Oversimplify

Brian Beutler suggests that anyone opposed to the Iran Nuclear "Deal" (but particularly many of the GOP candidates who uniformly oppose the deal) "wants war."  Beutler creates a simpleton's matrix of his perceived view of the relevant choices. I suspect he thinks this matrix makes him look objective and clever, when in reality, it makes him look like a struggling third grader who has been assigned a writing assignment that he doesn't understand. Here's the matrix:

In comic understatement. Beutler writes, "This matrix is slightly oversimplified, but only slightly."

Ya think?

With the smug arrogance and of someone who perceives himself to be one of the smartest kids in the room, Beutler suggests that anyone who opposes Obama's appeasement of Iran is somehow a warmonger. He further suggests that the combination of harsh sanctions and no nuclear weapons is an impossibility ("not happening"), when exactly the opposite is true. By the way, how does he know this?

Like his favorite president, Beutler also presents us with a false choice. Either you're in favor of sanctions and Iran's development of nuclear weapons, or if you're more evolved and nuanced, like Beutler, you rely on appeasement and capitulation to lead to "no sanctions and no weapons." The idiocy of this construction is breathtaking. But then again, the Left thrives on fantasy constructions that sometimes border on the idiotic.

Beutler conveniently forgets that the "deal" that Obama has constructed provides no real mechanism for verification, hopes that Iran will not conduct a clandestine program to develop weapons despite clear historical evidence that it will, suggests that sanctions can be reintroduced later (a lie), conveniently forgets that $150 billion in sanctions relief will be used for nefarious purposes to further roil the most unstable region of the world and further Iran's hegemonic designs, and will lead to a nuclear arms race among nations that really should not have nuclear weapons.

But no matter, the smartest kids in the room all have to stick together, and since Obama thinks he's one of those kids, it would seem reasonable that his friends on the Left would follow his every move no matter how ill-conceived.

There are many good reasons that Democrats (and they're the only players that matter right now) should reject this "deal," but it might be best to "oversimplify" (as Beutler does): If people with the mental acuity of a Brian Beutler are for this "deal," that alone is sufficient reason to be against it.