I did a post the other day about how incredibly naive Obama is if he truly believes you just sit down and chit-chat with dictators and arise from the coffee table having solved all the world’s problems. As the days go by, more and more quality writers and thinkers are piling on to make the same point. Here are two of my favorites:

Anne Bayefsky, UN Watcher extraordinaire, speaks scathingly of Obama’s coffee klatch idea:

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.

Read the rest here.

The second article I liked came from Dick Morris and Eileen McGann. They can be uneven in their analyses, but I think they’ve nailed the terrible consequences that will flow from Obama’s assurance that he can just walk into Iran and solve all problems:

The Iranian regime is almost entirely dependent on oil and gas revenues to pay for the vast program of social subsidies with which the government buys domestic support. Gasoline costs 35 cents a gallon in Teheran. Bread and all other staples are subsidized from public funds. But 85 percent of all government revenues come from oil and gas exports. There lies the regime’s vulnerability.

Iran is sitting atop the second largest oil reserves in the world. Only Saudi Arabia has more. But it can’t get at them. It lacks the foreign investment and technology necessary to increase, or even to sustain, its petroleum output. Under the Shah, Iran pumped upwards of six million barrels of oil a day. Now, Iran generates fewer than four million daily barrels. With domestic consumption of energy increasing at 10 percent a year — due in part to the massive subsidies which hold the price down — Iran is expected to see its oil exports cut in half by 2011 and entirely eliminated by 2014. If Iran cannot export oil, it cannot pay for social peace and the regime could be in dire trouble.

Without subsidies, the Iranian people, half of whom are under 30 and only 40 percent of whom are ethnically Farsi, will become restive and resentful. Already, many complain that Ahmadinejad’s policies have led to global isolation of Iran and stymied economic growth and social upward mobility. While opinion surveys in Iran indicate that the people support the nuclear aspirations of the regime, they are not willing to pay a price of international isolation.

If a President Obama were to meet with President Ahmadinejad, it would send a signal to the Iranian people that they are not isolated but that the rest of the world has come to respect them and to have to deal with them. The leading argument for toppling the current regime will have been fatally undermined.

I’m absolutely certain Morris and McGann are right that Obama’s idea will give devastatingly positive imprimatur to an evil regime. Why am I so certain? Because I read Natan Sharansky’s book about the stunning effect Reagan’s Evil Empire speech, and the unending support of America’s labor unions (which were fiercely anti-Communist) had on Soviet dissidents: it gave them hope.

Reagan’s moral clarity and unyielding stance enabled both vocal and quiet dissidents to stand up against one of the world’s harshest tyrannies. It assured them that the world was not blind to their suffering and that they had morality on their side. It protected them from the brainwashing of a tyrannical regime.

Obama, by speaking with these dictators as if they’re his good buddies, will be destroying the hopes — nay, even the sanity — of every decent person trapped in those countries. He’ll be sending the message that the tyrannical government under which they suffer is okay, ’cause it’s all relative, and that they’re just weeny whiners for complaining. After all, Michelle Obama complains about being a wealthy, well-educated woman in the richest nation in the world. Everyone complains — it’s all pretty much the same, after all: America’s democracy and Iran’s theocracy, right?

UPDATE: Curt, at Flopping Aces, has a great round up of comments about just how dangerous Obama’s ideas are (with a nice link to yours truly, too).

Tags: Barack Obama, Iran

Trackback URI | Comments RSS