What a day

What A Day:

I was occupied a good portion of the day with family business, so imagine my surprise this evening to sit down and read the news:

A) President Bush, speaking before the Israeli legislature, gave a foreign policy speech that 'aides privately admitted was an attack on Obama.'



"As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland, an American senator said..." Heh, yeah, that's pretty clear.

It's a fair attack, delivered in a speech in Washington, DC, in the President's role as the head of his party. An attack on a political opponent delivered before a foreign government, where a President speaks as the head of state for all Americans? That's the sort of thing we didn't used to do.

B) This Israeli parliament burst into applause.

C) Joe Lieberman said Bush was exactly right. (That link is to Think Progress -- if you read the comments, it may be helpful to note that the "Nazi" they are referring to is Lieberman, not the actual Nazis mentioned by the President.)

D) Obama was outraged at the suggestion that he might try to appease foreign enemies. He also said that his promise to meet personally with Iran and others "without precondition" was not to be read as appeasement, as there would be "preparation" for such talks.

E) John McCain asked just what Obama wanted to talk to Iran about, if it wasn't appeasement.

Allahpundit is right to ask two serious question. First:

A serious definitional question: What separates “appeasement” from negotiation generally? The right, I take it, would characterize negotiations with any aggressor as appeasement since it creates a perverse incentive by rewarding a malefactor for misbehavior. Want to talk to President Obama? Simple: Start your own nuclear program, build a proxy army in a neighboring state (or better yet, two neighboring states) and wait for him to beat a path to your door. The left, I’m guessing, would define the term more narrowly, as negotiation with an aggressor without a demand that he concede anything already gained. Signing a peace deal with Hitler in exchange for his promise that he won’t do anything bad from now on would be appeasement; signing a peace deal with him in exchange for his withdrawal from Czechoslovakia wouldn’t.

And second:

The question McCain should be asking is what Obama intends to do if that deal is struck and then we discover that Iran’s cheating, just like it was cheating in concealing its nuclear program in the first place prior to 2002 and just like it’s guaranteed to try to cheat post-bargain given how effectively nuclear facilities can be concealed these days. And instead of whining about “hypocrisy,” Obama should hit him with the counterfactual: What exactly is Maverick’s plan for dealing with them? We’re on the clock here; they’ll have a bomb circa 2015 at the latest. Is he going to fold his arms and wait for Israel to deal with it or is he prepared for airstrikes, an admission Obama doubtless would love to wring out of him? To which McCain’s reply, of course, will be to ask if Obama’s ruled out airstrikes no matter how dire the situation is.

The real policy on Iran appears to be "hope they fall into internal revolution," which is certainly possible. If they do, the investment in building Iraq's military as an regional ally will more than pay for itself.

Hope is not a plan, though; and tyrannical governments have proven very resilient at crushing internal revolts. So yes, what is left if not appeasement? Are airstrikes on the table? An offensive similar to the one that took down the Taliban, where we don't just hope for an internal revolt but openly aid one? Negotiation with preconditions? What preconditions?

Iraq is what everyone has been talking about, but Iran is going to be the big question that the next President faces. It's valuable, then, to see the general election campaign starting off with a chance to see what the candidates have to say about it.