pretty please, with sugar on top

Samantha Power, a distinguished and eloquent author and academic and supposedly a close adviser on foreign policy to Barack Obama, suggests that we “rethink” Iran. Perhaps not surprisingly, considering who she is advising (the King of Hope), her expert “advice” is also founded on hope—and nothing but,, as she herself admits in this pathetic, intellectually dishonest, and useless piece in Time magazine [e.a.]:

A new Iran policy should start with the premise that any country behind a problem can also be behind a solution. No aspect of the Iraq quagmire can be resolved without Iranian involvement. Washington has a better chance of modifying Iran’s influence in Iraq–and Afghanistan, the Palestinian territories and Lebanon–than of immediately halting it.

To do so, we need to broaden the range of policy tools we draw upon. That means refraining from redundant reminders that military force is still “on the table,” which only strengthen the hand of hard-line Islamists and nationalists. It means broadening cultural contacts with the Iranian people, bypassing the regime through Voice of America and the Internet. And it means trying high-level political negotiations, something the Bush Administration has so far shunned. Supporters of engagement should not equate dialogue with concessions. We should ask international negotiators to insist–as we did with the Soviet Union during the cold war–that Iran address human-rights issues as well as security concerns. It’s true that earlier attempts at engagement have produced few dividends. But what negotiations can do is diminish perceptions of U.S. arrogance and remind the world of the urgency of getting Iran to cooperate on issues of shared interest, from preventing state failure in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan to caring for Iraqi refugees.

Dear Samantha Power:

Your candidate repeats this cute phrase over and over again on the stump: that it is stupid to keep trying the same things over and over again and to expect a different result.

Let me remind you that

a) successful negotiators (like, for example, John Edwards) never take anything off the table before beginning negotiations.

b) recent cultural exchanges have led to Americans being jailed and then intimidated after their release

c) Iran has a tendency to change “negotiators” just as negotiations begin to get somewhere (i.e., just as Iran is tempted to make some compromises)

d) international “negotiators” are working against the businessmen in their own countries, who are writing contracts with Iran right and left, now that the NIE declared Iran kosher.

e) “diminishing perceptions” of U.S. arrogance, such as for example Bush’s recent Middle East trip, are a PR exercise in futility. Photo ops and talk are cheap. People the world over are not as stupid as you think.

The Iranians don’t want to deal. They want to rule, with an iron “Islamic” fist—over people who are not interested in their manner of governance.

Stop selling false hope. You are not doing your candidate—or our country—any favors.