Lesson in Iran for local GOP
In my years as a strong Republican who supports Republican candidates, I am amazed at Kootenai County Republicans publicly airing criticism from their divided sides and using the Press to put their divisive views forward. This division is exactly what the Democrats want. A divided Republican base is doing the work for the Democrats; they just sit back and let it happen.
The old saying “United we stand, divided we fall” will continue to diminish the party strength. If we want to hang on to our principles, take a look at our Congress and realize the division of power. As a former negotiator of contracts for a large corporation, I was trained before being allowed to participate in negotiations of such importance. The object of negotiating is not to believe you will get your “perfect” way but to realize the other side has their “perfect” way and recognition of the fact that we will have to give up something and they will also.
The split has caused, at least for me, strong disappointment in our party to allow this to continue for such a long period of time. Frankly, it is why I have never become involved in the local party; I could not tolerate the split tunes everyone is playing. “My Way or the Highway.”
I watched as the Iran — U.S. treaty negotiations evolved into the U.S. caving on every major issue. Now Iran is pushing back on treaty rules while the administration was bragging about the “great treaty.” Iran realized early that a weak U.S. was sitting across the table from them and if they just stubbornly held their ground, dealing with the personage of people who did not have a strong president behind them saying we “will not cross that line.” And that is exactly what happened.
To negotiate you have to take a firm stand on what you will not give up. I could find no firm stand in all our policies in Iran. Just a feeble-minded need to strike a treaty for the sake of politics and the braggadocio getting a treaty signed with a nuclear Iran.
If our team in my business life had done such a thing, we would all have been looking for other employment. We had our orders from headquarters. We could take our position back to headquarters for an assessment of and reconsideration. My corporation in a commercial world knew exactly how far we could bend before it would not be profitable to continue. But what we had was a company with the power to go somewhere else or start the process of shifting a major product, though difficult, to do just that.
In our negotiations with Iran, instead of lifting the sanctions, we should have sustained every one until our goals were satisfied. We bought and paid highly for our weakness. They received from us exactly what they wanted, sanctions lifted, and money to boot. We lost all our power in those decisions. You can’t negotiate anything worthy from a position of weakness and Iran did their homework before coming to the table.
A more inexperienced, wishy-washy government could not have been put into place at the Iran treaty table. Of course that is my opinion not from stubborness, but my past experience as the first female contract administrator in my division.
Della Kenney is a Post Falls resident.