Diplomacy Is Not Complicity

But now, if the clerical junta prevails, anyone who shakes hands with Ahmadinejad will have a hard time washing the blood off his own hands. ~Jonah Goldberg

This will come as news to some, but metaphorical blood is non-transferable. Nixon did not pick it up from Brezhnev or Mao, Reagan did not somehow acquire the blood of Afghans by engaging with Gorbachev throughout his two terms while Afghanistan was under Soviet occupation, nor Kennedy did leave Vienna screaming, “Out, damn spot!” If negotiating with thuggish regimes means that our leaders partake of the crimes of that regime, I assume Goldberg must be in high dudgeon about the bloody taint afflicting…well, pretty much every President since FDR. There was a time when people on the right were more resistant to the temptation to reduce foreign policy to a morality play or some sort of childish game in which negotiating with “bad guys” gave you cooties. For almost the last ten years, they have been far less so, and it’s pretty embarrassing.