James Baker, the globally accomplished diplomat and former GOP Secretary of State under Reagan totally flummoxed the cartoonish GOP bagman, Sean Hannity.
Point blank, Baker said that given the choice between waging a war or a foreign policy solely restricted to establishing a new democracy in the Mid-east or alternatively pursuing policies of stabilizing the region, policies of stabilization were preferable.
Hannity tried to parry this heretical bashing of Bush's core foreign policy talking point with the usual GOP gobbledygook propaganda such as "this is "World War III" and "this is a fight against Islamo Fascists." Baker seemed uninterested in Sean's offer of GOP red meat talking points and he continued.
Paraphrased as best I can, Baker said, "Given the choice between engaging America's forces based on a principle (i.e. 'democracy') or based on establishing stability, stability is, all things considered, the superior objective.
Not yet finished shredding the inept Bush, Rice, Cheney foreign policy, Baker continued by basically saying that not engaging in talks with America's enemies was nuts and sophomoric (my words). He recounted that he personally visited Syria almost twenty times and on his next visit Syria abandoned their twenty-year-old policy towards Israel and agreed to sit with Israel in negotiations, de facto recognizing their existence.
Thank God for YouTube because this is, on the one hand, political theater of the highest order which everyone should have the opportunity to see and hear once this episode is posted. Not only was Hannity beautifully sandbagged, in my opinion, but Bush 41' had to know that his son was going to get this political ass whumping.
This is an important message. It is the old guard of Bush 41' and Reagan trashing 43's leadership and foreign policy. Hopefully this clear message will to some degree return a semblance of values, competence, professionalism and honesty to America's foreign policy.
http://www.cognitorex.blogspot.com
At present living in the Berkshire Hills of MA; ex Int'l banker, Europe, Eastern Europe plus an IPO and a billion dollars in deals in the oil patch; had a play produced eons ago about teaching the Ten Commandments in public school, Arthur Miller said nice things and came to closing party; I've also pointed a shotgun at a very loved and respected CEO's corpus during a Mexico dove hunt (no foul), spent some Top Secret time around NSA folk and met a few 'household' names in my day.
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