Monday, February 11, 2013

Rejecting Liberal Platitudes

Liberals are fond of berating conservatives for not wanting to negotiate with enemies. "If you don't make peace with your enemies," they said, "who do you make peace with?" Preconditions were bad, they said. Just talk! Ahmadinejad has just violated liberal bumper sticker wisdom.

Iran will not talk to us about their nuclear program unless we accept a precondition:

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Sunday that he is ready to have talks with United States if the West stops pressuring his country, the latest in a series of hints from leaders in both Washington and Tehran about the prospect of direct bilateral negotiations over the Islamic Republic's controversial nuclear program.

However, Washington is highly unlikely to relax sanctions on Iran — and Tehran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say on key state decisions, says that his country won't negotiate under threat. This makes it hard to envision how talks could take place.

Huh. From Ahmadinejad's point of view, he's right. And our left is wrong.

Ahmadinejad understands that talks with an enemy should be for the purpose of achieving a victory through non-military means. Victory is the objective whether you jaw, jaw, or war, war. Again, unlike our left which isn't likely to believe our objective is good, doesn't even see the foe as an enemy (just a friend we haven't made yet, right?), and is prone to viewing talking and an agreement--any agreement--as the ends rather than the means to achieve a victory.

Ahmadinejad may be an evil, nutball, with American blood on his hands, but at least he is not confused about talking with an enemy.