Evidently, how my NY Senators, Chuck Schumer moreso than Kirsten Gillibrand, will vote on the Iran nuclear agreement is a big thing.
The story linked above is relatively balanced, compared to the pro-every-war Murdoch press, whose multiple stories and editorials in the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal could have been written by Netanyahu's press office.
The upshot is that Schumer and Gillibrand have not made any commitment on the upcoming vote, and that they will have to balance the fears of a potential Iranian nuclear capability of conservative Netanyahu fans with the fears of another Mideast war of the majority of their constituents.
Schumer is the presumptive next leader of the Senate Democrats, and a longtime champion of Israel in the Senate, so the Murdoch pressure on him has been relentless.
Fred Dicker's column on July 19 had Al D'Amato, the sleazy guy who Schumer beat to get into the Senate, urging his erstwhile foe to vote against the agreement because, absurdly, "the security of our nation and the security of Israel are threatened."
A July 27 NYP editorial headlines that "Chuck Schumer should take a tip from Joe Lieberman on Iran," and includes this insight from LIEberman:
Chuck is the key. .. [If Schumer comes out against the deal, that] opens the way for a lot of other Democrats to oppose it as well.
LIEberman's Likudnik bluster will hopefully have little effect on Schumer, because he does not need the votes of Likudniks and/or NYP Kool-Aid drinkers to get re-elected forever.
But the pressure is on, and time is growing short, so I've done my little part to counter the Netanyahu-inspired BS Schumer and Gillibrand are reading every day by emailing both of them today.
More, below.
Here's the email, sans the pleasantries:
There is an agreement between Iran and the P5+1 which seems to guarantee that Iran will not be able to get nuclear weapons for at least 10 years.
The only opposition to that agreement comes from the governments of Israel and Saudi
Arabia, for reasons that are little related to nuclear proliferation.
Israel, which has a sizable nuclear deterrent force, wants to limit Iranian aid to
Hezbollah and Hamas.
Saudi Arabia, as always, wants to limit Shia influence in the Near East.
Among the many reasons to support the agreement are:
1) The rest of the P5+1 will eagerly start trading with Iran, no matter what the US
Congress does.
2) The United States' national interest in that region is not congruent with the
political interests of Netanyahu.
3) Netanyahu has, for many years, allied himself with the neocon wing of the Republican
Party. His current ambassador and his unprecedented speech to Congress this year are the just the latest examples of that. You are not part of the neocon wing of the Republican Party.
4) Very few of your constituents support going to war to stop Iran from developing
nuclear weapons. You've probably heard from all of them already, and they number in the hundreds in a state of 20 million.
5) Absent the agreement and its inspection regime, Iran would presumably work to develop nuclear weapons within the next decade, which may well prompt an Israeli bombing campaign that will lead to unpredictable but surely bloody consequences.
6) On this as with most issues, President Obama deserves your support. He and John Kerry have worked hard, and successfully, for an agreement to limit Iran's nuclear ambitions. Only neocon hard-liners, Israel Firsters, and Republican presidential candidates (I repeat myself) think that that's a bad thing.
Voting for the Iran agreement is essentially a vote to "give peace a chance."
Voting against the agreement is essentially a vote for US involvement in yet another war in southwest Asia.
Please vote for the agreement.
If you are a New Yorker, please join me in letting our Senators know that voting for the Iran agreement is the right thing to do:
http://www.schumer.senate.gov/...
http://www.gillibrand.senate.gov/...