seahawks football coach got his team down to the three yard line but could not score and bragged how well they did moving 80 yards down the field just to get that far, would you believe the coach saying that?”
Nobody sober would agree it could happen. Yet, the President of America and his five power partners bargaining with Iran will now be heralded for having achieved a “great diplomatic victory” when and if Congress certifies “the best deal we could get.”
A moment of respectful silence and thought, please.
Why is it a “diplomatic victory” if it is only the “best deal we could get” instead of the deal we should have gotten?
It will be clear, if it is not already so, that we have seriously devalued the business of international diplomacy, our own capacity for negotiation and the shameful even modest acknowledgement of those victims put into their misery and suffering by our new partners who not only out-maneuvered the 5+1 opposition but the United Nations as well
The “best deal available” is no victory, only one more ransoming of the truth that we are going to be safer.
My locker room interviewer had the point well-made. We would fire a coach who could not take his team all the way when scoring the points was within their reach.
There is no presidential diplomatic victory, just one more political deal that will have left much ill feeling and well-remembered angry questions in its wake.
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Joe Honick is president of GMA International in Bainbridge Island, Wash.
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