Nixon met with Leonid Brezhnev and Mao Tse-Tung, and Reagan met Mikhail Gorbachev, but the Republicans seem to think talking to your enemies is a sign of weakness. And they intend to make their no-diplomacy policy an issue in the campaign. Here’s their reaction to Bill Richardson’s endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama.
The GOP slammed the endorsement. Republican National Committee spokesman Alex Conant said it serves as a “reminder that Bill Richardson brags about meeting with hostile foreign dictators – just like Barack Obama aspires to do,” a reference to the senator’s statements that he would meet with Iranian leaders.
“Obama and Richardson have very different resumes, but they share the same wide-eyed approach to America’s enemies,” Conant stated. “Photo ops with Castro, Chavez and Kim Jong-il have not made America safer in the past – and won’t in the future.”
Ironically, less than a year ago it was Gov. Richardson that the Bush administration tapped to talk to the North Koreans when their policy there got into trouble. Of course, the Republicans were a bit confused by that whole episode.
“Talk about retreating to a Clinton policy,” said Republican political consultant Ed Rogers. “Next they will want Hillary to sponsor heath-care legislation,” he said, referring to the Democratic front-runner, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), and her ill-fated bid to overhaul health insurance as first lady. Rogers said he was puzzled about why President Bush would complain yesterday about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) visiting Syria while praising Richardson for going to North Korea.
Cognitive dissonance is a way of life with Republicans and it doesn’t seem to trouble them most of the time. They will attack Barack Obama for his willingness to sit down and take the measure of our enemies. In part, this is because the GOP is the party, not of national security, but the national security industry. A defusing of international tensions is never in their interests.
But it’s also a way for them to portray themselves as tough on national security. They seem to forget that Henry Kissinger held secret meetings in Paris with Le Duc Tho and other North Vietnamese emissaries for years on end during the Vietnam War.
Beginning in 1969, Mr. Tho held recurrent secret negotiating sessions in Paris with Henry A. Kissinger, then national security adviser to President Richard M. Nixon. The two men initialed the armistice accord on Jan. 23, 1973, after working out its terms, and President Nixon called it “an agreement to end the war and bring peace with honor.”
Mr. Tho and Mr. Kissinger were jointly awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for that work, though fighting between Vietnamese forces continued. Mr. Tho, the first Asian chosen for the honor, refused it, saying that “peace has not yet been established.”
I suppose the modern day equivalent would be Condi Rice holding secret meetings with Ayman al-Zawahiri or one of his top lieutenants. Not a very useful analogy, I know, but I hope it makes the point that the Republican attitude toward North Korea, Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela is nothing more that empty political posturing. It’s not like Obama is going to sell them TOW Missiles or send Ollie North to deliver them a Bible and a cake.
