Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

US Senator from Connecticut Chris Murphy held a behind the curtain meeting with Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. Sometime after the meeting, Murphy ran into a wall in the person of Mollie Hemingway, after which a Zola on his staff wrote up, very late in the day, an extensive apologia that very likely will fizzle, even among Connecticut’s Murphyites. The Journal Inquirer took Murphy to task in a February 22 Editorial, “ Murphy was wrong to meet with Iranian official ,” that is worth quoting in full: “Sen. Christopher Murphy’s recent meeting with Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif was a mistake. Murphy’s rationalization that we need to keep doors open with Iran is faulty. Iran is a clerical fascist state and is a sworn enemy of the United States. It will remain so as long as Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei remains in power.

Murphy and Blumenthal U.S. Senators Chris Murphy and Dick Blumenthal were anxious – perhaps too anxious – to “set the narrative” concerning the strike on   General Qassem Soleimani of Iran, who met an untimely death at the hands of an American drone in Iraq. Soleimani was engaged in his usual business in Iraq – killing Americans. He had, during his years as the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s top general, become proficient in the art, providing IED’s to friendly terrorist groups in all quarters of the Middle East. The state department has said he was responsible for upwards of 500 deaths of American soldiers in Iraq. After washing himself in American blood, Soleimani would duck back into Iran, a safe harbor from U.S. retribution.

On Monday (February 6, 2017), the Harford Courant printed a long, 1335 word op-ed column written by U.S. Senator Chris Murphy that previously had appeared in the Huffington Post, “ Trump’s Reckless Path Towards War .” http://www.courant.com/opinion/op-ed/hc-op-murphy-trumps-reckless-iran-policy-0206-20170203-story.html This is the lede to the column: “Since the inauguration, the White House has taken several ham-handed escalatory steps that bring into question whether  Trump  and his most radical advisers are begging for war with Iran. This would be a disaster of epic scale, perhaps eclipsing the nightmare of the Iraq War.  Republicans  and  Democrats  need to start viewing President Donald Trump's actions and words as a possible accidental or intentional prelude to major conflict, and take steps to counter this dangerous slide to war.” Almost every sentence is parsable. Taken as a whole, the piece amounts to a pawn house of campaign talking ...