Abu Kais at Michael Totten’s blog:
Senator Bill Nelson (D), the first in a group of at least 4 senators who want to try dialogue with Syria, has been dragged through the mud by dictator Bashar Assad. Over the next few days, John Kerry, Arlen Specter and Christopher Dodd will join him, in an attempt to “convince the Assad regime to “cooperate” in Iraq. As soon as they finish reading the Baker-Hamilton report…
Hopefully (sarcasm), Kerry and the rest will convince Assad where Nelson failed, and Assad will continue to feel important, and frequented by US Senators programmed to blindly oppose their president, without offering a clear alternative.
The senators have described their mission as a “fact-finding” trip. Here’s a suggestion. Read those intelligence reports. Or have one of your interns translate a Lebanese newspaper. Maybe visit a Lebanese blog or two. Just don’t expect yourselves to achieve anything but wasting taxpayer money by visiting Assad.
What’s next? Tea and a holocaust story with Ahmadinejad?
The foundation of any country’s foreign policy should – obviously – be dialogue. There are many different cultures in the world and all countries have different interests, and those cultures and interests need, as far as possible, to be reconciled with each other. The value of dialogue is difficult to underestimate. However, there are situations in which dialogue simply isn’t useful. The goal of dialogue is to find common ground or at least to understand each other better and, as a result, to find a compromise. This automatically means that both sides have to be willing to give in. Why would Syria want to give in? The current situation in Iraq is not that bad for Syria.
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