I am but I'm not really.
I decided to try to clear things up on this issue. A long time ago, someone asked Obama:
QUESTION: In 1982, Anwar Sadat traveled to Israel, a trip that resulted in a peace agreement that has lasted ever since.
In the spirit of that type of bold leadership, 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?
And Obama answered:
OBAMA: I would.
Now that's the version you will find on free republic or any other hate filled republican blog.
Here is the full version.
QUESTION: In 1982, Anwar Sadat traveled to Israel, a trip that resulted in a peace agreement that has lasted ever since.
In the spirit of that type of bold leadership, 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?
OBAMA: I would. And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them -- which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration -- is ridiculous.
(APPLAUSE)
Now, Ronald Reagan and Democratic presidents like JFK constantly spoke to Soviet Union at a time when Ronald Reagan called them an evil empire. And the reason is because they understood that we may not trust them and they may pose an extraordinary danger to this country, but we had the obligation to find areas where we can potentially move forward.
And I think that it is a disgrace that we have not spoken to them. We've been talking about Iraq -- one of the first things that I would do in terms of moving a diplomatic effort in the region forward is to send a signal that we need to talk to Iran and Syria because they're going to have responsibilities if Iraq collapses.
They have been acting irresponsibly up until this point. But if we tell them that we are not going to be a permanent occupying force, we are in a position to say that they are going to have to carry some weight, in terms of stabilizing the region.
Obama never said he would meet with anyone, he said he would talk to them. Which is something Bush never did. Either out of laziness or because they felt they had something to gain by escalating conflict (which republicans often do have something to gain by doing that -- see military contracts, for one. Politicizing the confict here at home is another.)
Now one of the most frustrating things about this issue is that very few people seem to recognize a substantive difference between a meeting (which has also been regarded as a summit), and talking, which could be a 1,000 different things ranging from two operatives instant messaging each other or a phone call from the oval office itself.
So when John McCain accuses Obama of promising to meet with any leader without preconditions, at this point, I just wish Obama (or maybe it's better if it comes from Biden) would just call McCain the liar he is on this issue.
Obama never made such a promise. I do not believe this is Obama's policy.
Now I want to be more clear about this. One of the reasons. It is because I do not believe this is Obama's policy that I decided to vote for him. And proof of it, in my mind, is his selection of Sen. Joe Biden as a VP.
Here is Biden on this issue.
If I believed Obama's position on this was any different, I would not vote for Obama.
Strong words I know. But I do believe this is a very important issue. And one of the things that troubles me the most about it is that the way people have talked about it during this election cycle has been unproductive. And that's also why I get sick of people discussing this issue. No distinction between talks on the one hand..... and meetings on the other. And no one ever talks about an example either.
I feel it would greatly benefit the discussion if Jim Lehrer, for instance, would ask McCain:
"Can you please tell us what a good precondition would be before you would meet Ahmadinejad?"
And then when McCain says
"Iran ceases Nuclear testing,"
then it would be brutally clear that he will be continuing the Bush policy that has failed.
Indeed, the point is, if you've achieved that as a precondition there's no longer a reason to meet except to shake hands and for the American President to gloat. Iran loses face. (Losing face is a topic all on it's own as far as Diplomacy is concerned, suffice to say, in successful Diplomacy every party involved can walk away confident they did not lose face as part of the process, they can even go back to their hardliners in their government and boast about the things they achieved!)
I would call McCain's precondition what it is. It's not a precondition. It's an excuse not to do anything about the issue and escalate conflict.
But is there a precondition with respect to Iran that might be beneficial? I don't know.
But there should be.
I.
I want to quote one of our great Democratic Presidents, JFK on this issue, a statement he made during his debate with Nixon:
I would not meet Mr. Khrushchev unless there were some agreements at the secondary level - foreign ministers or ambassadors - which would indicate that the meeting would have some hope of success, or a useful exchange of ideas.
This is the first of two reasons why preconditions are important to the Diplomatic process.
At the next debate JFK expanded on this:
I think the president of the United States last winter indicated that before he'd go to the summit in May he did last fall, he indicated that there should be some agenda, that there should be some prior agreement. He hoped that there would be uh - b- be an agreement in part in disarmament. He also expressed the hope that there should be some understanding of the general situation in Berlin. The Soviet Union refused to agree to that, and we went to the summit and it was disastrous. I believe we should not go to the summit until there is some reason to believe that a meeting of minds can be obtained on either Berlin, outer space, or general disarmament - including nuclear testing.
In short, preconditions do establish a foundation of progress. It is only by making small concessions at the secondary level that an adversary can prove to you that they have the same goal you have in a meeting/summit: De-escalation of conflict. Progress on the larger issues. That they regard the effort in all seriousness.
II.
The second reason why a precondition is necessary is to avoid a legitimization of some of your adversaries policies. This applies more to the situations we see today, and applies more directly to a situation where other parties are involved.
To discuss this briefly I'll use an example that I have often used in the past. The No. Ireland Peace process.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/...
During his White House campaign in 1992, the then Governor Clinton of Arkansas made a pledge to send a peace envoy, something that the majority of the politically influential Irish-American caucus had long sought.
The commitment risked infuriating London and following election, Clinton appeared to have dropped the pledge - appointing only an "economic envoy", Senator George Mitchell.
....
But it was a fine line to follow. In 1994, President Clinton angered London, the US's closest ally, by granting a US visa to Gerry Adams.
Despite accusations of being soft on terrorism and opposition among some of his own people, Clinton saw it another way.
Only by including the republicans could they be encouraged to leave violence behind.
I reference those paragraphs to illustrate how London was dealing with America's involvement in this process. It is clear that they were very sensitive to the issue, and although my personal loyalties lie with a united Ireland, I can't really blame them. If a bomb goes off killing innocents in a pub and then the American President gives the Political Wing Leader of the IRA (who took responsibility for that bombing) a visa to visit America, it can make things more tense, not less.
So you can imagine what would have happened if the American President went to Belfast, met with Gerry Adams and shook his hand if a simple precondition had not been met.
And that precondition was, in my opinion, a cease fire that was agreed on 15 months prior to his visit.
President Clinton's first visit to Northern Ireland came in November 1995, 15 months after the IRA announced its first cease-fire.
Without that precondition, if an American President had gone to Belfast and shook Gerry Adams hand, it would have been regarded, rightly or wrongly, as an act of choosing sides. An action that would be regarded as a statement, the statement being that how the IRA has decided to resolve their grievances is OK by America. Can you imagine an American President shaking hands with Adams and a bomb going off in London the next day. That's fucking disaster.
So I want to be clear about what I meant when I said above that I would not vote for Obama if I believed his position on this issue was any different. If I thought for a second he would have gone to Belfast and shook Gerry Adams hand without a cease fire in place, then I would not vote for him.
The good news is this: I don't think that for a second.
Adendum: The JFK quotes can be found at www.debates.org.