John McCain weighs in on today’s controversy:
“The belief that somehow communications and positions and willingness to sit down and have serious negotiations need to be done in a face to face fashion as Senator Obama wants to do, which then enhances the prestige of a nation that’s a sponsor of terrorists and is directly responsible for the deaths of brave young Americans, I think is an unacceptable position, and shows that Senator Obama does not have the knowledge, the experience, the background to make the kind of judgments that are necessary to preserve this nation’s security.”
In a bizarre way, it seems like we’ve been transported back in time to the post-WW2 era and the Red Scare that followed thereafter.
Is McCain saying we should have no diplomatic contact with Iran whatsoever ? If that’s the case, there’s really only one option —- war.
Let’s be honest about it, if it became necessary, we could bomb Iran into the Stone Age if we needed to, but that’s supposed to be the last alternative. The first option is supposed to be diplomacy and trade and openness that will, hopefully, lead to changes in Tehran.
That, and not war, is, after all, what ultimately brought about the end of the Soviet Empire.
Or, as Andrew Sullivan puts it:
Obama should not, in my view, concede the premise here. He should have a debate about whether in fact it is a good idea for the president of the United States to keep dialogue with our enemies as an option. What you see in McCain’s and Bush’s rhetoric is an idea that diplomacy and statecraft are somehow about conferring legitimacy on people and regimes anathema to us, as opposed to advancing the West’s interests by a variety of methods: force of arms, diplomacy, alliances, etc. They seem wedded to a dramatic rather than pragmatic view of foreign policy.
Diplomacy, not war, is what won the Cold War after all.
