Friday, May 23, 2008
BOXED-IN, SET-UP FOR GOTCHA
The media and the candidates, blindly working together, have boxed-in debate to exclude talking to Iran "without conditions" (say, with only an agreed-agenda) and likewise exclude talking to Hamas. Even Obama, who avoided being trapped with regard to talking to Iran, has allowed himself to be boxed in like the others with regard to talking to Hamas. Are we to talk to no one who has bloody hands, or, who short of that, makes bloodthirsty speeches? We could choose to express our (justifiable) displeasure with their deeds and their words by taking such a stand, but is that going to be helpful? Sooner or later, we may expect peace will look better than purity; and then strive to turn the terrorists of time past into respectable citizens of time present and future, as happened finally in Northern Ireland and decades ago with the end of the British Mandate in Palestine. What the candidates should try for is to keep as free a hand for negotiations as possible, steering clear of traps that invite Gotcha..
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2 comments:
It is indeed a silly debate--the one about conditions--in part because the only way to establish the conditions of the discussions is by talking, without, er, conditions.
The idea of talks with preconditions is not necessarily self-contradictory, for two reasons.
First, giving someone a laundry list of conditions they need to meet in order to communicate does not by itself constitute a 'discussion.' Look at it this way: let's say Bush decides to talk to Ahmadinejad without conditions, and then in that meeting he simply shows up with a list of conditions he thinks Iran should meet in order for discourse between the two countries to continue. Would we look at that meeting and say that there was actual 'talking' or substantive discussion? It seems we might reject that as an effort at a real 'talk' and call it a one-sided communication.
Second, to claim that talking about pre-conditions for a talk is on par with the talking that will go on once conditions are met is to misunderstand what it means for two individuals, particularly in the context of international relations, to ‘engage in talks.’ Communication in and of itself conveys a statement between the two speakers. We can disagree about what that statement is specifically, but at minimum we can say that it is a statement of acknowledgement of some sort: when you talk to another person, you are acknowledging them as status-holders. The question is, what kind of status? Are you simply recognizing her as capable of engaging in responsive interaction? Or are you according her a more substantive, moral status when you talk to her?
I think people who don’t see a problem with talking to Iran without conditions take the former view—that talking to Ahmadinejad only conveys that you regard him as capable of some sort of rational discussion. Whereas those in the Clinton-McCain-Bush camp see it as more of the latter—that engaging in talks with another international leader dispenses upon that leader a status of political legitimacy of some sort. To talk to Ahmadinejad is to acknowledge that he is the type of person capable of reasonable political discourse, and this kind of acknowledgment does not square with the kinds of comments Ahmadinejad has made, particularly regarding the state of Israel and the Holocaust.
This doesn’t mean, however, that the Clinton-McCain-Bush camp is correct. Rather, it just means that if/when talks with leaders like Ahmadinejad take place, it is important that they be placed in the correct context. Talking with people we disagree strongly with can be productive and even morally necessary (as Braybrooke writes, ‘peace over purity’), insofar as the talker drives a distinction between recognizing the necessity of talking to someone whose beliefs she finds morally repugnant, or in a stronger sense ‘evil,’ and recognizing or lending indirect support to those beliefs themselves.
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