Great Divide: Story of the 2016 US Presidential Race - Howard Harrison

Great Divide: Story of the 2016 US Presidential Race (eBook)

Howard Harrison (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2020 | 1. Auflage
410 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-0983-2638-8 (ISBN)

The Great Divide: Story of the 2016 US Presidential Race takes readers on a tour of one of the most unusual, controversial, and compelling elections in history. It starts in June 2015 when billionaire real estate mogul and reality TV star Donald Trump joins a crowded field of Republican candidates and soon vaults to No. 1 in the polls. It ends with a result that shocks the world. In between, readers will enjoy a play-by-play (or blow-by-blow) account of all the events that made headlines during the campaign. Written in real time, the story captures each event as it occurred, up through the election. You will read about Bernie Sanders reigniting 1960s liberalism, Hillary Clinton's e-mails, the Supreme Court vacancy, the "e;Stop Trump"e; movement, terrorist attacks, rally violence, Muslim bans, Mexican walls, and more. The book also explores the issues that have created such a polarized electorate. Specific story lines abound: An anti-abortion group infiltrates Planned Parenthood and shoots a covert video of an official discussing the "e;sale of baby body parts,"e; leading GOP candidates to condemn Planned Parenthood and to call for an end to its federal funding. The United States and other world powers sign a nuclear deal with Iran that is denounced by Republicans universally and by some Democrats. Several GOP candidates support a county clerk in Kentucky who refuses to issue marriage licenses to gay couples because it conflicts with her religion. The Islamic State downs a Russian passenger jet, kills 130 people in Paris, and influences an attack in San Bernardino, all in the last months of 2015. Candidates spar over how to stop terrorism, with some suggesting a religious test to determine who can come to America. As the first female presidential nominee of a major party, Hillary Clinton gets grilled on Benghazi; her e-mails, speeches, honesty, voice, and stamina; her husband's behavior; and other issues. The death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia exposes the partisan divide at its starkest when Congressional Republicans refuse to consider any replacement nominated by President Obama. The GOP forms a "e;Stop Trump"e; faction, believing Trump is not really a Republican. Russians allegedly try to influence the election by hacking Democrats' e-mails. A dozen women accuse Trump of sexual assault, and he denies all charges. These are just some of the events that made the 2016 US presidential race one sure to be discussed and dissected for years. They are all here in The Great Divide.

CHAPTER 3

Diplomacy versus War

On July 15, 2015, the United States and five other world powers—Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China—agreed to a deal with Iran that would lift longstanding economic sanctions in exchange for Iran curbing its nuclear activities. The agreement would prevent Iran from being able to build a nuclear weapon for at least 10 years and would allow UN inspectors to monitor compliance with the deal’s terms. Sanctions could be reinstated if Iran violated those terms.

If Iran did not violate the terms, it would be able to resume selling its oil on the open market and gain access to about $100 billion in frozen assets. The deal also would end a 2010 UN arms embargo banning Iran from buying or selling conventional arms and ballistic missiles. Under the new agreement, the arms embargo would lift in five years, and the missile embargo in eight.

Naturally, Republicans jumped all over the deal. So did Israel. So did some Democrats. They criticized the Obama administration for giving up too much for too little in return. Providing any kind of relief to Iran—sponsor of terrorism, supporter of Syrian President Bashar Assad, and enemy of Israel—felt unseemly. Enriching Iran financially and strengthening it militarily seemed insane.

Iran maintained that it would use its newfound prosperity for domestic improvements to provide for a populace that had suffered years of isolation and economic starvation. Detractors feared Iran would funnel the money to terrorist allies in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, and elsewhere, adding to current unrest in the region, and ultimately resume its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

As in any negotiation, there was give and take. The United States also was not negotiating unilaterally with Iran but in concert with five other nations. Iran’s demand to end the UN arms embargo wasn’t something the United States wanted to do, but Russia was in favor so it could then sell arms to Iran. The best the United States could do was to insist that the embargo not be lifted for at least five years.

Obama wanted to completely dismantle Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and end its production of enriched uranium. Instead, he settled for cutting Iran’s uranium stockpile and reducing its number of uranium-enriching centrifuges more than Iran had wanted. Iran agreed to give UN inspectors access to its nuclear sites and scientists but demanded and got a requirement for 24 hours’ notice.

There was plenty not to like about this deal and the concessions that were made. Iran was a dangerous influence in the world, and generally not aligned with U.S. interests. The country was regaining significant financial resources and the ability to buy, in five years, the most sophisticated conventional weapons out there, then, in three more years, ballistic missiles. Still, despite these valid concerns, some of the rhetoric criticizing the deal was hyperbolic.

“The worst agreement in U.S. diplomatic history,” declared one conservative columnist, who lamented that “ten years of painstaking sanctions will vanish overnight, irretrievably.”

