From Robert Scheer in The Nation:
Finally, Barack Obama may prove deserving of his Nobel Peace Prize by joining with England, France, China, Russia and Germany in negotiating an eminently sensible rapprochement with Iran on its nuclear program. Following on his pullback from war with Syria and instead, successfully negotiating the destruction of that country’s supply of chemical weapons, this is another bold step to fulfill the peacemaking promise that got him elected president in the first place.
As Obama reminded his audience at an event Monday in San Francisco, he was fulfilling the pledge from his first campaign to usher in a “new era of American leadership, one that turned the page on a decade of war.” As a candidate in 2007, he committed to engage in “aggressive personal diplomacy” with Iran’s leaders, and he has now done just that.
This is potentially an international game changer comparable to Richard Nixon’s opening to Mao’s Red China and Ronald Reagan’s overtures to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, two examples of heroic diplomacy that combined to destroy the underpinnings of the Cold War. Those who continually call for regime change in Iran as a condition for improved relations with that country, as Obama’s critics are now doing, ignore that history. …
Evidently, this has also been a casebook study in diplomacy pursued for years at the president’s insistence with much international cooperation and at the highest level of effectiveness. But instead of celebrating the president’s returning to his original promise as peacemaker, the warmongers of both parties in Congress, egged on by the unholy alliance of Saudi Arabia and Israel, are crying foul. Their outrage is an affront to morality and logic, as well as a stark betrayal of a legitimate public concern over the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Obama’s critics clearly prefer the murky unknown of rank speculation to the reality check of on-site inspection when it comes to preventing nuclear proliferation. How can it be a bad thing to call Iran’s bluff — if that’s what it is — on its nuclear program being designed for peaceful purposes?
It’s the worst deal ever, and dangerous as well
From Daniel Pipes in the National Review:
This wretched deal offers one of those rare occasions when comparison with Neville Chamberlain in Munich in 1938 is valid. An overeager Western government, blind to the evil cunning of the regime it so much wants to work with, appeases it with concessions that will come back to haunt it. Geneva and November 24 will be remembered along with Munich and September 29.
Barack Obama has made many foreign-policy errors in the past five years, but this is the first to rank as a disaster. Along with the health-care law, it is one of his worst-ever steps. John Kerry is a too-eager puppy looking for a deal at any price.
With the U.S. government forfeiting its leadership role, the Israelis, Saudis, and perhaps others are left to cope with a bad situation made worse. War has now become a much more likely prospect. Shame on us Americans for re-electing Barack Obama.
It’s quite possible Iran can be dealt with rationally
From columnist Pat Buchanan, in Rare:
If … in an act of insanity, Iran found a way to deliver (a nuclear bomb) to Israel or a U.S. facility in the Middle East, Iran would be inviting the fate of Imperial Japan in 1945.
So, let us assume another scenario, that the Iranians are not crazed fanatics but rational actors looking out for what is best for their country.
If Iran has no atom bomb program, as the Ayatollah attests, President Hassan Rouhani says he is willing to demonstrate, and 16 U.S. intelligence agencies concluded six years ago and again two years ago, consider the future that might open to Iran — if the Iranians are simply willing and able to prove this to the world’s satisfaction.
First, a steady lifting of sanctions. Second, an end to Iran’s isolation and a return to the global economy. Third, a wave of Western investment for Iran’s oil and gas industry, producing prosperity and easing political pressure on the regime.
Fourth, eventual emergence of Iran, the most populous nation in the Gulf with 85 million citizens, as the dominant power in the Gulf, just as China, after dispensing with the world Communist revolution, became dominant in Asia.
Why would an Iran, with this prospect before it, risk the wrath of the world and a war with the United States to acquire a bomb whose use would assure the country’s annihilation? …
Deal might temporarily slow down Iran’s progress
From the Jerusalem Post editorial board:
The nuclear agreement signed in Geneva … is a “bad deal” from Israel’s perspective.
Simply put, the deal does not roll back the vast majority of technological advances Iran has made in the past five years that have drastically shortened what nuclear experts call its “dash time” — the minimum time it would take to build a nuclear weapon if Iran’s supreme leader or military decided to pursue such as path. …
… At its best, the deal signed in Geneva might temporarily slow Iran’s progress toward nuclear arms capability. More likely it will provide the U.S. and other western nations with a false impression that headway has been made while providing cover for the Iranians as they plod forward toward nuclear capability. Under the circumstances, there seems little cause for celebration.
Some Arabs feel the U.S. has abandoned them
From Geneive Abdo, a fellow in the Middle East program at the Stimson Center and a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution, for Al Jazeera:
For Iran, the United States has always been the big prize. For 30 years, Iran’s bombastic rhetoric against the “Great Satan” was merely an expression of a hurt heart. So the euphoria in Iran in the last few days over the nuclear deal is not surprising. However, some Arab societies are mourning, not celebrating. As I write these comments from Cairo, the reaction expressed in the Arab world’s most populous and arguably more important state is one of fear and discontent. If the deal with Iran extends beyond the six-month interim period and succeeds, this could mean more intrusion by Tehran into the Arab world, shifting the balance of power that has been in place for decades. … Some Arabs feel Washington has abandoned them, and that it’s time to find another protector.
