The same sort of wishful thinking has infected our stance toward the Middle East. Policymakers and much of the U.S. media have ignored and dismissed words and deeds that demonstrate implacable hostility to the American vision and malevolent intentions regarding important U.S. interests.
Iran has consistently declared its intention to establish its Islamofascist rule in the Middle East. It has funded and exported terrorism around the world (even on U.S. soil) and cheated on its treaty obligations, including its agreement as a non-nuclear member of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to not develop nuclear weapons. We initiated negotiations with Iran to compel it to honor its NPT commitments, which are to not acquire nuclear weapons and to abide by UN Security Council resolutions requiring Tehran to suspend enrichment of uranium. Iran has violated that treaty and those resolutions for years.
A dangerous deal
Now, we are reportedly are on the verge of sealing a deal that would allow Iran 10 years to engage in limited enrichment - supposedly insufficient to make a nuclear weapon in less than a year. Then, after 10 years, Iran could engage in unlimited enrichment, a central ingredient of a nuclear weapons program. As suggested by Netanyahu in his address to Congress, such a deal could be supported only by people who believe that in 10 years Iran will reform - that it will stop supporting terrorists, stop seeking nuclear weapons, and stop aggressively touting the downfall of America and Israel. Apparently, the leaders crafting policy in Washington believe they will persuade Iran to do just that.
Perhaps our policymakers' desire to convert Iran influences their views about Palestine. Hezbollah, Hamas, and Fatah, allies of Iran, have declared - Hamas in its constitution and Fatah in statements in Arabic - that nothing short of eliminating Israel will satisfy them. Iran has repeatedly vowed to wipe Israel off the map. Yet our policymakers criticize Israel for not making concessions to Hamas or Fatah to achieve a two-state peace - a two-state solution that Hamas and Fatah reject, and a peace that both say they won't accept.
The terrorist group that calls itself the Islamic State claims that Muslim texts oblige it to create a 7th Century-style Islamic entity in the Middle East, expand it worldwide, and use beheadings and other brutal practices in the territory it controls and as instruments of conquest. U.S. policymakers dismiss ISIS' invocation of religious imperatives as an outlier. Meanwhile, thousands of Muslims from around the world rush to the Middle East to join ISIS, presumably subscribing to its interpretations of Islam and to ISIS visions that match up to the future they wish to live.
Just because our policymakers and pundits want a world where conflicts are resolved in a framework of tolerance, non-aggression and the rule of law, doesn't mean that this is an achievable goal. Just because our policymakers are prepared to negotiate toward a fair resolution of a dispute with an adversary does not mean that diplomacy is worthwhile. A determination to pursue these goals is a serious vulnerability when the goals are pursued inflexibly.
Our leadership must be prepared to recognize when an adversary is an implacable foe with whom reasonable compromise is not possible. In this circumstance, diplomacy should give way to changes in political, economic and military policy to protect against the dangers posed by the adversary. Continued wishful thinking at that point is a danger itself.
