Against Obama, Again

On James Baker III:

Here we see that Kim du Toit has a minor rant (by his standards) on the subject.

Of course, the youthful pundit was born in 1990 or something, so he probably thought Abraham Lincoln won the Vietnam War. Needless to say, he spluttered and babbled, but essentially conceded the point to Colmes.

Which is where I wanted to shoot the TV with my 1911. (From the kids’ rooms: ”Mom! He’s yelling at the TV again!”)

The two simplest answers for Colmes’s question came immediately to my lips:

Baker III has never been a conservative. Like his erstwhile boss, Bush 41, Baker is a liberal Republican and internationalist, and he would almost always prefer negotiation to confrontation (Gulf War I excepted);

If Baker did spend all that time talking to Assad, it sure as hell didn’t achieve anything—Syria continued to threaten Israel, and continued to fund and support the thugs of Hezbollah and Hamas.

And then, the counter-question for Colmes: “If an experienced, wily diplomat like James Baker III was unable to achieve any palpable results by talking to a terrorist-supporting regime like Syria, what makes you think that the rookie Obama, with no foreign polcy experience, could achieve any better results?”

Views about Mr. Baker vary somewhat. I might have put it differently:

"When you have marched on a road of bones, then you can usefully barter with an enemy. Your foes will see you standing at the end of that road, and they will imagine where it might yet lead if an end to it isn't negotiated."

If our interlocutor fails to get the "road of bones" reference, I'd add, "Don't you write about American politics? If you aren't doing the required reading, there's nothing I can do for you."

This is the same reason that Israel can negotiate with Syria, now. They bombed Syria's nuclear reactor. If President Obama wants to blow up some Iranian reactors as a precondition, he can talk all he wants after that. That's the time to talk.