Tom Cotton, Tragic Hero

 Despite the value of his open letter, he will become Obama’s scapegoat when the Iran negotiations inevitably fail.

Victor Davis Hanson

 

. . . "Secretary of State John Kerry is the most outraged of Cotton’s critics — and has the most notorious record of trying to undermine presidential foreign policy.
"As a freshman senator, Kerry traveled to Nicaragua to show solidarity with “Comandante” Daniel Ortega — as a way of opposing then-president Reagan’s efforts to help the Contras in their resistance to the Sandinista Communist takeover. Two other Democrats, Senator Tom Harkin and House speaker Jim Wright, also met with Ortega.
 
"Most unfortunate was House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s disastrous 2007 trip to Syria to meet with thuggish president Bashar al-Assad. At the time of their meeting, Assad was offering assistance to radical Islamic groups that were attacking U.S. troops in Iraq.
"Cotton and the senators, in contrast, never traveled to hostile territory, never met with America’s enemies, and never wrote warm personal letters to thugs.
"But was the Cotton letter a political “blunder”?
"Not really.
. . .
  "But Cotton will endure plenty of blame if Iranian negotiators walk away in fury because a skeptical U.S. Senate would have to approve any sweetheart deal that they pulled over on Obama.
"In other words, Cotton is not a blunderer — he is a classic lose/lose tragic hero."