Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Talk, talk, talk

Several former secretaries of state argue that we must talk to Iran. Michael Ledeen of NRO sets them straight:

"5 former secretaries of state agree we should talk to Iran. The five are Kissinger, Baker, Albright, Christopher, and Powell. Apparently not a single one of them is willing to say that we've been talking to Iran for thirty years, with no apparent positive result. They should all be ashamed of themselves for misleading the American people into believing that "talking to Iran" would be a new policy, or that it has any realistic hope of advancing our cause."

What remains amazing is that there are those who think that talking, in and of itself, with sworn enemies like Ahmadinejad's Iran is somehow good in and of itself; that somehow talking produces good mojo, or something. And yet there's little evidence that this is the case. (Ask the ghost of Neville Chamberlain how productive it was to have talked with Adolf Hitler in 1938.) It's like this kind of thing is an article of faith or diplomatic theology, or something.