Thanks to Mustapha, I stumbled upon a pretty good piece by Friedman. I gotta say, I like #5 the most.
As I have argued before: When you have leverage, talk. When you don’t have leverage, get some. Then talk.
Right now Iran & Friends — Hezbollah, Hamas and Syria — have a strategy that has produced leverage for them, and the next U.S. president is going to have to think afresh how to counter it. The “Iran & Friends” strategy is built on five principles:
… Principle No. 5: Cast yourself as the “resistance” to Israel and America, so any opposition to you is equal to support for Israel and America and so no matter how badly you are defeated the mere fact that you “resisted” means you didn’t really lose.
Nice. He’s spot on.
Here’s hoping that once the primary silly season is over, the McCain and Obama camps will stop jousting over whether to talk with our enemies — which we must — and will start focusing instead about how we and our friends get more chips to bargain with — which we lack.
I couldn’t agree more.
Meanwhile, I have some advice for McCain. Ronald Reagan had an amazing rhetorical ability to infuse hope and a lot of optimism together with stances that acknowledged the real Soviet threat. People are tired of cynicism and gloomy talk. Obama’s strength is his charisma and uplifting approach. He speaks about the future with a bright sense of hope. McCain doesn’t.
I can’t wait for the one-on-one televised debates between Obama and McCain. Should be a lot of fun watching them. Plus, I still need to make a final pick and go with it. Being the classical liberal I am, I lean right, although I wouldn’t want a Dick Cheney-style neo-con as president. But then again, I wouldn’t want a Jimmy Carter-style one too.
Gosh, I have a headache. The debates should make things a lot easier. Here’s hoping they reveal a lot of substance rather than silly smears.
What?





SudaneseThinker
SudaneseThinker





