A Talk-Is-Cheap Foreign Policy; Obama doesn’t get it. Tiny Iran; Obama’s big learning curve.

Democrats are right to feel upset about President Bush’s appeasement accusation. It is their Achilles’ heel in this election and they know it. The foreign-policy mantra of the Obama campaign amounts to this: Talk is cheap.

Over the next five months we will see the many tentacles of such a strategy emerge and the comeback “that’s political” — as Obama has objected — will be treated with the disdain it deserves. Determining how to deal with the enemies of freedom and democracy is as political as it gets.

Would-be President Obama’s first moves concerning the state sponsors of terrorism bear repeating — from now until November 3:

From Obama’s website: “Obama is the only major candidate who supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions…. Talk to our Foes and Friends: Obama is willing to meet with the leaders of all nations, friend and foe.”

From a July CNN debate: “Would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?” Senator Obama: “I would.”

The assumption here is that the leader of the free world sitting down to talk with a leader of the unfree world is like shmoozing with a friend over a cup of coffee about some creep you misjudged on a bad date — where there’s no endgame except commiserating for its own sake.

Talking with the enemy, however, is not such an encounter. The goal is to change the status quo in your favor, either by altering the subsequent behavior of your foe or your allies.

Achieving that aim is never cost-free. The buildup to any high-level diplomatic encounter is carefully prepared and highly orchestrated. The event itself will have consequences that need to be foreseen and manipulated.

The first inevitable consequence will be the appearance of legitimacy, that is, some measure of equality and serious grievances on both sides. In fact, columnist David Brooks reported this past weekend that Obama has already referred to claims of terrorist organizations Hezbollah and Hamas as “legitimate.”

For the steep price of fostering moral confusion, what will America get in return? Will our erstwhile allies and fair-weather friends be mollified by a photo-op? Will the semblance of discourse on our side yield more chips than the boost in ratings the enemy will achieve in his own neighborhood? The answer to both questions is an obvious “no.”

So there will be a second inevitable consequence — the necessity of having to give something up. One might try to assert that the photo-op itself was the “consideration,” and the appearance of legitimacy and accompanying grievances is all you’re prepared to offer. But that position won’t fly, since having lent legitimacy to the other side, turning round and ignoring them entirely will endear you to no one.

And so you ask, What’s the least you can give? Time. Time for diplomacy. Time during which you make no major hostile moves against your foe.

And time for the foe to, say, move a nuclear-armaments program further towards completion and nuclear arms into the hands of individuals who want nothing from you except to blow your brains out. Or as the non-diplomats would describe the time spent: Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

This Obama strategy has many corollaries. High on the list will be placing the United Nations at the cornerstone of any diplomatic agenda. The U.N. will be front and center regardless of its appalling record in realizing its raison d’etre — to protect peace and security, promote human rights, and respect the equality of nations large and small. This past year the U.N. apparatus condemned the United States for human-rights violations more often than 98 percent of all other U.N. members. But in a talk-is-cheap universe, the U.N.’s endemic anti-Americanism will be sloughed off as mere hot-air or just blowing off steam. Harmless, until America looks around the U.N. for allies to stop genocide in Sudan, starvation in Zimbabwe, subjugation in Lebanon, totalitarianism in China, slavery in Saudi Arabia, torture in Burma, or nuclear-weapons programs in North Korea and Iran, and discovers that in the world of U.N. diplomacy the real villains “R” U.S.

A New York Times editorial highlights another corollary — they call it yearning for a more civilized dialogue. Iranians champion a similar thought — they call it a dialogue among civilizations. Naturally, Iranian authorities consider their own country — in which stoning, public hanging, and cross-amputation are legally-sanctioned punishments — as one of those civilizations. A civilized dialogue with anti-civilization President Ahmadinejad brings to mind U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour’s September 2007 visit to Tehran for a “Human Rights and Cultural Diversity” conference. The day after she listened attentively to the president’s speech and dialogued with his officials, the regime executed 21 people, stringing up the bodies on cranes in public places.

In other words, talk isn’t cheap at all. And a President Obama’s stunningly specious foreign policy will be paid for in blood, sweat, and tears.

— Anne Bayefsky is senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. She also serves as the director of the Touro Institute for Human Rights and the Holocaust and as the editor of EYEontheUN.org.

‘It’s terrorism, stupid.” Nothing short of blunt talk will do in light of Sen. Barack Obama’s comments this past week on Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah. They are the most significant indication to date of the looming catastrophe for American national security posed by an Obama presidency.

