Commentary Magazine



Susan Rice, Barack Obama’s foreign policy advisor, is at it again. She is on a mission to save Obama from himself, insisting that he never promised to meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad–and that he never said without preconditions.

The bizarre additional explanation this time is that it was some other unnamed leader of Iran he may have had in mind for a get together. Two problems :1) it is a lie and 2) huh? As to the first, there is ample documentation–from Obama’s own mouth–that it was Ahmadinejad he had in mind and that he would meet without preconditions (in the first year of his presidency, no less). The media has been reporting as much for a year and it was a prime source of disagreement with Hillary Clinton. If his campaign persists in this line of defense, he risks not just losing the foreign policy debate but his reputation for practicing the New Politics. (In other words he will, in the eyes of the public, not simply be a novice in foreign policy, but a liar.)

Second, Rice seems obsessed with the notion that it might be a different Iranian leader with whom Obama could meet. But why should that make any difference? Any leader of Iran who refuses to renounce the destruction of Israel, the support of terror groups, the supply of weaponry which is killing Americans and the acquisition of nuclear capability would be no better. Does she see such a figure on the political horizon in Iran?

In short, this is fast becoming a horrid display of diplomatic incompetence and dishonesty. In the YouTube era this sort of amateurish dissembling simply won’t do.