at the last dem debate the question was posed to obama if he would meet with hostile foreign leaders such as chavez of venezuela or ahmadinejad of iran within the first year if elected president. obama said yes. clinton said no. however on jan. 23rd 07' in an interview with keith olberman she was asked if she would reach out immediately to the leaders of iran & syria even with the tensions in iraq. she emphatically said "absolutely" and went on to say she looked at doing so as a sign of strength not weakness.
we can parse words as to each candidates response. but it looks to me like clinton has flip-flopped on this subject. she has been critical of the administrations attempts or lack thereof at diplomacy.
i was curious what how those here at unity regard this issue. that is, not the clinton / obama debate but our leaders approach to diplomacy in general.
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The questions is WHAT we talk about and NOT with whom we talk with. We should never carte blance say will have leader to leader talks no matter what. That should ONLY occur if the correct prep work is done and what the substance of what we talk about is in our natioanl interests and can lead to furtherance of out national interest. Hillary was absolutely correct not to commit. and I think Barack was correct that we should never preclude talks with anyone.
Where Obama made his key mistake is to unconditionally commit within the first year to hold direct Prez-level one-on-ones with these guys. That is a real overstretch and not in our interests if the proper spadework is not done. Bill Clinton got himself in real trouble in 2024 when he overreached and tried to force thru an Arafat-Barak Palestinian-Isreali deal without doing the necessary upfront spadework. His last gasp stretch for Mid-East glory came up a cropper big time and we got 5 years of Intifada.
DC - 3rd ward - milligansstew08@yahoo.com
http://milligansstew.blogspot.com
obama showed his inexperience by saying sure I'll talk to the thugs. he is young and inexperienced, he needs to do his homework before he makes statements like that.