It’s a strategy that has been much maligned, and rightly so. And, as Helene Cooper points out in the NYT, the rhetoric doesn’t exactly match the substance.
While Mr. Bush and his advisers have repeatedly scorned the idea of talking to enemies without first getting preconditions met, administration policy over the last seven years has been far more nuanced. In fact, the United States under the Bush administration has shown a sliding definition of just when it is beneficial to talk to whom.
Under Mr. Bush, the United States has held direct talks with Libya (which has admitted responsibility for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103, which killed 270 people); sent envoys and a warm presidential letter to North Korea (which detonated a nuclear device in 2006); and even participated, through American diplomats in Iraq, in talks with Iran (which the United States has accused of backing attacks against American forces in Iraq).
American diplomats do not talk to Hezbollah or Hamas — both militant Islamic organizations that Washington considers terrorist groups. But while the Bush administration long ago withdrew its ambassador from Syria, the United States does business with its government, which backs Hezbollah, and which the State Department has designated a state sponsor of terrorism.
So what was Mr. Bush talking about last week when he compared negotiations with terrorists and radicals with “the false comfort of appeasement”?