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Obama's New Rules

5:53 PM, Mar 7, 2008 • By MICHAEL GOLDFARB
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More straight talk from Samantha Power, the now departed foreign policy adviser:

Like Vieira de Mello, Obama is "comfortable crossing boundaries". They also have in common a willingness to talk to dictators; and here Obama needs to be careful. When the former Yugoslavia was disintegrating, Vieira de Mello was so obsequious to the Serb leaders Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic that he was nicknamed "Serbio".

"In his relationship with evil, he almost got a little seduced," she admits. The way to do it, according to Power, is "to be in the room with the bad guys but not to check your principles in at the door". Obama would engage with Iran's President Ahmadinejad. He would sit down with North Korea and Syria. Is there anyone he wouldn't talk to? "Not among elected heads of state. He won't talk to Hamas, but he would talk to Abbas."

Why draw the line at (democratically elected) Hamas? Obama explained earlier this week while campaigning in Texas:

"You can't negotiate with somebody who does not recognize the right of a country to exist so I understand why Israel doesn't meet with Hamas."

More by Michael Goldfarb

How unbelievably arbitrary. Obama has pledged to negotiate directly with Iran, and yet Iran does not recognize Israel's right to exist. Nor does Syria. Obama famously said that it was a "disgrace" that George W. Bush had not spoken to the (undemocratically installed) leaders of Iran and Syria. Yet even by Obama's own logic such negotiations ought to be precluded. After all, Iran has not only pledged to wipe Israel from the map, but it is building the capacity to do so.

HT: FP Passport