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I don't have a problem with it. None at all.
...Democrat nominee, let's talk about one of his more troubling (for me anyway) proposed policy initiatives; negotiating with our enemies.
Senator Obama's victory speech last Tuesday turned decidedly to the general election campaign. After all but clinching the Democrat Party's nomination for President, his speech sounded more like a convention nomination speech than a primary victory speech, I suspect some of the same themes will be repeated in Denver this summer.
So, who else caught this passage?
Okay, for the uninitiated, our enemies in World War II were Nazi Germany, headed by Adolf Hitler; fascist Italy, headed by Benito Mussolini, and militarist Japan, headed by Hideki Tojo. FDR talked directly with none of them before the outbreak of hostilities, and his policy once war began was unconditional surrender.
FDR died before victory was achieved, and was succeeded by Harry Truman. Truman did not modify the policy of unconditional surrender. He ended that war not with negotiation, but with the atomic bomb.
Harry Truman also was president when North Korea invaded South Korea in June, 1950. President Truman's response was not to call up North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung for a chat. It was to send troops.
Perhaps Sen. Obama is thinking of the meeting FDR and Churchill had with Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in Tehran in December, 1943, and the meetings Truman and Roosevelt had with Stalin at Yalta and Potsdam in February and July, 1945. But Stalin was then a U.S. ally, though one of whom we should have been more wary than were FDR and Truman. Few historians think the agreements reached at Yalta and Potsdam, which in effect consigned Eastern Europe to slavery, are diplomatic models we ought to follow. Even fewer Eastern Europeans think so.
When Stalin's designs became unmistakably clear, President Truman's response wasn't to seek a summit meeting. He sent military aid to Greece, ordered the Berlin airlift and the Marshall Plan, and sent troops to South Korea.
0 for 2. So, let's contrast Kenendy's pre-presidential military and politcal experience with Obama's paper-thin resume. Maybe Obama is thinking of Kennedy's 1961 summit with Khrushchev in Vienna. That summit was a disaster for resasons that bear intense scrutiny. Opposite of looking to this as validation of Obama's policy, I think Vienna is actually a fair comparison and warning against Obama's expressed intentions as President of the United States.
The closest historical analog to Sen. Obama's expressed desire to meet, with no preconditions, with anti-American dictators such as Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the trip British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French premier Eduoard Daladier took to Munich in September of 1938 to negotiate "peace in our time" with Adolf Hitler. That didn't work out so well, did it?
And the United States has been talking with Iran right along in any event. It's not for lack of communication that Iran has been conducting its war on the United States. It is amazing the media haven't pursued Obama on this subject, or challenged him on his repeated assertion that we're not talking or haven't talked with Iran. Okay, not so much "amazing" as unconscienable.
And, when Obama invoked past Democratic presidents in his speech Tuesday night, he started with Roosevelt but omitted Johnson, Carter, and Clinton. Moving on from the Clinton era is part of the thesis of Obama's candidacy, so the omission is understandable. Of past Democratic presidents, none has set a better example of the pitfalls of "talking to our enemies" than Jimmy Carter, both in his presidency and his travels since, right up until that sham meeting with Hamas last month, (though Carter probably would not acknowledge that his interlocutors are our enemies).
Obama may not be knowledgeable enough to know he doesn't want to emulate Roosevelt at Yalta. Perhaps he believes that Roosevelt's name sanctions whatever action he can attach to it. But Obama is smart enough to know that he doesn't want to profess a desire to emulate Jimmy Carter, if only on political grounds. In substance, however, it seems to me that the president Obama most closely resembles on this point is Carter.
This certainly will be an issue in a general election atmosphere.
I don't have a problem with it. None at all.
The problem with your positions is that Obama doesn't want to 'negotiate' with anyone. Your argument would be rock solid if you could find the word 'negotiation' in any of Obama's speeches. I guess we could continue to ignore aghmedinajid (whatever his name is) or we could sit down with him one time and explain his limited options. Or we could the neocon appraoch and invade his neighbor which apparently hasn't stopped him from talking about blowing up Isreal..
You've got to admit that Obama's references (and he could clear this up by explaining what he means by "talk") tend to lean more to negotiation than ultimatum.
And, if that's the case, it's already being done. Europe engaged Iran for a damn long time without any success. Our State Department has talked until it's blue in the face. If Iran had shown any inclination for cooperation, I'm sure a meeting with the President could have been possible...but, instead, they've remained defiant and have continued to bluster about Israel and inflame the region through their proxies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza.
