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Stuttaford May Be Losing His “Moral Clarity”

The refusal to meet Khatami is an admission of weakness, not a declaration of strength, and, as such, is a mistake. If the concern is that the Iranians will spin any meeting (which will almost certainly go nowhere) more effectively than the Americans, that should be a wake-up call that the US is making a […]

The refusal to meet Khatami is an admission of weakness, not a declaration of strength, and, as such, is a mistake. If the concern is that the Iranians will spin any meeting (which will almost certainly go nowhere) more effectively than the Americans, that should be a wake-up call that the US is making a mess of projecting its message – and isn’t prepared to raise its game.

As for the tired, desperate and thoroughly disingenuous complaint that talking to our adversaries is the act of a Chamberlain, lets look at some previous Nevilles drawn from GOP ranks. One was called Dwight Eisenhower. Prior to the moment that the Gary Powers incident messed it all up, Ike was going to talk to Nikita (“we will bury you”) Khruschev. Or if we prefer, we can look at another Chamberlain. He was called Richard Nixon, the man who went to see Chairman (tens of millions murdered) Mao, and spent quality time with Leonid (Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan, you name it) Brezhnev, as, in the case of the latter tyrant, did President Ford. And then we have remember Ronald Reagan, another unconvincing striped pants and umbrella man. Back in April 1982, he indicated that he’d be glad to meet old Brezhnev if he came to the UN that summer. ‘Unfortunately’ Brezhnev was busy dying at the time, so the meeting never took place.

What Reagan, Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford all understood was that the exercise of (sometimes meaningless) diplomacy was an important asset in the US arsenal, and if that meant they would have to sit down with monsters, so be it. They were confident that they would prevail. Is that no longer the case? ~ Andrew Stuttaford, The Corner

But as Stanley “The Horror, The Horror” Kurtz would tell you, they were just dealing with those minor adversaries, the Soviets and Mao–not a real threat like a lone Iranian nuke being launched at the U.S.  Sure, Mao may have technically had more nukes when Nixon went to China, and Mao may have technically killed tens of millions of people with his policies, and he may have technically launched a war against American forces only twenty years before, but he was small potatoes compared to Ahmadinejad and the Iranian nuke!  You mustn’t use diplomacy on weaker nations–that’s what invasions are for.

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