A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

We should be appalled by now that the contretemps involving President Bush and Senators Obama and McCain has lasted as long as it has. By now, cooler heads should have prevailed and forcefully responded to Senator Obama that a plain reading of the language of President Bush's speech before the Knesset makes clear that Senator Obama was in no way implicated in the President's comments concerning the appeasement of dictators and terrorists. Indeed, White House officials have said on background that if anything, the comments were directed at Jimmy Carter in the aftermath of his recent meeting with Hamas and the only politician who was directly criticized in the oft-repeated quote from the President's speech was Republican Senator William Borah, who was apparently never disabused from the notion that if only he could have met with Hitler, Borah's powers of eloquence alone would have been sufficient to stop World War II from ever having broken out.

But of course, we are still in the midst of the contretemps and still dealing with the blasts of outrage and fury from Team Obama and its allies in the aftermath of the President's speech. It is one thing to campaign with a chip on one's shoulder, but after a while, this gets rather tiresome, does it not?

It should. But shockingly enough, the controversy appears to have kicked into second gear now, with Team Obama and its allies now claiming that if President Bush wants to slam appeasers, he should start with his own Defense Secretary and Senator McCain, who allegedly have adopted Senator Obama's negotiating strategy in toto.

Of course, these claims are ridiculous when examined closely. Let's consider first the comments made by Secretary Gates:

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the United States should develop some leverage on Iran and then hold talks with the regime that the U.S. government says supports global terrorism and sponsors insurgents in Iraq who are killing American troops. VOA's Al Pessin reports from the Pentagon.

Secretary Gates says the United States needs to recognize that Iran will need to get something out of any talks, so U.S. officials should not expect to simply go into talks with Iran with a list of demands. He also said more people-to-people exchanges could help build such U.S. leverage on Iranian leaders.

The secretary spoke to the American Academy of Diplomacy Wednesday evening, but reporters were not allowed to record the event for broadcast.

He said the 2006 Iraq Study Group's recommendation for more engagement with Iran has not been implemented. Secretary Gates said the United States might have missed an opportunity to engage with Iran during the term of former president Mohammad Khatami. But he indicated it will be more difficult to have constructive talks with Iran today, under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Secretary Gates said that is why the United States needs to develop some leverage.

It should not require explanation and analysis to reveal that Secretary Gates's approach to negotiating with Iran departs significantly from the approach advocated by Senator Obama. The latter has famously said that he would be willing to meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions--a comment that was famously (and justly) criticized by Senator Clinton. Secretary Gates, by contrast, recognizes that before any such negotiations take place, "leverage" over Iran must be created. Senator Obama would go into discussions with Iran relying only on the audacity of hope. Secretary Gates, by contrast, would actually have a plan on how best to negotiate with Iran.

All of this, of course, would come as a revelation and a surprise to people like Andrew Sullivan, who these days is more a cheerleader than he is an analyst who sifts through evidence carefully and thoughtfully in order to make reasoned conclusions. But Sullivan's misrepresentations and misinterpretations of the issue notwithstanding, it remains crucial to continue stressing that his preferred candidate would enter into negotiations with Iran without a clear and serious strategy of (1) what we could hope to get from the negotiations, (2) what we might be forced to give up, (3) at what point we might be expected to conclude that the negotiations are going nowhere and walk out of the negotiations as a consequence and (4) what our best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA) might be. If Senator Obama has actually worked out these details of his negotiating plan, he hasn't been kind enough to reveal those details to the public and as mentioned earlier, given Senator Obama's comment that he would meet with Ahmadinejad without preconditions, one might be forgiven for thinking that not too much in the way of details has been worked out in advance of any such negotiations. I am not opposed to talking to Iran per se. But again, if you want to talk to Iran--as with any other set of talks between nation-states--you have to have a negotiating strategy. Here's mine, and I'm not even running for President. Where is Senator Obama's?

As for the allegations concerning Senator McCain, they revolve around the argument that Senator McCain has said that the United States will have to deal with Hamas. These allegations stem from a recent Washington Post editorial that was penned by former Clinton State Department spokesman Jamie Rubin, who claims that in an interview with Senator McCain, the Senator stated that he would be willing to sit down with Hamas and have a nice chat. Thus, presumably, if Senator McCain is a hypocrite for attacking Senator Obama's foreign policy positions and negotiating platform.

The charge does not hold water. As pointed out here, Senator McCain did not call for unconditional talks with Hamas, a point that is reinforced here. Lou Dobbs doesn't get much right, but you know what they say about stopped clocks, don't you?

Note in the video interview with Jamie Rubin that Senator McCain states that part of any interactions with Hamas "will be dictated by how Hamas acts, not by how the United States acts." If that isn't a clear indication that Hamas has to give up the implementation of terrorism and asymmetrical violence in order to be treated like a genuine negotiating partner, I don't know what is.

But the Noise-Machine that is in the possession of Team Obama and its allies does its very best to elide the above points--incontrovertible as they are. Instead of having the bulk of the mainstream media establishment point out that Senator Obama was in no way slighted by President Bush's Knesset speech and that there is--contrary to what appear to be popular opinion--a great deal of daylight between Senator Obama's position on talks with rogue states and factions on one hand, and the positions of Secretary Gates and Senator McCain on the other, we get bizarre and hackish efforts to conflate the two positions. In addition, we get oodles of media attention fulminating over an attack-that-never-was on Senator Obama while ignoring all sorts of personal assaults against Senator McCain and others who occupy a position on the center-right of the American political spectrum. We also hear a lot about how Senator McCain's famous temper will surely bring about World War III itself, while at the same time ignoring the supposed Apocalypse-inducing temper of other politicians who have a "(D)" next to their names, including one who fairly recently, was President of the United States. For those who wonder why it was necessary to create an alternative media establishment like the one that we have in the Blogosphere, the issues discussed in this post provide a clue. And concerning those who tut-tut about the supposed avalanche of character assassination that is allegedly being directed at Senator Obama, one waits for them to denounce with attendant fury the distortions of the positions of Secretary Gates and Senator McCain and the personal attacks launched at Senator McCain--his exemplary service to the country notwithstanding--and other center-right politicians and thinkers who are accosted as Naziesque by people who once were thought respectable (and still are, if only because there is no media coverage of their overly exuberant rhetorical pyrotechnics).

Until such denunciations are in the offing, let us be spared the lectures. The would-be lecturers are not impressing anyone.