So the other day I wrote about my belief that a large part of why the situation in Tibet and the response of the Chinese leadership to that situation have both been negative and sliding downhill. A quickie review: It’s because the leadership completely doesn’t get where the Dalai Lama is coming from.
They don’t understand that a free people isn’t at the beck and call of His Holiness. They’re so used to their own world and without exposure to his, or to the style of thinking in the west, the only paradigm that they have to apply to the situation is their own- and that’s one where when they say “jump”, the people don’t even stop to ask “how high?”
I think that in the long run, we can work on this problem by having lots of exchange programs- as many as anyone will allow- so that people can see how “them guys over there” really live, work, and play. More importantly, they can see how those other guys THINK.
I have confidence that the American-western-European style of a representative democracy with lots of personal liberties will prove itself, over time, to be the system that people want to emulate and live under. People should be free to choose their religion, their political thoughts, their profession, their leisure activities.
But you know what? These exchange programs will help US to understand other nations as well. First of all, we’ll have contacts in those places. We’ll have learned more about them and how to deal with them.
Until we can build these kinds of things, though, we are left with the present-day situation. How do we deal with it?
This question has come up recently in the Presidential campaign. The other day, while making an official speech to the Israeli Knesset (legislature) during a state visit, President Bush engaged in a little mudslinging towards Barack Obama.
W suggested that we shouldn’t be talking with other nations, even (or especially) those who seem to oppose our ideas, will, and goals. Specifically, he meant Iran, and he also definitely meant to slag on Barack Obama and the Democratic Party.
Now, put aside for a minute just how outrageous (and stupid) it is to use an official diplomatic venue to engage in cheap political grandstanding. And put aside that even the Bush Administration’s own (wiser-than-W) officials, like Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, think that talking with Iran (or other nations) is a good thing.
Let’s just think about what Bush said:
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. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ”Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.“ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.
Keep in mind here that Bush isn’t talking about us negotiating with, say, Osama Bin Laden; it’s plainly aimed at Obama, because Obama has been in the news lately discussing the fact that yes, sure, he’d meet with Iranian and/or Syrian officials to try and work things out with them.
Now, let’s turn to what Barack Obama has to say about this. It’s an answer to a reporter’s question about the matter:
And that is a position. I mean, what’s puzzling is that we view this as in any way controversial, when this has been the history of U.S. diplomacy, until very recently. This whole notion of not talking to people, it didn’t hold in the 60s, it didn’t hold in the ’70s, it didn’t hold in the ’80s, it didn’t hold in the ’90s, against much more powerful adversaries; much more dangerous adversaries. I mean, when Kennedy met with Khrustiev, we were on the brink of nuclear war. When Nixon met with Mao that was with the knowledge that Mao had exterminated millions of people. And yet we understood that we could advance our national security interests by at least opening up lines of communication. And this was bipartisan. And it’s a signal of how badly our foreign policy has drifted over the last eight years; how much it has been skewed by the rhetoric of the Bush Administration that this should even be a controversial proposition. Yes.
First of all, how impressive is it that this is basically an off-the-cuff answer, thought up right there on his feet, at a press conference? After 8 years of Bush, I’m not entirely sure our nation can handle the shock to its system that a President Obama would bring; we’re not used to having a leader who A) is smart B) can speak without sounding like a moron and C) has a logical policy.
But what’s more important is what Obama is saying. Think about it. Compare it to the Bush-McCain line (and note that McCain’s people were all over Bush’s speech almost immediately; the White House no doubt provided advance copy to the McCain campaign so they could try and pile on and take advantage of it).
Bush/McCain (or, as I think I’ll start calling him, McSame) have been blathering that talking with Iran is a mistake. Obama says “look, we were able to sit down and talk with the Soviets, for crying out loud… that’s not really a controversial position for US foreign policy”.
I can’t wait for an Obama/McSame campaign fight. Obama should publicly challenge McSame to a series of debates- not just the usual 2 or 3 for a Presidential campaign season, but a half-dozen. Maybe one every 3 or 4 weeks. The more the voters can compare Obama to McSame, the better.
Barack gets it. We *must* try and engage our would-be opponents in dialogue. That doesn’t mean we should let our guard down *too* much; just think how much differently World War II would have gone in the Pacific if we had planned better for the possibility of the Japanese attacking us and not had so many ships parked like sitting ducks in Pearl Harbor. We might have been able to defeat Japan a full year or more earlier.
But that doesn’t mean it was stupid for us to be negotiating with Japan, even immediately before they nailed us. It means it was stupid of us to not be READY for the war… but trying like hell to avoid it is not stupid. It’s smart.
And there’s a world of difference between “appeasing” an enemy (like giving away Czechoslovakia to Hitler) in a way that only encourages him to increase his aggression, and working out a deal where your “enemy” doesn’t have to BE an enemy and the two sides can learn to live with each other.
I can hear the ignorant now: “But Paul, you don’t get it. Those people want to KILL us, and they don’t care about anything, 9/11 blah blah blah 72 virgins blah blah blah.”
Well, to those folks, I have to say WAKE THE HELL UP. The people who drove airplanes into our buildings on 9/11 are entirely different people than the leaders of Iran or Syria. For example, the Syrian President spent over a year in London studying opthalmology, and his wife (while ethnically Syrian) was born and spent pretty much her entire life in the United Kingdom.
The Syrians have been a big thorn in everyone’s side… but to lump them in with Osama’s nutjobs is totally ignorant of the realities of the world.
Likewise, Iran in the past has been one of the most secular nations in the Muslim world. There were times when they allowed all kinds of personal freedoms. There’s still a strong movement for liberalized policies on religion, the economy, and so forth in Iran. Iran actually has seats in its Parliment set aside and slotted for Jews, Christians, and Zoastrians. Again, to simply say “Iran wants to kill all of us” is ignorant of the realities of the world.
And Barack Obama gets this. George Bush and John McCain don’t get it. And that’s why Obama will be a much better President than McCain.
