McCain has been on both sides of nearly every issue
in the Senate. He keeps morphing back to Bush.
McCain: "We Are Going to Have to Deal With" Hamas
May 16, 2008 1:19 PM
FROM GUEST-BLOGGER RICK KLEIN, OF ABC'S THE NOTE
This hiccup just in from John McCain's attempts to blast Barack Obama
over his supposed eagerness to meet with terrorist leaders: McCain wants
to meet with them, too.
Well -- sort of, and not quite. Jamie Rubin, whom you may remember as a
State Department spokesman during the Clinton administration, uses a
Wa****ngton Post op-ed today to relate this interview he conducted with
McCain two years ago, shortly after Hamas took over the Palestinian
government.
Rubin: "Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way
they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas
is now in charge?"
McCain: "They're the government; sooner or later we are going to have to
deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this
administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards
Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they
not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it's a new reality in the
Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent
life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving
them that."
Huffington Post has the VIDEO HERE.
The Democratic National Committee is putting this out there actively.
And liberal bloggers jumping on this. At Huffington Post, Max Bergmann,
deputy policy director at the National Security Network, sprinkles in
some quotes where McCain sup****ts direct talks with the Syrians to come
to this conclusion:
"McCain is directly contradicting himself by attacking Senator Obama on
his plan to confront Iran at the negotiating table. A pattern is
emerging. While McCain claims to be a deep foreign policy thinker with
positions carefully developed from his quarter century in Wa****ngton,
the reality seems to be that his positions -- when not outright crazy
-- are often knee-jerk and contradictory -- often dictated by what his
temperament is at that moment or influenced by how the political winds
are moving."
Rubin -- a sup****ter of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's candidacy --
writes that McCain "is guilty of hypocrisy."
The McCain campaign is clearly concerned about this -- I got this
identical response three separate times from the campaign this morning:
"There should be no confusion, John McCain has always believed that
serious engagement would require mandatory conditions and Hamas must
change itself fundamentally -- renounce violence, abandon its goal of
eradicating Israel and accept a two state solution." -- Campaign
spokesman Tucker Bounds.
Bounds continues with the contrast: "John McCain's position is clear and
has always been clear, the President of the United States should not
unconditionally meet with leaders of Iran, Hamas or Hezbollah. Barack
Obama has made his position equally clear, and has pledged to meet
unconditionally with Iran's leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the leaders
of other rogue regimes, which shows incredibly dangerous and weak
judgment."
McCain's 2005 answer about Hamas is certainly interesting -- and doesn't
exactly sound like something that would come out of his mouth as a
presidential candidate. But I'm not convinced it's "hypocrisy," either.
But in that quote, McCain is not saying specifically how he would engage
Hamas; critically, he is not advocating direct negotiations without
preconditions.
Conservative blogger Jennifer Rubin writes at Commentary: "This is
supposed to be a gotcha quote? It doesn't appear that McCain was saying
we should talk to Hamas immediately and without preconditions, or that
we should talk directly to their state sponsor Iran (the latter has been
the real point of contention of late)."
As to whether McCain and Obama have a real difference here, recall the
key quote that the McCain campaign hopes to hang around Obama's neck.
Last July, Obama was asked at a Democratic debate whether he would "meet
separately, without precondition, during the first year of your
administration, in Wa****ngton or anywhere else, with the leaders of
Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea."
Obama's answer: "I would. And the reason is this, that the notion that
somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them -- which has been
the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration -- is ridiculous."
More recently, Obama has been clear that he would not meet with Hamas,
and criticized former President Jimmy Carter's decision to do so. His
pledge to meet with the leaders of rogue states, he told ABC's David
Wright last month, "does not include Hamas. They are not heads of state
and they don't recognize Israel. You can't negotiate with somebody who
doesn't recognize the right of the country to exist. So I understand why
Israel doesn't meet with Hamas."
Obama has said he would be willing to meet with the head of the
Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, as president.
-- Rick Klein
May 16, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (46)
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