What would be the point of lending prestige to that nutjob by our head of state meeting with him?
Really? I'm shocked.
Your unwillingness to be open minded never shocks me anymore.
You've got to admit that Obama's references (and he could clear this up by explaining what he means by "talk") tend to lean more to negotiation than ultimatum.
I do agree that he should explain himself better so the right wingers will stop proclaiming he wants to negotiate with terrorists
Yoni is saying "If ya gotta shoot, shoot. Don't talk."
Which is a fine, memorable line for a great spaghetti Western movie scene, but not as the strategy for the most dominant military power in world history, guranteed to kick any country's ass (kicking insurgents/terrorists' asses is a lot more difficult. 6 years in Afghanistan, 5 years in Iraq, and the asses still aren't kicked)
Of course, the little chicken is all for shooting as long as he's not the one shooting or being shot at.
Iran knows it will be destroyed if it initiates any attack, as a state.
I say talk, because in any case Iran won't shoot. Their infrastucture, and many 1000s of their people, wil be obliterated.
Iran will do lots of proxy shooting, eg, today in Beirut.
How will dubya solve that, by more shooting? Lebanon's a disaster.
What exactly is dubya's approach to Lebanon? Is there one?
Shooting is always the solution, like in Afghanistan and Iraq.
we don't negotiate. we build a giant stack of lies, invade, blowup as much as we can, build a new stack of lies (because the old lies are stale and inaccurate) and point the finger at anyone else but ourselves.......it's an oil thing.
I concur but it'll fall on deaf ears. The right wingers will keep on saying it over and over again.
why would you want him to clarify any of these statements? these are the people that would never vote for him under any cir stances.
That is a correct statement.
this is going to be a disaster if he becomes president. even more incentive to hold my nose and vote for McCain, hoping that Huck gets the VP nod
also, we still don't know if Obama is the nominee, Operation Chaos continues!
- Mars
Because we're going to attempt to persuade those who might vote for him that he's wanting to negotiate with terrorists unless he clarifies.
Why wouldn't he clarify if, in fact, his intentions are different?
Luckily for the Yoni and/or the blog he ripped his opinion from, Obama forgot to include Reagan in that list, who did talk with our enemy, the Soviet Union.
Yes, and with results. Gorbechev tore down the wall, abandoned his insistance that we abandon SDI, ins uted peristroika, and dissolved the Soviet Union.
Reagan's points were non-negotiable...they were an ultimatum. Another reason to believe Obama isn't talking about giving Iran an ultimatum, he didn't include Reagan.
Obama isn't Reagan and Ahmadenijad isn't Gorby.
yep, if ron were alive he'd rip W a new one for selling us out to china. then he'd look at obama and think it's time we had another smart guy in office.
Yeah, right.
"Gorbechev tore down the wall"
Russia collapsed around him, he had little to do with it, when the Germans (not Gorbachev) broke through the wall, bankrupted and powerless Russia could not nothing.
Russisa was bankrupted and powerless because:
1) Russia invaded Aghanistan and got their asses kicked, spending many billions and causing serious civilian objections due to the very high loss of Russian military.
2) a huge drop in Russian hard $ revenues due to the West reducing oil demand after the Iranian oil shock of the early 80s. Russian ruble was not tradeable. Russian oil sales through the 70s and early 80s kept Russia going on oil hard $$. When the oil price collapsed, so did Russia. Reagan and Gorbachev had little to do with it. The Russian system was simply unsustainable.
No Boutons, Reagan is the SOLE reason communism ended..
He is the principal reason the Soviet Union collapsed. Communism still exists in Cuba, China, North Korea, and elsewhere.No Boutons, Reagan is the SOLE reason communism ended..
But, can we get back to what Obama's intentions are with our enemies? What could he say to Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah, or Al Qaeda that would change them from their current courses of action? Something that's not already been said.
did the USSR attack us?
- Mars
also typical strategy by liberals: LETS BASH REAGAN GUYS EVEN THOUGH THE DEAD GUY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE TOPIC AT HAND!
- Mars
Which begs the question why Republicans like to treat Ahmed like he is Gorbachev with hundreds of nukes pointed at the U.S....Obama isn't Reagan and Ahmadenijad isn't Gorby.
Are you trying to make people think you caught all of this yourself or what? Put the link to Yahoo that you copy+pasted this from
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