The amateur Statesman

Of course your first thought is probably Barack Obama, with his calls for "dialogue" with Iran's President Mahmood Ahmadinejad and other amateur diplomats who want dialogue with Chavez or Cuba's Castro or North Korea. The Hollywood left loves this talk, they've been wanting to chat with dictators and terror leaders for years.

But my thoughts today came from Jimmie Carter, yep same guy that made fools of us with Iran in 1979-80 is now starting a dimplomatic mission to the Middle East. From the Intellectual Conservative ... What Will Carter’s Meeting With Hamas Accomplish?

For the record, I am not surprised that former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is traveling to Syria to meet with Hamas leader Khaled Meshal. The only thing about Carter’s visit that surprises me is that he didn’t go through with it sooner. (Photo of Carter with Hugo Chavez)

In fact, Carter has wanted to visit Syria for time now. Carter said so in a scene filmed for Jonathan Demme’s documentary Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains. While Carter was en route to Boston’s Logan International Airport after his controversial appearance at Brandeis University in 2007 to promote his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, he expressed anger towards the Bush Administration, singling out National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley in particular. The 39th President was irate the State Department would not grant him permission to visit Syria so he could meet with its dictator, Bashar al-Assad. Carter protested that he had known the junior Assad since he was in college. I am sure Assad would regale Carter with tales of his days at Phi Beta Jihad on the campus of the University of Damascus where he would make pledges dress up as Orthodox Jews and pelt them with eggs. Ah, good
times.

So if Carter has been keen to have an audience with Assad it is hardly a stretch that he would want to have an audience with Meshal. Who knows? Maybe Carter and Meshal will get along so famously that Carter will invite him to sit in the President’s Box at the Democratic National Convention this summer in Denver.

Will Barack Obama go along with this kind of plan? Will he encourage amateur diplomacy as a means to open minded engagement? Has the American public really considered what our foreign policy will look like with these guys back in power?

We may dislike the Clintons, but they weren't in bed with terrorists and dictators like Obama's followers seem to want.