The Democrats' Idea of Ideas

Amir Taheri polks holes in the myth of JFK's "sophisticated" diplomacy and reminds us how well Jimmy Carter's diplomacy with the Islamic Revolution worked:

the Carter administration did "engage" with the mullahs without artificial deadlines, saber rattling and name-calling. The results for the U.S. were disastrous.

In 1979, soon after the mullahs seized power, Mr. Carter sent Ayatollah Khomeini a warm congratulatory letter. Mr. Carter's man at the U.N., a certain Andrew Young, praised Khomeini as "a 20th-century saint." Mr. Carter also tapped his closest legal advisor, the late Lloyd Cutler, as U.S. ambassador to the mullarchy.

And we know how well that worked out.

Then there's Bill Clinton's approach:

Mr. Clinton did not reveal that in 1999 he offered the mullahs "a grand bargain" under which the Islamic Republic would be recognized as the "regional power" in exchange for lip service to U.S. "interests in the Middle East." As advance payment for the "bargain" Mr. Clinton apologized for "all the wrongs that my country and culture have done" to Iran, whatever that was supposed to mean.

The calls in the media for Bush to "engage" the Iranians come quite close to the definition of insanity attributed to both Ben Franklin and Albert Einstein (What? Not Stephen Hawking? -- ed.)

Read the whole thing. It's quite devastating. I think this is another paper tiger/strong horse moment.