The problem with historical parallels

is knowing what's really parallel to what. This is where the deeper problem with Barack Obama's attempt at historical equivalence comes in. After all, had he wanted to name Republicans instead of Democrats, he could have said much the same thing with greater accuracy by citing Nixon and Reagan; but though his comparison would have been correct in the letter of the matter, it would have been wrong in the spirit. When Nixon opened the SALT talks, or when Reagan went to the Reykjavik summit, they were dealing with a government that worked, fundamentally, on a modern rationalist Western understanding of power and politics in which "if you do this, you will die" is a deterrent. The ability to deter the action of other powers by making that threat is the linchpin of the Western approach to diplomacy; this is not to say that every diplomatic move rests on the threat of force, or that all such encounters are in some way fundamentally hostile, but it is to say that the rules by which the game is played have developed, over centuries, from that point and on that basis. Which raises the question: how do you address an enemy for whom death is not a deterrent?

That, unfortunately, is the situation we're in with respect to powers like Iran, and organizations like Hamas and Hizb'allah. This is the point Alan Dershowitz was trying to get across a couple months ago in his editorial "Worshippers of Death"; that's why he hit his readers with this barrage of quotes:

"We are going to win, because they love life and we love death," said Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. He has also said: "[E]ach of us lives his days and nights hoping more than anything to be killed for the sake of Allah." Shortly after 9/11, Osama bin Laden told a reporter: "We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the big difference between us."

"The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death," explained Afghani al Qaeda operative Maulana Inyadullah. Sheik Feiz Mohammed, leader of the Global Islamic Youth Center in Sydney, Australia, preached: "We want to have children and offer them as soldiers defending Islam. Teach them this: There is nothing more beloved to me than wanting to die as a mujahid." Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech: "It is the zenith of honor for a man, a young person, boy or girl, to be prepared to sacrifice his life in order to serve the interests of his nation and his religion."

In other words, even if talking with our enemies has worked in the past (a dubious assertion, on the whole), there's a lot less reason to think it might work this time, because we don't have the same leverage here; we can't make them behave, because we can't deter them from acting. All we can do is stop them. (As Dershowitz points out, we're at a disadvantage in that, as well; but that's a subject for another post, at least.) Unfortunately, the message doesn't seem to have taken, judging by Sen. Obama's remarks. What matters here isn't whether the American people think talking with, say, Iran or Syria, is a sign of weakness; what matters is that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Bashar al'Assad most assuredly will—and will react accordingly.