If you have nothing of substance to rebut my arguments with, why waste your time on gibberish? I did indeed read your points. I noted that you mentioned the Iranian’s sudden anxiousness to make nice… and you know what I did then?

Wait, this might shock you a little…

I answered you.

Here’s a little tip about negotiation for you, Pat. You never negotiate from a position of weakness (as Obama now is seeking to do). You negotiate from a position of strength. Bush wasn’t “ignorant” or “arrogant” in spurning their false advances, because as the Iranian ‘negotiation’ tactics with the IAEA showed, they shamelessly used good faith negotiations simply to buy time.

They lie, and lie, and lie and then finally, they sit back and laugh when they’ve accomplished their ultimate goal, as they will with the nuclear weapons they and the IAEA swore blind they weren’t building.

In the case of 2003, they thought that the United States was going to enact regime change in Iran. So they sought to buy time with false negotiations so that they might raise men, arms, speed their nuclear program along and pray like mad that we got held up in Iraq. It wasn’t a heartfelt yearning for detente. It was a cynical ploy, one of many they have successfully leveraged against the west over the years, successful thanks to well-meaning but gullible people like you.

Cynicism. Manipulation. Lies. Is this the kind of behaviour you do admire, Pat? Bush dealt with them openly and honestly. So long as they were a murdering, homophobic, misogynistic, terrorist-sponsoring nation, he wanted nothing to do with them. He didn’t respond to their offer with scorn, however, as the Iranian spokesman did to Obama. Did you notice that, Pat?

C’mon, don’t be so self-loathing and naive. There are bad guys in the world, buddy, and your nation isn’t the capo de tuti capi of them. No matter how much you wish it were so.

The delusion you’re suffering from is a common form of denial found on the left of politics. It holds that if only the USA stopped being mean, or did something completely differently, or didn’t do something, or whatever, then everything would be hunky-dory. It’s a rather US-centric view of the world and it willfully overlooks the capacity of other nations, people and cultures to be powerful, driven actors in international affairs. Driven by their own goals and ambitions; very few of which are anywhere near as decent and altruistic as those which drive your nation. Just because your nation is the current superpower doesn’t mean it is controlling the entire world, Pat. That’s patently impossible for any nation, no matter how powerful.

Please re-read my article to learn why this is a bad time to try negotiating with Iran. You consider yourself a principled person, right? Try to learn more about the Iranian regime under the mullahs. See if you still think it a government which is worthy of entreaties from the President of the United States.

Now Obama wants to try talking instead of ignoring. That does not signal appeasement. It’s the first step in confronting them.

You note the date of that offer? Quite a few belligerent nations (Libya, North Korea, Syria, etc) were all of a sudden anxious to start negotiations with the United States, who had just overthrown the Taliban in Afghanistan and had invaded Iraq. We were now in the business, or so the world thought, of overthrowing despotic regimes.

It would be a terrible mistake, in your eagerness to find something human and decent in the Iranian regime, to overlook such details. They were afraid for their existence. That is the ONLY reason that they made such offers and as such, were rightly ignored.

I’m no apologist for Obama. This article is a critique of his naive and misguided attempts to engage a nation which stands nothing to gain from meaningful negotiation. Obama compounds this foolishness with negligence when he agrees to cease the development of ABM technologies and their emplacement in Poland (which would have pleased Czar Putin no end).

He’s made a bad start. All I’m refraining from doing is demonising him in the way the media demonised Bush. I want to rob liberals of the ability to point to any real ‘Obama derangement syndrome’. I think we should keep the bar of debate raised quite high and attack Obama and his people strictly on the issues. To this end, I won’t speculate wildly (as have some have done) as to his state of mind.

I simply don’t believe that he despises his country. I think he’s had a lot of bad influences in his life and hopefully he will be able to drag himself away from them. If he was the radical America-hating loon that some make out, I think we would have seen a very different approach to the one he’s so far taken.

From an article here: http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/11/17/a_grand_bargain_with_iran.php:

Iranian leaders offered to stop “material support to Palestinian opposition groups…from Iranian territory” as well as “pressure on these organizations to stop violent actions against civilians within [Israel’s] borders of 1967.” And it offered to accept the Arab League “Beirut declaration”—a Saudi-sponsored initiative in March 2002 which proposed a comprehensive peace, including the establishment of normal relations, with Israel based on Israel’s withdrawal to pre-1967 war lines.

What Iran wanted in return for these concessions was an end to U.S. “hostile behavior,” including the “axis of evil” tag and its designation as a “terrorist” state, as well as end to commercial sanctions, “decisive action” against anti-Iranian MEK terrorists, especially on U.S. territory, and access to peaceful nuclear and other technologies. Finally Iran wanted recognition of its “legitimate security interest in the region”—a phrase that has been interpreted as referring to security guarantees against U.S. attack and recognition as a party to future security arrangements in the region.

Michael MacConnell
Obama said how he is going to disarm the world. He said he was going to reduce our nukes, then the other countries will be EMBARRASSED and reduce theirs. Our first line of defense will be EMBARRASSMENT!!!!! I’m not sure if we will deliver it by artillery, bomber, or missile. Oops!! I forgot. We wont’ have those for long. I guess the countries will have to come and get their EMBARRASSED themselves.

I can hear our enemies now cringing because they will have more nukes than we do and would be too EMBARRASSED to use them. You do have to admit Obama’s plan is a lot cheaper than Reagan’s plan was.

1) What they’ve always wanted. Regional supremacy and a reduction in American influence in the region.
2) This article wasn’t about the role of Russia and China in Iran. It was about the error Obama was making in attempting rapprochement.

Two things are missing from MacConnell’s article. 1) What does Iran really want? and 2) What is the role of Russia and China? What do they want and why are they helping Iran?