Treating Genocidal Fanatics Like Statesmen Is A Bad Idea (When Did This Become Controversial?)
Rick Richman unloads on the Council on Foreign Relations about their inexplicable decision to grant elite legitimacy to this decade's (and perhaps this century's) wannabe Hitler:
So: the American foreign policy establishment meets with a Hitler wannabe, gets rolled -- in a "dialogue" with a ludicrously non-responsive Ahmadinejad -- and the president of the CFR then assures the world they heard things of "considerable interest" and recommends "negotiations." How dumb can the American "foreign policy establishment" be?
We used to think that there was more or less a precise answer to this:
One last time: this isn't an issue of intention, it's an issue of how ideology and sensibility effects what information foreign policy elites think is relevant. Democratic Presidents, Senators, and Representatives get their information and recommendations from people who genuinely believe that Palestinian terrorists are blowing themselves up because of a 'cycle of violence'. They therefore recommend that Israel cease being violent, on the assumption that it will break the cycle. This is not just a misunderstanding of Palestinian intentions - it is a symptom of a flawed approach to figuring out the motivations of people who are seeking nuclear weapons to detonate in the heart of Western cities.
... but that was before the CFR invited Ahmadinejad. This is just irresponsible - ideology and myopia and investment in sophistication is one thing. But it must have occured to them, as they were mulling this decision over, to ask themselves: "what would we say if we were asked 'would you give Hitler a podium?'" But this is a confirmed trend among foreign policy sophisticates: the CFR tin ear is after all just a more severe version of the WaPo giving Hamas arch-terrorist Ismail Haniyeh column inches to make his case. We understand that there's value in hearing radical advocates of genocide pretend to not be radical advocates of genocide - but that doesn't outweigh the effects of treating these people as reasonable points on a spectrum of how Arabs react to Israel. Jeanne Kirkpatrick knew that almost twenty years ago - giving terrorists legitimacy makes them more, not less, radical and intransigent. And if you're still in doubt, ask yourself how every single person on the right could be so overwhelmingly sure that bringing Arafat to the White House would make him more likely to jerk Clinton's chain. Or how every single person on the right could be so overwhelmingly sure that giving Haniyeh a column in one of America's great newspapers would at best fail to moderate Hamas. What, they just keep getting lucky? (hat-tip to David Gerstman on the Kirkpatrick article).
So: the American foreign policy establishment meets with a Hitler wannabe, gets rolled -- in a "dialogue" with a ludicrously non-responsive Ahmadinejad -- and the president of the CFR then assures the world they heard things of "considerable interest" and recommends "negotiations." How dumb can the American "foreign policy establishment" be?
We used to think that there was more or less a precise answer to this:
One last time: this isn't an issue of intention, it's an issue of how ideology and sensibility effects what information foreign policy elites think is relevant. Democratic Presidents, Senators, and Representatives get their information and recommendations from people who genuinely believe that Palestinian terrorists are blowing themselves up because of a 'cycle of violence'. They therefore recommend that Israel cease being violent, on the assumption that it will break the cycle. This is not just a misunderstanding of Palestinian intentions - it is a symptom of a flawed approach to figuring out the motivations of people who are seeking nuclear weapons to detonate in the heart of Western cities.
... but that was before the CFR invited Ahmadinejad. This is just irresponsible - ideology and myopia and investment in sophistication is one thing. But it must have occured to them, as they were mulling this decision over, to ask themselves: "what would we say if we were asked 'would you give Hitler a podium?'" But this is a confirmed trend among foreign policy sophisticates: the CFR tin ear is after all just a more severe version of the WaPo giving Hamas arch-terrorist Ismail Haniyeh column inches to make his case. We understand that there's value in hearing radical advocates of genocide pretend to not be radical advocates of genocide - but that doesn't outweigh the effects of treating these people as reasonable points on a spectrum of how Arabs react to Israel. Jeanne Kirkpatrick knew that almost twenty years ago - giving terrorists legitimacy makes them more, not less, radical and intransigent. And if you're still in doubt, ask yourself how every single person on the right could be so overwhelmingly sure that bringing Arafat to the White House would make him more likely to jerk Clinton's chain. Or how every single person on the right could be so overwhelmingly sure that giving Haniyeh a column in one of America's great newspapers would at best fail to moderate Hamas. What, they just keep getting lucky? (hat-tip to David Gerstman on the Kirkpatrick article).
