Meeting the ‘Enemy’

Posted on March 27, 2008 by Lance

All depends on your point of view. From Mark Halperin:

Asked negotiating with certain foreign leaders such as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Obama said:

“I think people understand the notion of talking to our enemies,” Obama said. “If FDR can meet with Stalin and Nixon can meet with Mao and Kennedy can meet with Khrushchev and Reagan can meet with Gorbechav, then the notion that we can’t meet with some half-baked dictator is ridiculous.”

Filed under: Barack Obama, Geopolitics, Iran

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6 Responses to “Meeting the ‘Enemy’”

  1. Norm, on March 27th, 2008 at 6:57 pm Said:

    “half-baked dictator” OMG I love this line!

  2. Mike O, on March 27th, 2008 at 8:09 pm Said:

    A half-baked dictator whose Qod forces are in Iraq, training and supplying those that are killing American troops in the field. None of the 3 examples given had that going on in the background (the Vietnamese were being supplied primarily by the Russians, though I’d be happy if Obama wants to be compared to Nixon)..

  3. Lance, on March 27th, 2008 at 9:09 pm Said:

    The Russians were murderers as were the Chinese and we allied with them, which makes me want to say Obama is an idiot for using these comparisons.

    I don’t think we should be “talking” to him, though. The traditional American position should be to ignore him and withdraw from Iraq too.

  4. Mike O, on March 27th, 2008 at 10:16 pm Said:

    Sorry, Lance; but with my Nationalist Chinese In-Laws (who just won the elections in Taiwan), I can assure you, we have never allied with the current government of China. And my grandfather was investigated by the FBI for saying the we should let the Russian Communists and Nazis just kill each other off. The weapons FDR gave Russia were used to take China from the Nationalists later.

    However, ignoring the mass murderers of the world only emboldens them and- since no other power in the world seems to care how many millions any one given tinpot kills off- humanitarian reasons alone require they be contested. Mind you, the current Iranian leadership does not fall in the ‘mass murderer’ category yet, but they’re working awfully hard to get the capability. And they are currently working to kill Americans

    I cannot look in the eyes of the kids I know that are refugees from the Rwandan genocide and the Ugandan LRA war and ever think we can ‘ignore and withdraw’ from the problems of the world. 9/11 alone points out the reach of those problems with ‘tinpot dictators’, if nothing else.

    How we address them is definitely debatable, however.

  5. Lamont B Dumont, on March 28th, 2008 at 5:10 am Said:

    Silly Barak - he appears to adhere to the archaic notion that foreign policy should be run though State. In our Modern Empire, foreign policy is the province of DoD.
    Mike O, Lance, pick a direction.

  6. Mike O, on March 28th, 2008 at 8:31 am Said:

    State has never been worth squat without the DOD (or old War Department) all the way back to the Tripoli days. That has never changed. If you don’t give them the option of talk to members of State or members of the DoD, they’ll never even listen to State.

    Lamont, it must be nice to live in a world unexposed to the fact the ‘tinpot dictators’ by their very nature, tend to be unreasonable men. Of course, you must think those hangings of gays for being gay in Iran (by steel cable, construction crane, and in public) was merely creative Photoshopping.

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