Markos Moulitsas: A call to arms for Dems

In the wake of Nevada Sen. Harry Reid’s retirement announcement, the anointed successor as Senate Democratic leader is New York Sen. Charles Schumer. Thus, it was particularly disappointing to see Schumer’s bloodthirsty hawkishness on display over the Obama administration’s pending nuclear deal with Iran. 

Negotiators are currently close to a deal that would halt Iran’s march toward nuclear arms in exchange for rolling back international sanctions. Critics claim any deal would amount to capitulation to Iran, and are pushing — what else? — more war as an answer. Freshman Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) hilariously argued that the U.S. could destroy Iran’s nuclear program with four days of airstrikes, bringing to mind Donald Rumsfeld in 2003, when he said that a war against Iraq “could last six days.” OK, suddenly not so hilarious. 

{mosads}Even hawks in the war-crazy Bush administration concluded that attacking Iran was nuts. 

“When we talked about this in the government, the consensus was that [attacking Iran] would guarantee that which we are trying to prevent — an Iran that will spare nothing to build a nuclear weapon and that would build it in secret,” said Gen. Michael Hayden, who served as former President George W. Bush’s head of the CIA and National Security Agency. 

Retired Gen. Anthony Zinni, a former commander at Central Command, which has responsibility over the Middle East, painted an equally dire picture of Iran “firing up the streets.” 

“After you’ve dropped those bombs on those hardened facilities, what happens next?” he asked. “What happens if they launch [their missiles] into U.S. bases on the other side of the Gulf? What happens if they launch into Israel, or somewhere else? Into a Saudi oil field? Into Ras Laffan, with all the natural gas? What happens if they now flush their fast patrol boats, their cruise missiles … and they sink a tanker, an oil tanker? And of course the economy of the world goes absolutely nuts.”

So, do nothing, Iran gets the bomb. Attack Iran and you give the country extra impetus to finish its work while lighting the Middle East on fire. Neither is a palatable option, yet the hawks can’t seem to fathom anything else. 

Which brings us back to Schumer, future head of Senate Democrats, member of a party that has, by and large, gotten over its Bush-era war lust. Indeed, Barack Obama, not Hillary Clinton, is president today precisely because of Clinton’s vote authorizing Bush’s war against Iraq. 

In fact, that vote by Clinton is one of the remaining reasons many activist Democrats still harbor distrust and resentment of the possible future president. More than a decade may have passed, but the wounds are still raw. 

That Republicans oppose this framework deal with Iran isn’t surprising. Their raison d’être is to oppose anything President Obama proposes. Imagine if Democrats had treated Richard Nixon similarly as he normalized relations with China, or if they had tried to kneecap Ronald Reagan as he negotiated with the “evil empire.” Instead, they shrugged and looked the other way as their president sold arms to the same Iran that is now this week’s “worst evil in the world since Hitler.”

But it is jarring when a Democrat of any stature decides to join forces with the GOP war hawks. We assume the party — and its leadership — has learned its lesson. Yet here is Schumer, reminding us that we’re not quite there and that maybe it’s time for the anti-war left to go to war against the Democratic Party leadership again. 

Moulitsas is the founder and publisher of Daily Kos.