Jonathan Singer of MyDD.com made some excellent points today about the ongoing debate over foreign policy:
After hearing John McCain join George W. Bush in attacking Barack Obama for being willing to speak with the Iranian leadership this past Thursday, I had a few questions:
I’d go even a step further and ask why John McCain is afraid to speak with Iran. What is it about Iran that scares McCain so much? Or is it that McCain believes Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei are so crafty that they would trick an American President into inadvertently ceding the state of Maine or American Samoa to Iran? Or alternatively, is it that McCain simply does not know how to act in a manner different from his true political role model, George W. Bush?
Obama, speaking today in Montana, seemed to have the same question on his mind:
Here’s the truth: the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear weapons and Iran doesn’t have a single one. But when the world was on the brink of nuclear holocaust, Kennedy talked to Khrushchev and he got those missiles out of Cuba. Why shouldn’t we have the same courage and the confidence to talk to our enemies? That’s what strong countries do, that’s what strong presidents do, that’s what I’ll do when I’m president of the United States of America.
So, you know, for all their tough talk, one of the things you have to ask yourself is what are George Bush and John McCain afraid of? Demanding that a country meets all your conditions before you meet with them, that’s not a strategy; it’s just naïve, wishful thinking. I’m not afraid that we’ll lose some propaganda fight with a dictator. It’s time for America to win those battles, because we’ve watched George Bush lose them year after year after year. It’s time to restore our security and our standing in the world.
I point this out not to speak of some prescience on my part or to suggest that Obama has been cribbing off of MyDD. Instead I just say that I think this is exactly the right response to the isolationist-cum-jingoistic rhetoric coming from some in the upper echelons of the right these days, including George W. Bush and the man seeking to extend the Bush presidency for four more years — John McCain.
Yitzhak Rabin once famously said about negotiation with his onetime sworn enemies, the PLO and Yassir Arafat in particular, “You don’t make peace with friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies.” Likewise, John F. Kennedy wisely said during his inaugural address, “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”
I absolutely agree. This absolutely is the best response to McCain’s nonsense, and I’m glad Obama is demonstrating the proper leadership in this matter.
Read the full posting by clicking here.