Here is Obama in his own words, speaking in Pendleton, Oregon on Sunday night: “Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union… In Iran they spend 1/100th of what we spend on the military. If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn’t stand a chance.”

How does one begin a course for a presidential candidate in Terrorism 101? Where has Obama been for the past three decades during which the greatest threats to peace and security have moved beyond the sphere of state actors operating alone? After 9/11, why doesn’t Obama recognize the capacity of relatively small entities to wreak havoc, at comparatively little cost, on a nation as large and strong as America?

Despite Obama’s claim to be a foreign-policy realist, his fancy foreign-policy footwork contains as much realpolitik as a dancing sugar-plum fairy. Obama is keen to explain his hankering for an early heart-to-heart with Iranian President Ahmadinejad — with whom he would “be willing to meet separately, without precondition during the first year of [his] administration” or his desire to engage in “direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions.” His strategy so far has been to deny the undeniable transaction costs of an unconditioned presidential get-together: the undeserved legitimacy conferred on a would-be mass murderer, the time lost while a nuclear-weapons program continues in full swing, and the betrayal of brave local dissenters.

“Tiny” and not “serious” move us another step closer to the edge. The unfortunate reality is that Iran not only poses a serious threat already, but it does stand a chance of carrying out its dire program. Ahmadinejad, in addition to his professed affinity for genocide, is funding terrorist proxies in Lebanon and Gaza who believe they have started the job and are committed to finishing it. The message Obama sends in denying that Iran has “tried to pose a serious threat to us” is that a grave threat to the peace and security of Israel is not a threat to the peace and security of the United States. Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, of “Israel Lobby” fame, would be proud. But even the anti-nuclear-anything activists in the Democratic party should begin to worry about a president who thinks the consequences of an Iranian nuclear strike on Israel can be confined to the locals.

Official U.S. policy holds Iran to be a state sponsor of terrorism, along with Cuba, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. Not only has Iran tried, and is trying, to pose a serious threat to us, in some ways it is a greater threat than that posed by the Soviet Union. The terrorist organizations or non-state actors whom these rogue states sponsor are not subject to the same economic and political pressures that could be brought to bear on the Soviet Union. Madmen and religious fanatics driven by a belief in the imminent reappearance of the 12th Imam following worldwide chaos, or visions of virgins in post-suicidal heaven, or who just hate us more than they love their children, are not susceptible to the rational calculus of Mikhail Gorbachev.

But according to his recently reported conversation with New York Times columnist David Brooks, Obama believes the problem with Hamas and Hezbollah is that the poor things don’t “understand that they’re going down a blind alley with violence that weakens their legitimate claims.” We need to hear more about where in the governing Hamas Charter (with its overt anti-Semitism and manifest dedication to the destruction of Israel), and Hezbollah’s takeover plans for Lebanon, Obama finds legitimate claims. And the solution according to Obama? “The U.S. needs a foreign policy that looks at root causes of problems and dangers.”

Hezbollah Leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah couldn’t have said it better himself. Oh, wait: He has said it himself. Remember Iranian proxy Nasrallah in Beirut on September 30, 2006, just after he sent 4,000 rockets into Israel: “This experience of the resistance, which must be transferred to the world, relies on faith, conviction, trust, and the moral and spiritual willingness to give sacrifices. Also, it depends on the thinking, planning, organizing, training and armament, and as is said: dealing with the root causes.” Surely, Obama ought to know that invoking the language of “root causes” to illuminate the behavior of Hamas and Hezbollah plays into the nefarious strategy of these terrorist organizations and their sympathizers.

How about the tiny factor? On the one hand, we could all hum tip-toeing through the tulips along with Obama and Tiny Tim. On the other hand, we might cast our minds back to “tiny” anthrax envelopes or think about “tiny” suitcase bombs or “tiny” nanotechnology innovations in chemical and biological weapons. I also wonder how all those developing countries, allegedly ready to embrace us once again with a President Obama, will enjoy the big boy’s view of their tiny status.

Coming from a man who aspires to bear the single greatest responsibility for the peace and security of the free world, the resemblance to “peace for our time” is the least of Obama’s problems. The real problem is a book with a name like “Terrorism for Dummies” would have to become bedside reading at the White House.

— Anne Bayefsky is senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. She also serves as the director of the Touro Institute for Human Rights and the Holocaust and as the editor of EYEontheUN.org.

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