Everybody Wants to Talk to Iran. Again. And Again.

Michael Ledeen

Big headline: 5 former secretaries of state agree we should talk to Iran. The five are Kissinger, Baker, Albright, Christopher, and Powell. Apparently not a single one of them is willing to say that we've been talking to Iran for thirty years, with no apparent positive result. They should all be ashamed of themselves for misleading the American people into believing that "talking to Iran" would be a new policy, or that it has any realistic hope of advancing our cause.

But that's only the beginning . For the event that brought together the five — a panel at George Washington University, the most expensive college in America, I believe — was an orgy of calls for talk, talk, talk. That great military strategist, Warren Christopher (wasn't he the SecState when we ran away from Somalia?) announces that we should inform the Israelis that they have no good military option against Iran. That great global thinker, James Baker (who wrote a long memoir of his years in Foggy Bottom without once mentioning the role of Pope John Paul II), says it's outrageous that we're not more vigorously engaged with Syria (a theme echoed by his pal, former Ambassador to Israel and Syria Ed Djerejian, who runs the Baker Center at Rice University, in a new book). And Powell, whose deputy Richard Armitage once called the current regime in Iran "a democracy," and who approved secret (failed) talks with Iran, dithered a bit about who he was going to vote for.

Good thing we're not at war.