As the worst president ever makes his farewell tour around Europe, as everyone knows, he is warning foreign leaders that they are not taking the Iranian threat seriously enough. This warning is no surprise. The surprise was when Bush forgot to include his talking point about "all options being on the table." As has been noted, he made a point to trot it out again the next time he was in front of reporters.
Bush said
"I told the chancellor my first choice, of course, is to solve this diplomatically." He quickly added, "all options are on the table."
Question for Dana Perino: "When are diplomatic talks scheduled to begin?"
Bush and the neocons keep saying military strikes are a last resort. Of course, this language is code for the need to bomb Iran sooner rather than latter. Here, for example, is Norman Podhoretz writing a February 2008 followup to his June 2007"The Case for Bombing Iran":
The upshot is that if Iran is to be prevented from becoming a nuclear power, it is the United States that will have to do the preventing, to do it by means of a bombing campaign, and (because "If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long") to do it soon.
He reaches this conclusion after explaining how diplomacy and sanctions, what he calls the carrot-and-stick, have not and will not work. His analysis of the negotiations consists of saying "no one can remember" what happened in them.
The problem is that we have not had diplomatic talks, which my be why he seems to have a memory problem. Last year, our "diplomatic efforts" included artistic and cultural exchanges:
The $5 million program began with little fanfare last year with a series of visits by Iranian medical doctors and researchers and a trip to Iran by the U.S. wrestling team to compete in matches before 3,000 fans. State Department officials said they have received no reports that previous visitors had problems upon returning to Iran, making it easier to recruit Iranian citizens for future visits. All told, U.S. officials hope to bring about 100 Iranians to the United States by the fall.
This afternoon, the program will get a high-profile boost when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tours an exhibit of the Iranian art at the Meridian International Center titled "Wishes and Dreams: Iran's New Generation Emerges," the first Iranian art exhibit sponsored by the U.S. government. Rice hopes to meet with the artists and plans to speak about the administration's desire to reach out to the Iranian people
Aside from wrestling competitions and art shows, "diplomacy" has taken the form of the US trying to strong arm the UN Security Council into issuing ultimatums. Then there have been the failed sanctions. The Bush administration showed what it thought about real diplomacy back in 2003.
Here is Glenn Kessler in the Washington Post writing about our rejection of an offer from Iran to open diplomatic talks (h/t to Greenwald, A Tragic Legacy,):
Just after the lightning takeover of Baghdad by U.S. forces three years ago, an unusual two-page document spewed out of a fax machine at the Near East bureau of the State Department. It was a proposal from Iran for a broad dialogue with the United States, and the fax suggested everything was on the table -- including full cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian militant groups.
Now what was it we wanted again? Bush dismissed the offer out of hand, and the Iranians realized that they needed to ramp up their nuclear program.
Obviously, the new smear against Obama is that he is a naive, limp-wristed, Nazi-appeasing, surrender monkey for wanting to put diplomatic talks on the table.
So Dana, is Bush putting diplomacy on the table?