Yesterday, I pointed out [1]that there was a major shift in Democrat talking points over Iran and it’s threat to the west.
Today, I note something else… that perhaps even the Democrats have not noted.
For years, now, we’ve been told that we should be talking to Iran… negotiating.
Well, first, I echo what John Bolton said over the weekend: [2]
Negotiation is not a policy. It is a technique. Saying that one favors negotiation with, say, Iran, has no more intellectual content than saying one favors using a spoon. For what? Under what circumstances? With what objectives? On these specifics, Mr. Obama has been consistently sketchy.
Like all human activity, negotiation has costs and benefits. If only benefits were involved, then it would be hard to quarrel with the “what can we lose?” mantra one hears so often. In fact, the costs and potential downsides are real, and not to be ignored.
When the U.S. negotiates with “terrorists and radicals,” it gives them legitimacy, a precious and tangible political asset. Thus, even Mr. Obama criticized former President Jimmy Carter for his recent meetings with Hamas leaders. Meeting with leaders of state sponsors of terrorism such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong Il is also a mistake. State sponsors use others as surrogates, but they are just as much terrorists as those who actually carry out the dastardly acts. Legitimacy and international acceptability are qualities terrorists crave, and should therefore not be conferred casually, if at all.
Moreover, negotiations – especially those “without precondition” as Mr. Obama has specifically advocated – consume time, another precious asset that terrorists and rogue leaders prize. Here, President Bush’s reference to Hitler was particularly apt: While the diplomats of European democracies played with their umbrellas, the Nazis were rearming and expanding their industrial power.
There’s an aspect here which Bolton passes by a little too quickly, in the first para of the clip… the concept that negotiation is a tool.
Think, now; To what end are we using that tool? What would we seek? Iran is making no bones about what it wants; The destruction of the ‘stinking corpse” of Israel, and the establishment of a world-wide caliphate. Since both those goals are totally unacceptable, will someone please tell me what the hell we’re supposed to negotiate? What could we possibly negotiate away so as to move Iran (And lest we forget, others) off that often stated goal? Is what we might (Or might not) gain, worth the risk of giving Iran’s Islamic regime, legitimacy, toward their stated goal?
That point made, let’s also point out that our Iran policy has almost exactly been what former presidential candidate John Kerry promised he would do back in ’04. containment. Bush’s answer to Iraq and in Afghanistan, was to go in, and deal with the situation. The Democrats, universally want containment and negotiation to be the policy, (Though just what we are to negotiate is as I say, undefined, at best) So we have done with Iran thusfar. So it is that Iraq’s situation even by Nancy Pelosi’s lights over the weekend, is improving by leaps and bounds, and Iran is by Obama’s lights, still a serious threat.