4 Responses to “Arthur Herman”

1. Geoffrey Britain says:

   March 14, 2009 at 5:17 pm

   There are many aspects to foreign policy that those in the west inclined toward appeasement fail to appreciate:

   First, that those inclined toward aggression… generally believe themselves to be in the right. The Iranian mullah’s really do believe much of what they say and from stoning ‘adulterous’ women to hanging apostates, homosexuals and political opponents…they really do fully justify their actions as completely appropriate. They believe that it is us who have to change, not them. And the degree of change demanded is fundamental enough to amount to abandonment of our identity.

   Secondly, the ‘tenets’ of the vast majority of the west’s ‘progressive’ ideologies are anathema to radical Islam. Western liberals are the one’s least able to effectively reconcile our differences with radical Islam. From the Mullah’s point of view, liberalism represents all that is wrong with the west. To accept liberalism is to abandon their religion and core set of beliefs. Radical Islamics view liberals with complete disdain and contempt.

   Thirdly, our country’s foundational principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are so diametrically opposed to the mullah’s premises, that the prospect of reconciliation is ‘dead on arrival’. There’s a reason why they call the U.S. the ‘Great Satan’.

   Finally, negotiation and diplomacy are perceived as weakness, the behavior of people who have not the intestinal fortitude to take what is rightfully theirs…appeasement is always seen as an indication that aggression can succeed.

   The geopolitical realities of two such fundamentally opposed civilizational premises guarantee protracted conflict.
2. lester says:

   March 14, 2009 at 9:23 pm

   speaking of iran

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0ZhPokhPLs&feature=related

   ^miracle of imam hussein. that’s a pretty neat trick. the info says they ran out of gas or oil or whatever they were using but the flame kept coming out. thus it was a miracle.
3. nacl says:

   March 15, 2009 at 8:54 am

   No, the idea of a three year US boycott of Iran is not right.

   It was not the US that turned huffy and puffy and above speaking to Tehran. The Iranians were the ones who grew indignant, who broke relations, who captured and held 52 of our diplomats hostage for 444 days, who started up the Great Satan chant and to this day see it as their destiny to bring the US low.

   It has been their policy not to speak to us, except to disparage and insult.

   Ambassador Crocker twice sat down in 2006 to speak to them about Iraq. The first session lasted 4 hours. The Iranians simply and flatly denied all the financing, training, weapon supply and Quds fighting they were up to their ears in, and after those sessions they increased their mischief.

   In November 2007 Secretary Condi Rice went to a conference in Sharm el Shech, in the hope of starting a conversation. When the Iranian foreign minister saw that the Egyptians had seated her directly opposite him at a dinner, he rose and left the room explaining, a violinist in the room was immodestly dressed.

   We keep propagating the idea that we don’t want to talk to them; it’s the other way around. And the reason is, they know what we want of them, and want no part of that, under any conditions.