Mark, as I wrote in my earlier post ”my comments aren’t specifically directed at the Obama doctrine (such as it is).” As I thought I had made clear, that’s a different topic, so, no, I was not trying to smuggle irrelevant regimes or dictators into the discussion. Now that we have moved on to the topic of Obama, however, I would stress that I too have serious concerns about the tack that he is proposing to take. To put these into a broader context, if a rather simplistic one, what matters is not to whom America speaks, but how. Like you, I’d worry about Obama’s ‘how,’ but I’m also worried about George Bush’s ‘who.’ The current administration has often seemed to have elevated its willingness or unwillingess to talk with an adversary into a point of principle, an attitude that is, I believe, a mistake. Unfortunately, that’s an attitude that can be detected in some of the criticism of Obama. That too is, I believe, a mistake.