To Jaw-Jaw Is Always Better than to War-War

Matt Yglesias and Scott Lemieux have taken whacks at two separate portions of a spectacularly stupid Victor Davis Hanson post, so I guess I'll join in the fun and take aim at a third:

There is also an Alice in Wonderland flavor to the current Democratic response to the Korean and Iranian crises. We talked to the Koreans all during the 1990s as they prepared nuclear materials.

And now are told that we have a catastrophe since we have not recently talked to them. We talked all during the 1990s with Syria — and got nothing. Bill Clinton has always praised Iranian democracy; so, we talked to Tehran too, both stealthily and overtly.

So what is this obsession with talk, talk, talk? It reminds me of all those discredited British empty-headed pacifists and aristocrats who wanted to keep talking to Hitler after the fall of Poland, even after the fall of France, right up to the Battle of Britain.

Once more, very slowly: when we were talking to Korea, their plutonium was locked away; when we stopped talking to them, it wasn't. When we were talking to Iran, the moderate Khatami was president; calling them the Axis of Evil was one factor that undermined Khatami and gave us Ahmadinejad (whose political support depends largely on American belligerence). Syria, I don't know so much about, but I'd bet good hard cash-type American dollars that they opposed our interests less actively in the '90s.

But of course Neville Chamberlain talked, and therefore talking is bad. That's it; that's the sum of what he's saying here. As Robert Farley says: "when you've got absolutely nothing, reach for Munich". Victor Davis Hanson has a whole boatload of absolutely nothing, and every time he opens his mouth the reputation of Fresno State suffers.

[That's all, folks]