The October 1986 disarmament summit in Reykjavik. Reagan is at left. Yakovlev sits to Gorbachev's left on the photo's right side. Photo source: Yakovlev family archives
Wow, do I ever disagree with the statement Pres. Bush, said yesterday before the Israeli parliament:
“Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along... We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”Much of the president's meaning is obscured here by rhetoric. If one substitutes "terrorists and radicals" with "enemies," then Bush and his nearly eight years in power suggest that it's OK to kill, and otherwise antagonize, our enemies. But we shouldn't talk to them. Or attempt to understand them. Or the reasons for our disagreement.
Let's set aside for a moment the fact that even the Bush administration hasn't subscribed to this logic. Others have pointed out the State Department's diplomatic dealings with Iran. And in the last year or two, while America and Russia were doing their posturing, Bush was engaging quite congenially with Pres. Putin.
Aside from that, the "lessons of history" in fact support the notion that we should be seeking ways to engage with "the terrorists and radicals." There is, for example, the history lesson that I recount in my book, which chronicles the role played by "ingenious argument" in convincing Aleksandr N. Yakovlev that his society was wrong all along. And the way that Yakovlev would go on to play an integral role in ending the Cold War.
So the "ingenious argument" slagged by Pres. Bush helped to end the Cold War. Funny, but I am having trouble isolating any conflicts that Bush has managed to end with his favoured tactic of unilateral war.
Comments