Easy Fisking
When John F. Kerry writes an op-ed, fisking it is extremely easy. This time is no different. It doesn’t take long before spotting Senn. Kerry’s first false premise:
When Bush accused “some”, including Obama, Bush aides explained, of “the false comfort of appeasement,” McCain echoed this slander. “What does he want to talk about with [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad?” McCain asked, fumbling to link Obama to the Iranian president’s hateful words. Soon, a GOP talking point was born.
Lost in the rhetoric was the question America deserves to have answered: Why should we engage with Iran?
In short, not talking to Iran has failed. Miserably.
First off, people have talked with Iran. That’s what’s “failed. Miserably.” Secondly, we knkow that terrorists think that Americans are paper tigers. At least, they used to think that during the Clinton administration. They didn’t think twice during Jimmy Carter’s administration, either. Apparently, Sen. Kerry still hasn’t learned the principles behind the Reagan Principle.
The Reagan Principle is what I call President Reagan’s habit of not negotiating with evil empires until that evil empire was scared out of its wits. Sen. Kerry obviously didn’t remember that Reagan didn’t have a summit with the Soviets until his second term. Reagan’s not having a summit with the Soviets in his first term didn’t seem to turn out too badly.
Bush engages in self-deception arguing that not engaging Iran has worked. In fact, Iran has grown stronger: continuing to master the nuclear fuel cycle; arming militias in Iraq and Lebanon; bolstering extremist anti-Israeli proxies. It has embraced Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and spends lavishly to rebuild Afghanistan, gaining influence across the region.
Sen. Kerry says that President Bush “Iran has grown stronger” because of President Bush’s not sitting down with Ahmadinejad. While it’s true that Iran is stronger than it was 4 years ago, that doesn’t prove that it’s a result of President bush not having a summit with Ahmadinejad. In fact, I’d suggest that Sen. Kerry can’t prove that meeting with Ahmadinejad wouldn’t have more disastrous consequences than not meeting with him.
In fadct, Sen. Kerry should study this history lesson about JFK and Kruschev:
MR. SPIVAK: Mr. Vice President, according to news dispatches Soviet Premier Khrushchev said today that Prime Minister Macmillan had assured him that there would be a summit conference next year after the presidential elections. Have you given any cause for such assurance, and do you consider it desirable or even possible that there would be a summit conference next year if Mr. Khrushchev persists in the conditions he’s laid down?
MR. NIXON: No, of course I haven’t talked to Prime Minister Macmillan. It would not be appropriate for me to do so. The President is still going to be president for the next four months and he, of course, is the only one who could commit this country in this period. As far as a summit conference is concerned, I want to make my position absolutely clear. I would be willing as president to meet with Mr. Khrushchev or any other world leader if it would serve the cause of peace. I would not be able wou- would be willing to meet with him however, unless there were preparations for that conference which would give us some reasonable certainty, some reasonable certainty, that you were going to have some success. We must not build up the hopes of the world and then dash them as was the case in Paris. There, Mr. Khrushchev came to that conference determined to break it up. He was going to break it up because he would, knew that he wasn’t going to get his way on Berlin and on the other key matters with which he was concerned at the Paris Conference. Now, if we’re going to have another summit conference, there must be negotiations at the diplomatic level, the ambassadors, the Secretaries of State, and others at that level, prior to that time, which will delineate the issues and which will prepare the way for the heads of state to meet and make some progress. Otherwise, if we find the heads of state meeting and not making progress, we will find that the cause of peace will have been hurt rather than helped. So under these circumstances, I, therefore, strongly urge and I will strongly hold, if I have the opportunity to urge or to hold, this position: that any summit conference would be gone into only after the most careful preparation and only after Mr. Khrushchev, after his disgraceful conduct at Paris, after his disgraceful conduct at the United Nations, gave some assurance that he really wanted to sit down and talk and to accomplish something and not just to make propaganda.
Here’s JFK’s response to Nixon’s answer:
MR. KENNEDY: I have no disagreement with the Vice President’s position on that. It, my view is the same as his. Let me say there is only one uh, point I would add. That before we go into the summit, before we ever meet again, I think it’s important that the United States build its strength; that it build its military strength as well as its own economic strength. If we negotiate from a position where the power balance or wave is moving away from us, it’s extremely difficult to reach a successful decision on Berlin as well as the other questions.
Nixon and JFK seemed show that they shouldn’t meet with Kruschev without there first being preparations done at the ambassador and SecState levels. It appears as though Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain didn’t learn that lesson. I’d suggest that they both learn history better if they’re going to deal with a hostile world.
One lesson that liberals apparently haven’t learned from the 1990’s is that talking with Iraq allowed them to bribe foreign ‘dignitaries’ with the OFF money. Clinton kept on issuing threats, followed by Saddam making a token gesture, followed by his not obeying the latest UNSC resolution. Some good talking with Saddam did.
We also know that talking and negotiating with the North Koreans didn’t prevent them from acquiring nuclear weapons.
If talking with our enemies is the be-all, end-all, then the UN should be Utopia. It isn’t. It’s a festering sewer of corruption and inaction. It’s a joke to serious diplomats and statesmen.
Here’s something that must be answered:
Direct negotiations may be the only means short of war that can persuade Iran to forgo its nuclear capability. Given that a nuclear Iran would menace Israel, drive oil prices up past today’s record highs and possibly spark a regional arms race, shouldn’t we be doing all we can to avoid that conflagration?
Ahmadinejad is this century’s Hitler. What makes anyone think that anything but military strikes will prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons? Here’s what President Bush rightly said to the Knesset:
Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.” We have an obligation to call this what it is, the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history. (Applause.)
What “ingenious argument” would Sen. Obama or Sen. Kerry use to persuade Iran that they’re heading down the wrong path? Taking a pacifist’s approach is the best path to a peaceful world is the path that arrogant men take. History has proven that approach to be a fool’s approach.
During the Reagan administration, Sen. Kerry said that installing the Pershing II missiles in Europe and developing SDI would lead to a dangerous escalation in the Cold War. Eight years later, the Soviet Union had crumbled just like the Berlin Wall had been torn down.
It’s obvious that Sen. Kerry will still stay on the wrong side of history because he hasn’t learned from history. That isn’t just stupid, it’s insanity.
Technorati Tags: Obama, John Kerry, Ahmadinejad, Diplomacy, Nuclear Weapons, Nixon, JFK, reagan, Kruschev, Cold War, Saddam Hussein, Iraq, Foreign Policy
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog
May 25th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Agreed. We should just bomb the shit out of them and call it a day.