Our Foolish Chocolate Cake Foreign Policy
13 Jun 2006
I know you’ve heard it a thousand times, “Those who forget the past are doomed to relive it.” Still, despite its droning repetition and ringing in our ears, America suffers from chronic amnesia. Albert Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” The Bush Administration’s current overtures toward Iran constitute a replay of failed policies of the past that produced disastrous consequences. They are also, in my opinion, proof positive of the current administration’s insanity.
In spite of the fact that Iran is on a mad dash toward nuclear armament and is recognized by our government as the number one terrorist state in the world, the Bush Administration has decided that the best way to deal with Iran is by offering them a grab-bag full of goodies. Like a scared kid handing over his lunch money to the neighborhood bully, President Bush, frightened by his falling poll numbers, is offering to pull out of taxpayers’ pockets and handover to the mad mullahs of Iran a fistful of American trinkets. These trinkets include American Boeing airliners, technology with both civilian and military applications, help in building nuclear reactors, and a guaranteed supply of fuel to a country that boast of the world’s largest oil reserve.
Obviously, America has forgotten about the Bible and chocolate cake Robert McFarlene took to Teheran as a good-will gesture from the Reagan Administration to the Ayatollah Khomeini. Khomeini was so touched that he unleashed a reign of terror that introduced to the modern world Islam’s child soldiers and suicide bombers. Granted, Boeing airliners and nuclear reactors make for a far better good-will gesture than chocolate cake, but if Bush expects better returns from the Iranians than Reagan got he’s delusional.
Bill Clinton tried this madness of mollifying the malevolent in 1994 when he offered North Korea millions of American taxpayer dollars in exchange for Kim Jong-il’s promise to abandon his nuclear weapons program. The rest is history: Kim Jong-il crossed his fingers and promised, Clinton was snookered and delivered the dough, and North Korea used American aid to build uranium bombs.
Why should any sane person give credence to the promises of madmen like North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il or Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—who believes the Holocaust was a hoax, Israel should be wiped off the map, and halos appear over his head when he speaks at the United nations? Clearly, no sane person should. Thus, anybody who does must be mad.
Ever since Neville Chamberlain proclaimed “peace in our time” on the basis of Adolf Hitler’s promises, other naive ninnies have assured us that they too have purchased peace by paying the world’s worst scoundrels to make phony promises. Unfortunately, peace cannot be purchased at such bargain prices, exacting instead the much higher toll of human blood and bravery. The wise man understands that peace is unattainable as long as unappeasable evil is offered carrots rather than ultimatums. The fool, on the other hand, believes he can purchase peace from double-dealing despots for the extremely low price of chocolate cake, Boeing airliners, and nuclear reactors.
Don Walton
|
