I Have To Keep Reminding Myself

By Cernig

IIan Goldberg at Democracy Arsenal has a pretty good post today on why it's worth talking to even the bad guys. Spencer Ackerman loves it and continues to point out, correctly, that the Right have successfully catapulted the meme that negotiation is equivalent to appeasement. Spencer writes:

Bill Richardson or Richard Holbrooke, for instance, have deserved reputations for being straight gangster around a conference table. That�s not to say that you should sit the Iranians down and threaten them and that�s it, but part of conducting high-stakes diplomacy is knowing when to theatrically raise your voice as well as when to be polite and respectful. Somehow the right has gotten the country to think that the diplomatic corps consists of nothing but effete sybarites, but having a guy with a nickname like �The Bulldozer� on the negotiating team is partly how you get other countries to do stuff they don�t want to do.

That link of Spencer's is to a short piece on Holbrooke's part in the Yugoslav negotiations, and it has a quote from the Buldozer himself which illustrates just how bloodthirstily wrong the extreme Right are on this:

"If you can prevent the deaths of people still alive, you're not doing a disservice to those already killed by trying to do so," ..."And so I make no apologies for negotiating with Milosevic and even worse people, provided one doesn't lose one's point of view."

Which is exactly right. But that's the bit the Right doesn't want you to think about.

But there's another rightwing meme doing the rounds, and unfortunately IIan falls for it.

In the end, McCain�s plan is basically the Bush plan. If we continue down this track then Iran will simply continue to enrich uranium and at some point whether it be three, five or ten years from now an American President will be faced with the choice of having to either bomb Iran or let it go nuclear. Instead, what is needed a comprehensive rethink of America�s strategy.

A comprehensive rethink is indeed needed, but we're not going to get that by swallowing the propaganda whole or by repeating rightwing "false choice" arguments that the only choices are a nuclear-armed Iran or an attack. As nuke expert Cheryl Rofer wrote in comments to my post today on what we should take from Putin's assertion that Iran isn't seeking the Bomb:

I know that the idea that Iran might not be making a bomb becomes more and more seemingly remarkable with every declaration by the Bushies that they are, but that is indeed where all the evidence points.

The latest IAEA report said so quite explicitly.

But I have to keep reminding myself too.

Reminding ourselves that progressives should be challenging the rightwing's narrative that "negotiation = appeasement" on both evidentiary and logical grounds is the right place to begin a "comprehensive rethink", not after conceding them both premise and form of argument.