To talk or not to talk

This post precipitated comments about whether how to treat Hamas and whether we should "talk" to it.

People who are opposed to talking with Hamas miss several things:

1. "Talking" does not mean "negotiating." It means talking. In fact part of talking might be telling someone that they are talking nonsense, to put it politely.
2. "Talking" to someone does not suggest that one thinks the other person is reasonable much less "nice." Police talk with vicious criminals all the time because sometime the criminals themselves reveal the clus to solving a crime. Should we tell cops not to talk to bad guys because it "recognizes" them?
3. One talks to someone for one's own benefit — to gain information. For instance, the USA would have been better off had we been talking to Saddam Hussein's Iraq (at high and low levels) as we might have learned that it had no WMDs. It gives an opportunity to size up one's opponent and find the weak points.

Remember what the Godfather said: "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer."

The argument against talking with enemies is that  raises their status and legitimizes them? Of course it does. It is literal "recognition" and "acknowledgment." No one who suggests communication with Hamas could deny that. But so what? In fact Hamas is a player and one of the main impediments to any sort of peaceful solution. Not communicating Hamas will not make Hamas go away. But it does put Hamas on the defensive because if all they sell is "Kill Jews" and "Destroy Israel" then their perfidy is obvious for all to see and they eventually marginalize themselves as irrelevant.

Likewise I am always puzzled why both sides in this dispute make so much — one way or another — about Israel's origins. Its enemies claim it is a moral weakness that Israel was born in war, overlooking the fact that every nation was baptized (so to speak) in blood. Name one which hasn't except maybe Iceland. And the Palestinians — and I don't mean to be cavalier — are simply the losers of a war. Why should one expect them to be treated by Israel as other than enemies? There is a war going on. They were and still are (by-and-large) enemies. Now is that an unconditioned defense of Israeli policies? Of course not; Israel seems to me to be in competition with the Arabs for doing stupid things. But what it does say is that the moral posturing (and probably by many on both sides) is pretty silly.

Comments

[Jonathan]

A post on SLOG today has a clip from Hardball where Chris Matthews touches on this topic...its fun to watch:

http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/05/obama_basher_gets_clobbered

[Fnarf]

The stupid thing isn't "talking" or "not talking". It saying one thing and doing the other. The Bush Administration IS talking to our enemies even as its head insists that it's appeasement. His own frigging Secretary of Defense disagreed with him yesterday. And McCain? He doesn't believe a word that comes out of his own mouth.

This is going to be good in November.

[T. E. Williams]

"...the USA would have been better off had we been talking to Saddam Hussein's Iraq (at high and low levels) as we might have learned that it had no WMDs."

Ah, but WMDs was only the *official* reason for invading Iraq. Cheney & Co. were interested in setting up a landing strip and police station between Saudi Arabia and Iran. "Talking" to the people who run things in the mid-east only gets in the way of running them over.

[zanon]

I'm all in favor of talking, but people use it in the sense of "talking, not fighting".

The Godfather kept his friends close, and his enemies closer, and worked to (violently) undermine his enemies.

The US should talk to its terrorist enemies but as a complement to shooting at them, not a substitute.

-zanon