The Bush administration is ignoring the best traditions of our history in dealing with the enemies of our nation. We spent decades negotiating with the USSR even though there were more than 5000 nuclear warheads aimed at this country. Can anyone imagine what this would would be like had we not negotiated throughout the Cold War?
Iran wants a nuclear weapon to have middle east bragging rights now that Saddam is out of power. A nuclear weapon for a third world nation gives that nation legitimacy in the neighborhood as a whole. In the case of India and Pakistan it is more of an ultimate threat similar, but on a smaller scale, to the Mutual Assured Destruction or MAD in our recent past. The nukes keep the peace so to speak.
It is folly for President Bush not to have direct talks with North Korea and Iran as well as the Non-Alqueda Iraqi insurgents. We cannot invade either North Korea, Iran or win a war with a determined insurgency without levelling the nations involved. By not talking, we doom ourselves to an endless struggle with nations determined to have Nukes and with continued loss of life in Iraq.
By talking, I do not advocate giving in to demands. We have a military as a last resort of diplomacy and a State Department as a means to resolve our differences in a peaceful manner. There are many examples of when force is needed. Afghanistan and the Taliban was one such case, but with the new nuke states, why not talk first? President Bush will not succeed by staying the course. The course is wrong and moving farther away from resolution with each passing day and with each American soldier killed.
Instead of the world becoming a more peaceful place, it is far more dangerous than at any time in the past 40 years. Not since the the darkest days of the Cold War with B-52s on flying nuclear alert, have we been so far from the peace we have sought throughout our history.
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