Increasingly, the Western world has attitudes rather than policies. It's one thing to talk as a means to an end. But these days, for most midlevel powers, talks are the end, talks without end. Because that's what civilized nations like doing – chit-chatting, shooting the breeze, having tea and crumpets, talking talking talking. Uncivilized nations like torturing dissidents, killing civilians, bombing villages, doing doing doing. It's easier to get the doers to pass themselves off as talkers then to get the talkers to rouse themselves to do anything.
And, as the Iranians understand, talks provide a splendid cover for getting on with anything you want to do. If, say, you want to get on with your nuclear program relatively undisturbed, the easiest way to do it is to enter years of endless talks with the Europeans over said nuclear program.
President Bush understands the problem with talking with vicious enemies who will never agree to stop being vicious enemies:
Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.
Our Left insists that talking to enemies isn't the same as appeasement. I surely agree with that statement. But when you invest so much in talking as our Left does, by the tenth conference you've lost the ability to distinguish between talking and appeasing. And by the fifteenth conference, you don't even see the Hamas guys in suits (for example) you are talking to as enemies at all, really. It gets so hazy by then, that surrendering seems like statesmanship.
I trust President Bush to talk to our enemies. I'm not sure who else I'd add to that list.
