Your UN At Work …
Well, here’s one decision the Obama administration can be glad they made – boycotting this mess:
As Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for the eradication of Israel in his address to the United Nations anti-racism conference which opened it week long event in Geneva on Monday, delegates walked out, hecklers wearing clown-wigs shouted ‘racist’ towards him and were escorted out by security personnel and his speech was continually interrupted.
But hey, let’s sit down and talk with this fool – it’ll make all the difference in the world.
The UN – your third-world debating club at work.
~McQ
You have no room to talk about holocaust deniers when elsewhere you’re rationalizing and debating the merits of torture.
It’s f*cking TORTURE you twits.
Warning one, Tom D – we’ve made it clear this blog is designed to be safe for work – you want to use words filters pick up, then use “*” in the vowels or something. Another “in the clear” one for you and you’re gone. I’ve edited your previous comment.
There’s no specific torture involved in lining an entire town up in front of a pit and machine gunning them.   The ‘goal’ of torture isn’t the same as the goal of eradicating a race, population or class. Even if the person(s) committing the genocide enjoys the killing as much as they’d enjoy just good old fashioned torturing.
Genocide is torture?Â
What an idiot.
And the day you find ANY of us, ANY OF US debating the morality of GENOCIDE, notify the press. You idiot.
Tom D:Â WTF does that have to do with Iran’s genocide plans?
I’m sure TomD hasn’t even read what was written about torture in the posts. He just saw the word “torture” and decided everyone was gung-ho about it.
Capitalized TORTURE is the worst!
I am amazed that the EU countries walked out on Im-a-dinner-jacket’s comments. Whatever happened to diversity and tolerance?
Will we still chat with Iran without preconditions now?
YES. Yes, we totally should. We get a dialogue started, then we start asking for stuff. We try persuasion. It’s called diplomacy.
Conversation, wealth, global influence, and military force are all a part of diplomacy. In the current world, we’ll need to start with conversation.
Honestly, I have no hope that we can get anywhere serious with Iran at this. But there is ZERO harm in talking, and it will show that we are willing to play the game. Making demands before engaging in talks is pretty much a no go at this point. Our current military engagements have given Iran a great deal of power of influence in the region. They can afford to laugh us off.
Sabre rattling is NOT going to work, and could conceivably make things worse. None of our allies will support threats right now, so talking is our option.Â
Now, following the resolution of our current wars and a restructuring and revitalization of our forces, I have no doubt we can start making demands with better odds of success. Against a single, tangible foe, our forces and influence can be overwhelming, to say the least. BUT…reality check. We just cannot afford another war or big conflict right now, much as it may hurt our national pride to say so. So, we should talk, hope for results, and play our other cards when we are better positioned to us them. “Go it alone” and “us against them” is not always the best strategy.
No disrespect intended to those who think otherwise.
And, no, I am not an Obama supporter, except insofar as he is my President. I am black, a libertarian who believes the Dems continuously betray the prospects of my people while the Repubs fail to respect them, and I am a career Sailor getting close to retirement. I have sailed into many of my country’s conflicts alongside my brother Marines and the Air Force. While I KNOW we are the greatest warriors on this Earth, I STILL want my nation to talk first in almost all but the most dire of circumstances.Â
To jaw-jaw is of course better than to war-war, but my concern is that TAO and his brainless followers think that jaw-jaw is an end in itself: if we can only get the Iranians (or the norkies, or the Taliban, or anybody else who hates us) to sit down, we can persuade them to play nice. If our position was that we’ll talk in order to avoid war, then I’d feel a bit better about it (and I suspect that Tehran would be rather more agreeable). But our position seems to be no war at all; what reason has Tehran to jaw-jaw at all?
Further, jaw-jaw takes time. I believe that this is exactly what Tehran wants: time to complete their nuke program. THEN they might talk, knowing that the nuclear ace they hold gives them a MUCH better bargaining position.
Finally, I believe that diplomacy only works when both sides have realistic cause to believe that there is some reasonable compromise possible. What terms can we and the mullahs agree on? They want a free hand to build a Bomb, and they want Israel wiped off the map. It seems to me that there’s not a lot of room to negotiate on these things.
Docjim, are you burning the midnight oil? I’m stationed overseas, so my time of day is probably different from most posters…
Once again, I find myself in agreement with you…for the most part. Like I said, I have no real hope of getting anywhere serious with talk. Just saying that, at the current time, our options are pretty limited. We tried “our way or the highway” in our current conflicts, and it didn’t work (at least, not yet. We’ll keep trying).Â
Talking seems to be the best way to START. Clearly, we don’t want to get caught up in North Korea style stalling for time, but we have to start somewhere. And when (if) we do finally exercise other options, we should do so with clear and realistics goals and a strategy based on more than emotional responses.
A qualifier, since I got off the topic of the thread in my above comments: yes, we should absolutely avoid any conferences or summits when we know with complete certainty that the topics will be anathema to our national interests. The Administration made an excellent call with this one.
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