“The U.S. should engage Iran diplomatically”
U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA):
We must push for a complete halt to Iran’s enrichment activities and full access to all nuclear sites by the International Atomic Energy Agency. If Iran refuses, international sanctions should follow, and inspections with U.N. forces if necessary.
At the same time, the U.S. needs to build international alliances to create a unified front opposed to Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons. (Link)
So we must “push” Iran to stop enriching uranium. Okay. But what, exactly, does that mean? What would our “push” look like? And if, despite our undefined pushing (and even difficult-to-enforce international sanctions), Iran refuses to stop enriching uranium, then what? Send in U.N. inspectors, she says. And if Iran refuses the inspectors? Or allows them in, only to lead them around like a bottom in a leather bar?
In the meantime, the senator says, the U.S. should join other countries in creating “a unified front” in opposition to Iran’s quest for the bomb. Unified in what? In our rhetoric? Is that what we need, senator? To just get ‘em told?
I wonder whether it ever occurs to Sen. Feinstein and her ilk to ascribe to America’s enemies even a fraction of the malevolence they ascribe to our own president. What if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the sort of man the Left thinks George W. Bush is: an evil bastard hell-bent on his dark ways? If so, what implications might that have for Sen. Feinstein’s ill-defined, talk-based approach? Can you chat down the devil?
(For the editorial cartoons, thanks to Cox & Forkum.)
“War is diplomacy, persued by other means.” Clauswicz
Or maybe it was someone else who said it, phrased slightly differently. It’s early.