LONDON -- There he goes again. George Bush. Talking the talk to create bloodshed where he never has to walk the walk. And scoring cheap political points while doing so.
President Bush calls people who talk to terrorist groups appeasers and implies Barack Obama should wear a Scarlet A where his American Flag lapel pin ought to be.
Well George, what did you call your good friend Tony Blair then? He spent most of the first years of his time in office talking to the IRA's political wing Sinn Fein. And managed to negotiate a peace deal, the Good Friday Agreement, that was approved by the people of Northern Ireland even though the IRA was still armed to the teeth -- most of its weapons purchased from rogue state Libya. You going to call Tony Blair an Appeaser, Mr. President?
I was in the House of Commons the day Blair's predecessor John Major said it would turn his stomach to talk to the IRA. It was just weeks after the IRA had blown up a fish and chips shop on the Shankill Road killing many people. I had watched Gerry Adams carry the coffin of the bomber through his neighborhood. The atmosphere was feverish. Yet newspapers were reporting that talks were on-going... and so Major had to give a speech to parliament. I have no doubt Major felt nauseous about talking to terrorists, he had personal friends who had been murdered by the IRA... but the papers were right, talks were going on. You going to call John Major, who the IRA mortar-bombed in Downing Street, an appeaser?
The planet is covered with terrorist groups, many of them holdovers from liberation struggles of the post-colonial era. They all have political wings set up specifically to do the kind of negotiating Sinn Fein successfully did. If you want to resolve their conflicts you have to talk to them... sometimes on the QT, sometimes through the media, sometimes face to face. But in the end you talk.
You know it, Mr President, and if you don't, in Israel they do. Call up Shimon Peres and ask him about it. Call up any senior Israeli politician, Likud or Labour, and ask them. They spent decades saying they would never talk to the PLO, but in the end they did. Some day, sooner rather than later, they will talk to Hamas. Because peace does not mean justice. Peace means simply the space to breathe. Peace means crimes go unpunished ... but people have space to renew their lives.
For more on Israel-Palestine on the 60th Birthday of the founding of Israel go here. Spread the word.
And as for states like Iran -- disgusting as the Ahmadenijad regime is -- you talk. You talk because no government is forever -- even those without term limits -- and co-opting that kind of regime is easier than invading it. Too bad you never learned that.