Bush Pulls Switcheroo - On Himself

Last August, President Bush issued bold and decisive rhetoric about Iran. As reported in The Guardian:

Mr Bush said Iran's nuclear programme would cast the Middle East "under a shadow of nuclear holocaust" and said the regime was the "the world's leading supporter of terrorism".

He followed that up in May with a speech in Israel in which he labeled as an appeaser anyone who wished to find a diplomatic solution to the problem of terrorism, and compared these unnamed people to the Nazi appeasers of World War II.



From the New York Times:

“Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,” Mr. Bush said, in a speech otherwise devoted to spotlighting Israel’s friendship with the United States.

“We have an obligation,” he continued, “to call this what it is: the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

This all fit in very nicely with Bush's saber rattling over Iran ever since his infamous "Axis of Evil" speech. Imagine, then, my shock when I read that Bush had reversed his position and that, as The Guardian reported:

The US is planning to establish a diplomatic presence in Tehran for the first time in 30 years, a remarkable turnaround in policy by president George Bush who has pursued a hawkish approach to Iran throughout his time in office.

My first thought, of course, was that George Bush must be reading my blog, since just last month I pointed out why I felt that his hard-line stance toward Iran was the wrong way to go.

The true reason for Bush's about-face is difficult to pin down. He may be trying to salvage some sort of positive legacy in the Middle East, since his "roadmap to peace" led absolutely nowhere, and his wars are at this point not at all likely to succeed in the long term. Or he may truly be interested in negotiation with Iran for its own sake, to improve the prospects for peace in the region.

Whatever the motivation behind Bush turning into one of the appeasers that he lambasted only a couple months ago, since the alternative is a march to war, this is one Bush flip-flop that I can live with.
.

Why The US Needs Obama's Foreign Policy

A lot of hay has been made by conservatives over Obama's foreign policy plans. The sentiments of the right were summed up nicely by President Bush when he stated that anyone who would have a dialog with our "enemy" was the equivalent of Chamberlain, who thought that appeasing the Nazis would avert a war.

Bush's analogy was, of course, absurd. Last I checked (though admittedly, I don't get CIA briefing on these things) Iran was not amassing troops at their border, preparing to attack a neighbor. Not even Israel.

Marco Vicenzino has an interesting article in the Turkish Daily News. In part, he states:

The reality is that dealing with Iran is less contingent upon who occupies the White House and more dependent on who wins Iran's next presidential election in 2009, and even more so upon the ultimate discretion of Grand Ayatollah Khamenei. If moderate rhetoric prevails on both sides at the early stages of both new presidencies, some form of a new direct or indirect dialogue could possibly evolve in a very gradual manner by the middle of each respective president's term.

Something that doesn't get a lot of play in the US media is the fact that Iranians elect their president. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not a dictator, no matter how much the Bush administration likes to paint him as such. The coming election in Iran is at least as important as this fall's US election to the process of peace or war in the Middle East.

In the US, we have two main choices: Barack Obama or John McCain. McCain wants to bomb Iran. He has stated as much and even sang a song about it. With McCain in the White House, the people of Iran will have real reason to fear the US. They will live every day wondering if American HellFire is going to rain down on them and destroy their homes, their lives, and their country. McCain will push for more sanctions and further isolation of Iran from the global community. If those measures have their desired effect, the people of Iran will suffer as their economy takes a serious hit.

Within that context, they will be confronted by a choice: should they elect a president who will try to bargain with the Great Satan, or should they stick with Ahmadinejad, who stands defiantly thumbing his nose at the superpower?

Fear is a strong motivator. Just look at Bush's approval ratings after 9/11. Just look at the Republican scare tactics used in 2002 and 2004. All of you conservatives, think back to the election of '04 where you were faced with the threat of "Islamofascists" and had to pick between Kerry, who wanted to find a way to reduce our military involvement in the Middle East, and Cowboy Bush, who is so tough he told the enemy to "bring 'em on." Whom did you choose?

If the Iranian people are presented with a US president who is willing to work with their leaders to meet the security interests of the region and the world, while bringing them into the global economic community so they can prosper and have better lives, would they choose to reelect the radical Ahmadinejad, or the more moderate candidate who wants to work with the US to make their lives better?

So we have to decide: do we want to put the warmongering John "Bush III" McCain in charge so he can continue saber-rattling, all but guaranteeing that Ahmadinejad will win reelection and the spiral toward war will continue? Or do we want to put Barack Obama in the White House, so he can start moving Iran, and the Middle East, toward a more moderate leadership, so they can join the rest of the global community and perhaps make the Middle East a place where the constant threat of war is little more than a fading memory?

We need Obama's foreign policy. It's as simple as that.

NOTE: For an opposite view of Obama's foreign policy, check out According To Nikki.