Pope Francis on ‘biggest economic issue of our time’
From Heidi Moore at The Guardian:
… The pope’s screed on “the economy of exclusion and inequality” will disappoint those who considers themselves free-market capitalists, but they would do well to listen to the message. Francis gives form to the emotion and injustice of post-financial-crisis outrage in a way that has been rare since Occupy Wall Street disbanded. There has been a growing chorus of financial insiders – from the late Merrill Lynch executive Herb Allison to organizations like Better Markets – it’s time for a change in how we approach capitalism. It’s not about discarding capitalism, or hating money or profit; it’s about pursuing profits ethically, and rejecting the premise that exploitation is at the center of profit. When 53 percent of financial executives say they can’t get ahead without some cheating, even though they want to work for ethical organizations, there’s a real problem. …
The bottom line, which Pope Francis correctly identifies, is that inequality is the biggest economic issue of our time – for everyone, not just the poor. Nearly any major economic metric – unemployment, growth, consumer confidence – comes down to the fact that the vast majority of Americans are struggling in some way. You don’t have to begrudge the rich their fortunes or ask for redistribution. It’s just hard to justify ignoring the financial problems of 47 million people who don’t have enough to eat. Until they have enough money to fill their pantries, we won’t have a widespread economic recovery. You can’t have a recovery if one-sixth of the world’s economically leading country is eating on $1.50 a day.
It’s only surprising that it took so long for anyone – in this case, Pope Francis – to become the first globally prominent figure to figure this out and bring attention to income inequality. …
A return to pentecostal fervor, evangelical passion
From author George Weigel in the Wall Street Journal:
… Pope Francis is a revolutionary. The revolution he proposes, however, is not a matter of economic or political prescription, but a revolution in the self-understanding of the Catholic Church: a re-energizing return to the pentecostal fervor and evangelical passion from which the church was born two millennia ago, and a summons to mission that accelerates the great historical transition from institutional-maintenance Catholicism to the Church of the New Evangelization.
Pope’s exhortation is like ‘I Have A Dream’ speech
From John L. Allen Jr. of the National Catholic Reporter:
Dreams can be powerful things, especially when articulated by leaders with the realistic capacity to translate them into action. That was the case 50 years ago with Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, and it also seems to be the ambition of Pope Francis’ bold new apostolic exhortation, “The Joy of the Gospel.”
In effect, the 224-page document, titled in Latin Evangelii Gaudium and released by the Vatican Tuesday, is a vision statement about the kind of community Francis wants Catholicism to be: more missionary, more merciful, and with the courage to change. …
Francis is neither liberal nor conservative
From the Rev. Bill Donohue, president and CEO of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, at Newsmax.com:
… On economic issues, the Pope posits a clear animus toward unbridled capitalism, a view shared by his predecessors. But he is more pointed, rejecting “trickle-down” theories.
He is not rejecting a market-based economic model in favor of a socialist one — indeed he restates Catholic teaching on subsidiarity — but he is warning us against greed and the single-minded pursuit of profit. …
Pope Francis is neither liberal nor conservative. He’s simply Catholic, and a towering champion of its many causes.
‘Pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope’
From conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh:
… If it weren’t for capitalism, I don’t know where the Catholic Church would be. … It wouldn’t exist without tons of money. But regardless, what this is, somebody has either written this for him or gotten to him. This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope. Unfettered capitalism? That doesn’t exist anywhere. Unfettered capitalism is a liberal socialist phrase to describe the United States. …
Socialism does not create free people and societies, and it does not preside over massive charitable giving and compassion. Socialism, Marxism constrain people, limits people, prevents people from realizing their potential as human beings. The United States of America and its genuine exceptionalism has allowed people to reach the pinnacle of their ability combined with their ambition and desire. …
The tipping point between the market and humanity
From Heather Horn at the Atlantic:
… Pope Francis, in his exhortation, notably does not call for a complete overhaul of the economy. He doesn’t talk revolution, and there’s certainly no Marxist talk of inexorable historical forces.
Instead, Francis denounces, specifically, the complete rule of the market over human beings—not its existence, but its domination. …
It's nothing new to say the financial crisis came from a lack of regulation. That's a fairly popular analysis. But what Pope Francis is saying is more Polanyan, hearkening back to the idea that the tipping point has to do with the relationship between the market and society/humanity, and which is subordinate to the other. Just as (economist Karl) Polanyi argued that the extension of the market economy across the globe (through the gold standard) was the root cause of World War I (and you'll have to go back to the original book for that, but it's a beautifully, hilariously gutsy, Guns, Germs, and Steel kind of argument), Francis is arguing that failing to keep humanity at the center of our economic activity was the root cause of the financial crisis. …
Pope isn’t calling for a revolution, necessarily
From the Bloomberg View editorial board:
… The market, (Pope Francis) says, tends to degrade people, to reduce them to heedless consumers. It’s hard to disagree, especially this time of year.
None of this is a call for revolution, necessarily. Market capitalism has lifted billions of people out of poverty, radically advanced science and medicine, and led to many technological innovations that improve the lives of rich and poor alike. To say that it also leaves many people behind, and that it has regrettable side effects, is not to deny these benefits. It’s only to acknowledge that they come at a cost.
The question, for popes as well as politicians, is how to mitigate that cost.
The solution isn’t for governments to seek ever more aggressive forms of redistribution, or to try somehow to turn back the capitalist system. It’s to rethink the social safety net for a new and more complicated age, one in which inequality is widening, the middle class is thinning and new technology — what the pope calls an “epochal change” — threatens to destabilize a generation of workers. …
… And here’s a piece of advice the pope left out of his encyclical: Black Friday sales are mostly a sham. Go home. Enjoy the simpler pleasures in life.
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