Thursday, December 22, 2011
Evidence, finally, of Democrat naivete
Useful Idiots piece by
Gary Krasner
Democrats created what they thought was a good wedge issue in foreign policy, and since about 2006 or so----after the Iraq war became sufficiently unpopular----they advanced it in the form of the mantra, “we must talk to our enemies.”
And by “talk”, they meant “negotiate.” And by “enemies”, they meant our existential enemies that supported Islamic jihad, and rogues like North Korea.
But someone must have neglected to tell Obama that “talking to tyrants” was merely an election issue. Not efficacious foreign policy.
But now it’s too late. The evidence is in. Obama’s policy of appeasement, through engagement with our enemies, has failed spectacularly.
See yesterday’s column by Charles Krauthammer here.
My own views, as expressed on my private political discussion list since 2006, are also vindicated. Because I’ve been railing against this naïveté since it first arose.
My view was basically that you don’t seek to coexist with existential enemies. You contain them long enough until the time comes when you can extinguish them.
Containment these days usually comes down to military preparedness, and execution of non-violent economic sanctions. For the latter to work, all nations must cooperate in the boycott. That’s been the experience from the 50 or so international sanctions conducted since WWII.
And to obtain that cooperation, you must not permit the enemy to shed it’s pariah status through public diplomacy. PRIVATE, backchannel talks, yes. But you must never share the stage with tyranny, thereby lending it some legitimacy at your expense. Certainly not until you obtain your negotiating demands. And that, by necessity, means there must be preconditions to any secret talks.
It was clear from the beginning that presidential CANDIDATE Obama didn’t understand the pariah principle.
He repeated all the Democrat mantras, such as quoting JFK: “We should never negotiate out of fear, but we should never fear to negotiate.”
Candidate Obama also said this: “Why shouldn’t we have the same courage and confidence to talk to our enemies? That’s what strong countries do. That’s what strong presidents do. [...] One of the things you have to ask yourself: What are George Bush and John McCain afraid of [in] demanding a country meets all of your conditions before you meet with them?”
Not only did Obama fail to understand the need for preconditions, he failed to appreciate history. The ACTUAL history he made reference to:
Senator Obama often referred to President Kennedy going to Vienna. But most historians see that as a serious mistake, which encouraged Khrushchev to build the Berlin Wall and to send missiles to Cuba. Another example is Richard Nixon going to China. Of all the many visits that Henry Kissinger made to China, every single word was dictated beforehand. More importantly, he went to China because China was then a counterweight to a greater threat, the Soviet Union. There are no counterweight considerations for engagement with Iran (we are allies of Sunni Saudi Arabia), or North Korea (we are allies of the South Koreans), or Syria (we are allies of Israel).
More than an example of how expedient and hypocritical Senator Joe Biden could be, was the wisdom he expressed on this issue in July 2007.
It was that candidates debate in Charleston, moderated by ABC correspondent Charlie Gibson. Althought that forum was not the actual place where we got to the heart of the matter----which is how outlaw and rogue regimes must be treated by a superpower that abides by international law. Nor did it begin with the facile Democrat complaint that we must “talk to our enemies.” That complaint had been maquerading as a genuine and serious foreign policy doctrine since the 2006 elections, and which seemed to have escaped close media scrutiny until the Clinton--Obama dispute had erupted.
At any rate, it is not to say that Hilary Clinton deserved accolades for refusing to make a promise, in the spirit of “bold leadership”, “ to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of her administration . . . with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries.” No more than Hilary deserved accolades from the prior debate, where she said that her administration would retaliate against our enemies following their attack on our shores. Because her answer failed to acknowledge the salient fact that a successful attack on the U.S. would have demonstrated that her policies of prevention and preemption---which Americans demanded following 911---had failed.
However, Senator Obama was the first who Gibson called upon to answer that question, and he did so with a resounding “yes”. And that sparked the criticism of Obama thereafter. But there wasn’t anything that Hilary Clinton said that was worth repeating. Rather, it was Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE). He told National Review Online that the idea of a president meeting with Ahmadinejad, Chavez, and others was “naïve.” Biden said, “World leaders should not meet with other world leaders unless they know what the agenda is, so you don’t end up being used.” “When I went to meet with Milosevic before the war, the condition I met with him was that no press would be available, I’d only meet him in his office late at night, and I wouldn’t dignify being seen with him.”
And that is one of the two conditions that must be met before a superpower shall meet with leaders of outlaw nations. An outlaw nation is any nation that routinely breaks international law (i.e. treaty obligations) as a matter of policy. Iran and Syria support terrorism. Terrorism is a violation of international law. Short of war, how should a more powerful nation relate to outlaw nations? Two rules generally apply.
First, as Biden said, the meeting must be in secret, and not announced to the world. The last thing you want to do is lend legitimacy to an illegitimate government. They seek the perception of legitimacy, as seen by their own population---who are usually oppressed---and by other competing governments in their region. When a powerful and legitimate democracy sends high level envoys to meet with an outlaw government, that raises the status of the latter, and diminishes the former. Sometimes, that’s all that the other nation wants from us, or expects to obtain by meeting with our diplomats. Imagine what Obama would be giving away by PERSONALLY meeting with such leaders! As president, he met with Hugo Chavez. It lent legitimacy to a nation aligned with our enemies. The U.S. received nothing in return.
