You never can be certain in advance that negotiations on difficult circumstances will be successful, but you can be certain in advance if you don’t negotiate that your problem is going to continue and maybe even get worse.
Lots more at SPIEGEL, including his support for prisoner exchanges that would reward the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers and this penetrating analysis of the dark supremacist motives underlying Bush’s attempts to politically empower 50 million Muslims:
[T]he fundamentalists believe they have a unique relationship with God, and that they and their ideas are God’s ideas and God’s premises on the particular issue. Therefore, by definition since they are speaking for God anyone who disagrees with them is inherently wrong. And the next step is: Those who disagree with them are inherently inferior, and in extreme cases — as is the case with some fundamentalists around the world — it makes your opponents sub-humans, so that their lives are not significant. Another thing is that a fundamentalist can’t bring himself or herself to negotiate with people who disagree with them because the negotiating process itself is an indication of implied equality.
Indeed. Which is why our willingness to negotiate with Iran is so disgusting.
He’s also pretty high on the Freshmaker, I’m sure you’ll be surprised to know.
Update: Here’s what negotiation’s gotten us: “Iran to Refuse UN nuke resolution.”
