Victor Davis Hanson does not like echo chambers, and Washington, he claims, has become one. A number of notions, it seems, are flinging repetitively around the enclosed and reverberant spaces of the Beltway Bubbleworld and, as a result of the ceaseless reiteration, are being elevated to the status of “gospel.” One such notion is that “We need to talk to Iran.” Hanson will have none of that. Tyrannies such as Iran resort to diplomacy only when, as Hanson puts it, “their backs are against the wall or their appetites are for a time sated.” With Saddam eliminated and the Taliban, at least for now, posing no threat, Iran finds its back at a comfortable remove from any flat and vertical surface and its appetite whetted for mischief. It therefore feels no urgent need to discuss, among other items, its exasperating insistence on enriching uranium.
Crossposted at Progressive Historians
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