My friend Jack Farrell blogs today about what should be a central question in any McCain-Obama town hall or debate or tea party or sing-along or whatever: Suppose the Israelis launch a preemptive attack against Iran -- what does the United States do?
There are two fundamental schools of thought on foreign policy, the optimistic and the pessimistic. The latter is what we'll call the Dick Cheney outlook: Our enemies are fearfully strong, the thinking goes, and democracy, with its emphasis on things like openness, checks-and-balances and collective decision-making are too weak to operate on a global stage.
Farrell adopts the optimistic view:
Is hope too risky?We Americans invented nuclear weapons; used them, and had a brief atomic monopoly. There was a time, in the late 1940s, when we could have attacked the USSR before the Soviets got the bomb, as some of our military leaders suggested. But U.S. presidents recognized that, with or without our atomic arsenal, we would ultimately, inevitably lose that war. Napoleon and Hitler proved that the Russians are just too big and tough and proud a people to enslave. And even if, for a time, we succeeded, we would not recognize the America we had become.
So we adopted a policy of deterrence, put faith in our ideals, and waited the Soviets out. From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, we talked and talked and talked with our foes, and let freedom speak for itself. And, yes, for much of that time Americans lived under an existential threat. We do today.
But in the end, guess what: freedom won.
Jack's good, but the optimistic, secure view of foreign policy has been stated with more eloquence -- 45 years ago today, in fact. As I note at U.S. News & World Report, today was the anniversary of John F. Kennedy's great speech on peace, which he delivered at American University in 1963.
Americans should not take "a distorted and desperate view of the other side," Kennedy warned, not "see conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible, and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats."
Communicating beyond merely exchanging threats? What -- without preconditions? That's just crazy talk.
--James Madison
--James Madison
http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/speeches/19460602%20Address%20to%20Reserve%20Officers%20Association%20Chicago%20Illinois.htm
--Dwight David Eisenhower
The way chosen by the United States was plainly marked by a few clear precepts, which govern its conduct in world affairs.
First: No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.
Second: No nation's security and well-being can be lastingly achieved in isolation but only in effective cooperation with fellow-nations.
Third: Any nation's right to form of government and an economic system of its own choosing is inalienable.
Fourth: Any nation's attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government is indefensible.
And fifth: A nation's hope of lasting peace cannot be firmly based upon any race in armaments but rather upon just relations and honest understanding with all other nations.
......."Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms in not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children".
.......These words are from a Republican president of knowledge,experience and wisdom: Dwight David Eisenhower
Muslim extremists today have just as little disregrard for their own lives as they do for ours. All else equal, I would much rather be sitting across the table from Gorbichov than Ahmadinejad, knowing that the latter ended a speech to the UN with a prayer that he help hasten the Apocolypse.
I'm not saying that war is ever the best option, but it seems to me that the idea we can accomplish anything substantial by simply talking to someone who calls our country "The Great Satan" is as "a distorted and desperate view of the other side" as any.
Also, I in know way intended to imply that all Muslims hate America or any such claim. Furthermore, I agree with your premise that "unless people of good conscience talk instead of make war we are all lost." Though as I believe I made it clear, I do not see Ahmadinejad as a person of good conscience.
We need to reverse our Yosemite Sam foreign policy. I do not blame Iran for wanting Nukes. Our history with them - installing and propping up the Shah, arming Iraq against them, calling them part of an axis of evil - we occupy 2 countries that border Iran - all that is pushing Iran to get something - anything - to deter a US invasion.
We need a President who will get very serious about talking through this situation very quickly.