Weaker Than He Looks
As Victor Davis Hanson points out, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is far weaker than he looks. Why, then, would anyone support validating this intractable enemy of America by entering into "dialogue" with him on any subject, when keeping up the pressure will work better -- and, perhaps, have a more desirable result?
posted by LadybugUSA at 5:25 AM
4 Comments:
One of the great things about the blogosphere is the ability it affords us to educate. That means bringing facts. The facts are the United States would be communicating with the Iranian Diplomatic Corps through its diplomatic organ the US Department of State in any negotiations about Iraq. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not the leader of Iran. He is third in the line of power in the nation behind the Assembly of Experts (Majlis-e Khobregan)and the Supreme Leader (Rahbare Enghelab). Were there ever a summit of interested parties in negotiating about Iraq at the highest political levels it would involve Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President George Bush, if at the highest diplomatic levels it would be Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Your readers can find all such information as this about countries that are not the United States, in the CIA Factbook by Googling "CIA Factbook" or going to: https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html.
And as for a reason why America would enter a dialogue with iran the best reason would be there is much to discuss.
(qcpn!)
D.T.
The mistaken assumptions in this attitude are manifest:
1) Ahmadinejad is not a powerful leader, he's a sock puppet. We would not be talking to him, but through him.
2) We are a superpower, but, somehow, there are some people and/or nations we can't TALK to without becoming weak.
3) Nowhere in the article you linked to is dialog with Iran even mentioned, much less discounted as detrimental to a policy of "keeping the pressure on".
The nature of his problems on the homefront are all the more reason to sit down with him. His, and the real power behind him, only real base is rabidly anti-US, he/they can't broaden it without significant internal improvements that only rapprochement with the rest of the world can secure. That's good for us and bad for them, for much the same reason that the iron curtain fell. When the Soviets put it up, they made happy talk about how it was protecting the east from the west, but everyone knew that it was a prison wall, thus it's failure was predictable the day it was put up. Ahmadinejad and his masters keep power by playing the bulwark against the rest of the world. Enough people in Iran believe it to keep them in power, and we are playing into their hands. Talking with Ahmadinejad/Mullahs doesn't mean that we have make bad bargains, but it does mean that he/they have to either abandon the rhetoric or have the talks fail at their expense.
We can NEVER lose by talking, only by making bad bargains or, sometimes, no bargains.
Talking to scumbags gives them credibility. It legitimizes them as a true power with whom we must deal. Scumbags need to be treated like the scumbags they are and dictated to, not negotiated with. If they are made to look like the fools they are, they lose in the fear/respect dept. at home as well. Who wants to defend a fool? When exposed for the fools they are, they would be forced into either capitulation or foolish responses, either of which works against them and for those who would see them deposed. If we should talk to anyone in Iran, it should be those we've assertained are sympathetic to the notions of liberty and foreign relations that we hold, not some compromise with those who believe an ally of ours deserves to be wiped from the face of the earth.
We should never negotiate with scumbags, only dictate to them. If we must have talks with anyone in Iran, it should be with those we've determined have the same notions of freedom, liberty and foreign relations as do we. There is no such thing as compromise with those who have sworn to see the destruction of ourselves and allies. The scumbags gain credibility and legitimacy when we negotiate with them. This is the opposite of what we should be doing TO them.
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