Lamont On Iran

Martin Peretz is publisher of the New Republic and one of the few, soon-to-be extinct, centrist Democrats. His biography notably includes support for the 1968, anti-Vietnam presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy. Writing in today's Wall Street Journal about the senate race in Connecticut he offers a withering perspective on the newest darling of the hard Kossack left:

[Ned Lamont's views] are also not camouflaged. They are just simpleminded. Here, for instance, is his take on what should be done about Iran's nuclear-weapons venture: "We should work diplomatically and aggressively to give them reasons why they don't need to build a bomb, to give them incentives. We have to engage in very aggressive diplomacy. I'd like to bring in allies when we can. I'd like to use carrots as well as sticks to see if we can change the nature of the debate."

Oh, I see. He thinks the problem is that they do not understand, and so we should explain things to them, and then they will do the right thing.

Read the whole article.

He goes on to say that a Lamont win would be "Karl Rove's dream come true". The hard lefties will claim that most of the country is against the war, according to polls. Again this is probably true to some extent -- but it does not mean the majority of the country endorses the views of naive, foreign policy featherweights like Lamont -- views which will be thrown into stark relief by the glare of the November elections.

What depresses me about Lamont's comments about Iraq, above, is that many people are seduced by this rhetoric. Who wants war, especially one carried out by the same ineffective people who apparently can't make progress in Iraq? True communication with the mullahs, if we really work to understand them, might turn the tide of hostility towards America, right?

This perspective wins me no friends from either party, but I can't help it: I'm very afraid that the only foreign policy categorically worse than what we've got right now is the knee-jerk appeasement and naiveté of people like Ned Lamont.