Hello Meir,
What a bunch of crap. Count me as one who disagrees with you.
One of the few things that President Bush has done that could be held up as an example of dealing with untrustworthy “leaders” is his total ignoring of Arafat, for years. Arafat was corrupt (millions in aid diverted to his accounts while his people lived in squallor), a profligate lier (said one thing in english, and another in Arabic – the same day) and known to be directly responcible for murder of Americans, in 1973 at the Saudi Khartoom embassy take over. Obviously negotiating with such an adversary is pointless, except for the photo op.
The Iranians and North Koreans are similarly untrustworthy negotiating partners. They are more akin to extortionists.
To think, given the last 20 years of experience, that anyone should negotiate with either Iran or the North Koreans is an excellent example of the “triumph of hope over experience”. The recent progress with North Korea, is an illusion or temporary, to slow their starvation, and help Bush look a little better, nothing more. If you think otherwise, you should consider the possibility that you are incapable of following evidence to a logical conclusion.
Negotiating with Iran, that is corrupt domisticaly and the world’s biggest supporter of terrorism is an exercise in self delusion. Obama would be real good at that, particularly the photo opportunities. Under Obama we would have another “end of history” period, as under Clinton, ignoring mounting threats. He would give us the same agressive talk with the same limp wristed responses to acts of war, such as the first World Trade Center bombing, the attempted assisination of a former President in Kuwait in ’93 by Saddam, the bombing of our soldiers in ’96 in Saudi Arabia, by Iran, the ’98 bombing of 2 embassies in Africa by Bin Laden.
Obama would be a one term disaster for our foreign policy, setting us up for nuclear terrorism.
Tom Horne
