Republican candidate for president and U.S. Senator Ted Cruz said: “If this deal [with Iran] goes through, the Obama administration will become the leading financier of terrorism against America in the world,” adding that he’s “heard this referred to before as the ‘Jihadist Stimulus Bill.’”
Cruz has continued to make similar comments when talking about the proposal, as he did Tuesday during a roundtable discussion with other lawmakers when he said that the deal with Iran will lead to the release of “billions of dollars under control of this administration” to “flow into the hands of jihadists who will use that money to murder Americans, to murder Israelis, to murder Europeans.”
Former Republican nominee for president Mitt Romney said (on Twitter): “I am opposed to the Iran deal, but @SenTedCruz is way over the line on the Obama terrorism charge. Hurts the cause.”
Ted Cruz is right; Mitt Romney is wrong.
The agreement between the U.S. and Iran is an agreement between a peaceful country and one openly committed to terrorism. Iran remains the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, as it has for the last 35-plus years.
In exchange for Iran doing what it already does — lying about its attempts to build and ultimately use nuclear weapons — the United States unfreezes assets so the Iranian government may regain control of them. The Iranian government needs this money, because it will strengthen its hold on power and enable the regime’s ability to sponsor and finance even more terrorism than it already does. What else would the Iranian government do with this money? Murdering people who will not practice fundamentalist Islam is their purpose for existing.
I cannot comprehend why Cruz’s comments are considered as anything other than obvious and factual.
Mitt Romney lost the last election, and he will never be president. However, it’s a good illustration of why Republicans so often lose — and why when they win, it almost never matters. Romney’s tweet reveals how many Republicans really think — which is to say, they do not think. It’s not that they’re stupid. It’s just that they’re political. They care more about what others think, or how they’re perceived, than about the obvious facts of reality.
With Republicans like Mitt Romney, there is no such thing as an opposition party on national defense.
Romney sounds like Jeb Bush and many other Republicans when he states, “Hurts the cause.” What cause? If you’re not willing to say aloud that handing over money to a terrorizing government is the same as actually subsidizing that government, then what are you willing to say?
Evading facts and subverting logic are what most politicians do every day.
If the kind of honesty and authenticity represented by Ted Cruz’s comments in this case actually harms his ability to become president, then something is deeply wrong with the people who would not support him for this reason. They must really hate America, or hate themselves for being American, to call this moral and financial bribery with Iran anything other than what it obviously is.
Imagine a schoolyard bully who threatens other children if they don’t hand over their lunch money. What would you think of a school principal who asked the threatened children to let the bully keep their money, in exchange for no longer bothering them? What would this do to the moral status of the bully — or the physical safety of the students?
It’s exactly the kind of timid appeasement the U.S. government presently practices with Iran. Only the stakes are much higher.
I might not support Ted Cruz because of his opposition to abortion rights or gay marriage, for example. But I’d never not support him for his comments on Obama’s sellout to terrorist Iran. Anyone who does so deserves what they get, quite honestly, when and if Iran ever delivers on the one promise it actually intends to keep.
