You know it’s a bad deal when within hours, there is talk of a Nobel Peace Prize in the air. Carl Bildt, Sweden’s former Prime Minister, tweeted:
I think the work of the Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Parliament this year just got much easier.
— Carl Bildt (@carlbildt) July 14, 2015
Bildt echoes an email that MoveOn.org sent out today:
We’ve all seen presidents drag us into war. It’s not every day we see one help the country steer clear of one. It makes me glad and proud that we have a president who truly gives peace a chance.
It probably isn’t worthwhile to over-analyze the brain dead, but really–how can today’s agreement plausibly be seen as bringing about peace? It funds Iran’s ability to support war in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere, and terrorism around the world, to the tune of more than $100 billion. It relaxes the arms embargo against Iran. And without the agreement, what war was in prospect? None.
I suppose someone might think that Iran was on its way to developing nuclear weapons and would have used them, and today’s agreement at least delays that day. But that isn’t where Bildt is coming from; he also tweeted that there were “Several missed opportunities for Iran deal in past years” because “Mistrust towards Iran was too dominant.” So I guess we were the potentially warlike party.
This is, I think, an instance of a common liberal phenomenon: a child-like faith in paper. You might be a liberal if you think the key to peace is signing documents.
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