How dare you, Major Garrett. How dare you insult our all-knowing god-king and his arrangements with our close friend and ally in Iran. How dare you do so on his own turf, in his home, where his wife sleeps and his children play with their toys. The audacity! And POTUS’s reasoned response? “You should know better.” BOOM! Check out that logic. It’s like he’s channeling Jon Stewart and John Oliver at the same time. He calls “nonsense” questions like he sees them.
Yes, you should know better, Major – if that is your real name – than to ask the question on the minds of more than one citizen (well, frankly, a lot of them… but remember most of them are probably racists) about whether this deal is really all it’s cracked up to be if we got so little out of it and left four Americans rotting in Iran. But seriously, wasn’t it rude of him?
Obama’s defenders in the media rose to take Major to task for his faux pas:
“CNN’s Don Lemon and Gloria Borger agreed with their colleague Dana Bash that CBS’ Major Garrett went too far with his question to President Obama… Lemon could see why, saying that when he watched Garrett ask the question, he thought, “Wait a minute, that was a little out of school.” Borger agreed that it was a “loaded” question with the language he used, and it was clear Obama didn’t want to dismiss a serious question like that, but the framing of it that way made him “angry and upset.”
Heaven forbid we upset him – why, that’s racist!
#MajorGarrett is a huge asshole. If U wanna "strike a nerve" with POTUS, why not just scream the N word? That shld get his attention.
— Bill Maher (@billmaher) July 16, 2015
Of course, it’s not all inexcusable. “This came after Obama had interrupted multiple journalists, including shutting down a question on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump before it was finished.” Well, in fairness, we can hardly blame him for being upset about that.
When he’s not shutting down reporters, Obama has challenged his critics to read the deal and point out where it does not prevent Iran from getting nukes. Well, perhaps this is a starting point: “Another concern about the nuclear agreement involves the IAEA’s long-term ability to police it. One concession allows Iran to appeal an IAEA request to visit a sensitive site, like a military location, to a special commission. While the U.S. and its European allies will hold a majority on the commission, a decision would take three weeks—during which time Iran could move material and activities.” And the fine print of the deal essentially gives the E.U., not the U.S., the determining power in whether this agreement happens. That’s just lovely.
But there really is something amazing about this latest kerfuffle from Our Most Petulant President, He Who Must Not Be Questioned, given that the best way to confront the inadequacy of this Iran deal is simply to cite the deal Obama himself described back in 2013. A brief list from Dov Zakheim:
All nuclear facilities in Iran will retain their activities. Contrary to the initial demands of the other side, none of the nuclear sites will be shut down. The policy to prevent Iran’s enrichment activities failed. Iran will continue nuclear enrichment. Iran’s nuclear infrastructure will be preserved. No centrifuge will be destroyed and research and development on all advanced centrifuges including IR-4, IR-5, IR-6 and IR-8 will continue. Arak heavy water reactor will remain as such. Any demands to return the facility to a light water reactor have been dismissed. The facility will be modernized and enjoy new additions through cooperating with owners of most advanced and secure world technologies. Iran will enter global markets as a producer of nuclear products especially in the case of “enriched uranium” and “heavy water.”
The point is that this deal is lousy not just based on the assessment of Obama’s political opponents – it is lousy based on the Obama administration’s own assessment, and the assessment of Obama himself. So why do it? It’s interesting that in the wake of the King and Obergefell SCOTUS victories, Obama reportedly told aides that he didn’t “need this” Iran deal for his legacy. But Obama has also repeatedly said that the consequences of this Iran deal are on him – that it will indeed be his legacy that suffers if the deal goes poorly, and that this alone should be enough to trust him on its nature. We shall see how that goes, and how bitterly he treats his critics if they deem his actions wrong, in the years to come. Then we can decide who knows better.