The Willingness to Meet

Senator Barack Obama has taken a great deal of heat for his position that he'd meet with leaders of enemy nations. The notion that there are countries America shouldn't communicate with is a curious one. Talking, after all, isn't the same as breaking bread. Yet Obama has been called everything from naive to an appeaser for saying he'd talk to the leaders of Cuba, North Korea, Syria, and (God forbid) Iran.

In order to best assess what Obama proposes, we ought to take a moment and look at what the Bush policy of refusing to talk without preconditions has wrought. The answer is an American foreign policy in shambles. Has not talking to Iran derailed their nuclear experimentation? No. How about their whack talk about Israel? Nope. 

Bush says Syria has been offering aid and comfort to the insurgency in Iraq. He won't talk to President Bashar al-Assad either. How then does he explain the fact that Israel has been holding secret talks with the Assad government for the last little while? Could it be the Israelis understand something Bush and his buddy McCain don't?

Obama has had to tinker with this central component of his foreign policy in the face of relentless criticism. He shouldn't have to. America's enemies have shown they won't back down simply because we won't talk to them. And we all know speaking to the enemy isn't the same as sleeping with the enemy. 

As long as you are dealing with nations from a position of strength, what's the problem?