The second condition is that you only negotiate with representatives of a sovereign enemy when you have some leverage over them. GW Bush didn’t have leverage over Iran to induce it to do what we wanted it to do. That’s why President Bush didn’t negotiate with Iran over its involvement with Iraq, or uraneum enrichment, etc. Not even Administration critic Richard Holbrooke---when pressed by Charlie Rose on July 31, 2007---could come up with something the U.S. could have afforded to cede to the Iranians. Bush’s diplomats later met with representatives of Iran at conferences, but only where other nations were represented. And there were backchannel communications, as there had been with all previous administrations. But he never shared the public stage with those tyrants.
Jump forward in time. Obama got elected in 2008.
It was clear from the first 6 months of this administration that promoting freedom, democracy, and rule of law would not be its foreign policy agenda. Dissidents in Russia and China were made to understand this, courtesy of Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. As were the democratic institutions in Honduras after they prevented a constitutional “coup” by Manuel Zelaya. Obama informed Jews in Israel that they were no better than nazis, and would have to forfeit their birthright to their land and culture to placate the Muslim hordes surrounding them, as well as the European elites who also hate Jews.
In Cairo, Obama told Muslims that their governments are just as benevolent and democratic as those in the West. His refusal to intercept North Korean shipments of missile technology is inexplicable and inexcusable. And by ruling out military intervention to stop the Iranian regime from developing nuclear weapons----and threatening Israel to follow suit----Obama sent a clear message of appeasement to the radical Shi’a who aim to dominate the region.
Obama’s accomodation with Daniel Ortega, Hugo Chavez, and Raul Castro are reminiscent of 1920s and 30s liberal infatuation with fascism (nationalism + socialism). But as irony would have it, the Obama apology & appeasement tour south of the border was interrupted when his own leftist constituents balked when he expressed his desire not to “meddle” in the internal affairs of Iran.
As the untested president clung to his desire to negotiate with the religious tyrants of Iran, his young naive supporters were discovering the folly of the “talk to anyone” doctrine----which distinguished candidate Obama and set President Obama’s trajectory towards appeasement. Perhaps even the 1960s liberal babyboomers are reminded of Birmingham and and Montgomery, as they see peaceful Iranian demonstators killed, crippled, and made to disappear. Even among all these Obamaphiles, the president’s tepid response to the naked repression is making his transendental image take on earthbound proportions. It seems it had taken the left 30 years to “get it”, concerning the reality of the repressive, terrorist-supporting Iranian regime. But it was a beginning.
The sad irony is that this is the foreign policy that Democrats thought they wanted! Obama supporters had wanted the next president to ratchet back the forward-leaning, pro freedom agenda of Bush. They opposed liberating Iraq from a man who killed 8 times more innocent people than Slobodan Milosovitch had. They abhored Bush’s “axis of evil” label, although it must be ringing true for them now, minus Iraq of course.
In their moral relativistic world-view, socalled militarism----even in the name of democracy, or the toppling of tyranny----was arrogant and hubristic. “You cannot build democracy with the point of a gun” was their slogan. Tell that to the descendents of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. Tell that to the young Iranian demonstrators today. They don’t seem to be making progress with their peaceful engagement with the regime.
But even days following the crackdown on Iranian protesters, Obama still felt his conciliatory, openhanded approach was viable, despite Ahmadinejad’s condescending rebuke of the “young president”, and demand for an apology, in response to Obama’s mild criticism of his regime’s violent response to the demonstrations. Obama had avoided using the word “freedom” in his criticism of the regime’s actions. Why? Because to utter that word would vindicate the interventionist policies of President Bush. And Obama was made by touting he was the anti-Bush.
Instead, Obama had been calling for “justice"----apparantly still vested in the fallacy that this uprising is about election fraud! At his press conference, Obama even had a prepared answer to a planted question from Nico Pitney of the Huffington Post:
What we know is that a sizable percentage of the Iranian people themselves … consider this election illegitimate. It’s not an isolated instance, a little grumbling here or there. There are significant questions about the legitimacy of the election.
But people do not place life and limb on the line, aggrieved because tweedle dee dum got more votes than tweedle dee dee. They do it for----if Obama will pardon the word----freedom.
Alas, that relates to the irony I mentioned earlier: Obama----and possibly his national security team----seem to believe that the Democrat’s “let’s talk to our enemies” campaign talking point since 2006 was actually the basis for a foreign policy. Someone had forgotten to tell Obama that it was merely an election strategy----a means to distinguish Democrats from, and villify, President Bush. It was just to get them elected.
Krauthammer this week summarizes the end results of this irony. It’s a tragedy. Americans were consumed with frustration over Bush’s inability to defend his policies, and neglected to take a cold analytical look at the alternative.
Gary Krasner
HowardWasRight 
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