“These sanctions devalued Iran’s currency by 73 percent, froze Iranian accounts in foreign banks, crippled the Iranian oil and banking sectors and tanked Iran’s economy,” boasted Republican Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois. Now, he said, the agreement with Iran “[paved] the rogue regime’s path to a nuclear weapon and [set] up a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.”

“I believe you’ve been fleeced,” Republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee told Secretary of State John Kerry, who had helped negotiate the deal.

House Speaker John Boehner called the deal “wrong for our national security and wrong for our country.”

The Republican presidential candidates weren’t much more restrained. Jeb Bush called the deal “appeasement.” Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker said it was one of Obama’s “worst diplomatic failures.” Even Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, the least hawkish of the GOP hopefuls, was against the pact.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio might have been the best, hyperbolically speaking. First he chided that “a third-rate autocracy has now been given equality with a world power, the United States of America.” Later, he implied that if he were elected president, he wouldn’t abide by the deal. “The next president is under no legal or moral obligation to live up to it,” he said.

Obama said the only alternative to the deal was war. He contended that the risk of a nuclear-armed Iran outweighed any other factors. He said monitoring would ensure that “every pathway to a nuclear weapon” was denied. “This deal is not based on trust,” he said. “It is based on verification.”

The president vowed to veto any legislation in Congress to scuttle the accord, saying it “would be irresponsible to walk away from this deal,” given its endorsement by all the other countries and the negative repercussions that would ensue.

In the Iranian capital of Tehran, citizens poured into the streets to celebrate the deal. For them, the sanctions had caused severe hardships. These were the people who had been lost in the hostile actions of countries. Of course, Republicans said the partying in the streets was proof that the United States had gotten a bad deal.

The Iran nuclear agreement was sure to come up at the first Republican debate, scheduled for August 6, 2015. All the GOP candidates felt the accord was “bad for America” and would bring it up to blast Obama, insisting that if they were president, they would not have signed the deal.

I am not qualified to assess whether the United States could have gotten a better deal or if we’d have been better off with no deal. Neither were the Republican candidates. Their statements were pure conjecture. The economic sanctions, though making life miserable for the Iranian people, didn’t seem to be slowing Iran’s uranium-enrichment program; history has shown limited effectiveness of sanctions in influencing a country’s policies.

When you get down to it, however, the details of the deal didn’t really matter. Republicans would condemn it simply because Obama had agreed to it. They would condemn it because Republicans love to accuse Democrats of being “soft”—soft on defense, soft on crime, soft on welfare cheats, and so on. Republicans view themselves as the “military party” and treat Democrats like the 98-pound weakling at the beach before he discovered Charles Atlas.

This machismo is an accepted plank of the Republican message and has been for some time. I remember that when Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, he got elected in large part because Iran—the same country we had just acquiesced to on this nuclear deal—had embarrassed the United States by storming our embassy, taking several dozen American hostages, and holding the hostages for more than a year. On the campaign trail, Reagan had said that if it happened on his watch, there would be no more Iran. He got elected in a landslide over incumbent Jimmy Carter. Iran released the hostages the day Reagan was inaugurated. The man was a hero.

Given Reagan’s threat about annihilating Iran and his pledge to increase our military might to regain lost respect in the world, I feared this guy would start World War III. This was unsettling so soon after Vietnam, but he turned out to be okay. I think he actually did strengthen us militarily and renew a sense of pride in the country.

Today, of course, Reagan would be a Democrat. That’s how far right his party has moved since 1980.

The point is that Republicans like to thump their chests, rattle their sabers, and call Democrats sissies. This would surely come out in the debate when discussing the Iran deal.

The broader issue perhaps is the concept of diplomacy versus war. Diplomacy sometimes requires making concessions to people you think are scumbags to achieve a greater good. Many Republicans portray this as weakness and think we should use our position as the greatest military power on earth to impose our will.

Since we introduced the world to nuclear weapons in 1945, every U.S. president has negotiated nuclear-arms agreements with hostile adversaries, such as North Korea and the former Soviet Union. Were they all wimps for sitting down at the table and making trade-offs with these regimes? Like Obama, they were lambasted for making bad and potentially dangerous deals, but reducing the threat of nuclear war superseded all other concerns.

“Either the issue of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon is resolved diplomatically through negotiation or it’s resolved through force, through war,” Obama said. “Those are the options.”

“We should not have to compromise with anyone,” I could just hear any one of the 17 Republican candidates for president bellowing in the upcoming debate. “We’re the United Fucking States of America. Do you want to step outside?”

The debate would be an opportunity for each candidate to show America how tough he (or she, in the case of former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina) was. The candidates could state what additional conditions they would have insisted on in...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	21.9.2020
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
ISBN-10	1-0983-2638-5 / 1098326385
ISBN-13	978-1-0983-2638-8 / 9781098326388

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