McCain and Graham: Obama 'Should Not Throw Stones from His Glass House'

Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) blasted President Obama’s Iran speech today in a joint statement, stressing that “in addition to jousting with strawmen, the president also repeated his reliance on false choices” — aka deal or war.

“President Obama’s speech today is just another example of his reliance on endless strawmen to divert attention from his failed policies,” they said. “It is particularly galling to hear the president try to defend his nuclear agreement with Iran by claiming that its critics also supported the war in Iraq.”

“Having presided over the collapse of our hard-won gains in Iraq, the rise of the most threatening terrorist army in the world, the most devastating civil war and humanitarian catastrophe in generations in Syria, the spread of conflict and radicalism across the Middle East and much of Africa, a failed reset with Russia, and escalating cyber-attacks and other acts of aggression for which our adversaries pay no price, the president should not throw stones from his glass house.”

McCain and Graham noted that they’ve never said diplomacy in principle equals weakness, but “what we object to is the president’s lack of realism — his ideological belief that diplomacy is good and force is bad, which has repeatedly resulted either in failed deals or bad deals.”

“…President Obama clearly does not understand the Middle East and has made one blunder after another. He was wrong when he ignored sound military advice to leave a residual force in Iraq.  He was wrong when he turned down the advice of his national security team when they urged him to help Free Syrian Army fighters when it could have made a difference. He was wrong when he failed to enforce his own red lines against Bashar Assad. He was wrong when he declared ISIL a ‘Junior Varsity team.’ He was wrong when he built a presidential campaign around a message of ‘Bin Laden is dead and al-Qaeda is decimated.’ And he is wrong about this deal with Iran.”

House Foreign Affairs Committee Ed Royce (R-Calif.), who introduced the resolution of disapproval against the Iran deal this week, noted that Obama “didn’t even try to justify the 11^th hour lifting of the restrictions against Iran’s intercontinental ballistic program.”

“That’s because there is no excuse for this concession, which was counter to the advice of our military and which leaves our homeland threatened,” Royce said. “…And let’s not forget, some of the same people who negotiated this deal were involved in the failed agreement with North Korea — an agreement that was hailed at the time with some of the same language President Obama used today.  Of course, North Korea now has multiple nuclear weapons.”