The most disheartening part of this terrible overture is that it is teeing up like an Iraq re-run.
There was (is) elaborate evidence of Iraqi ties to and promotion of terrorism. The administration, however, decided to put all its eggs in the WMD basket in the run-up to the war. When no WMD were found, no one cared any longer that Saddam had been a terror monger.
So here we are three years later. The administration decides to break off from a years-long policy of no official dealings with Iran. How is it pitched? ”Give up your WMD aspirations (in this case, nukes) and we’ll make you various concessions.” Not one word about terrorism.
Iran was a professional terror-monger when Saddam was still on training wheels. They did Khobar Towers (with their wholly owned Hezbollah and probably al Qaeda, too), killing our 19 of our airmen. They have trained al Qaeda for years. They have given al Qaeda safe haven for years — allowing a massive escape of al Qaeda operatives from Afghanistan in 2002. They are still harboring al Qaeda. They are, as we speak, abetting the terrorists fighting American and British forces in Iraq.
Yet, not one word about terrorism. And this less than a week after President Bush at least appeared to reaffirm the Bush Doctrine at the West Point commencement.
I suppose one could argue that this discrediting of our anti-terrorist rhetoric might be worth enduring if the overture to the mullahs actually had any chance of ending their quest for nukes. (I wouldn’t agree with such an argument, but I’d admit it was colorable.) But of course, the overture never had a prayer of accomplishing any such thing.
If we’re not going to follow the Bush Doctrine, we should really stop talking about it.