Sarah Palin: Henry Kissinger is Beyond Naive When it Comes to Diplomacy

by Eric Martin

Sarah Palin, renowned foreign policy authority, derides neophyte Henry Kissinger as "beyond naive."  Via Ilan Goldenberg:

Couric: You met yesterday with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who is for direct diplomacy with both Iran and Syria. Do you believe the U.S. should negotiate with leaders like President Assad and Ahmadinejad?

Palin: I think, with Ahmadinejad, personally, he is not one to negotiate with. You can't just sit down with him with no preconditions being met. Barack Obama is so off-base in his proclamation that he would meet with some of these leaders around our world who would seek to destroy America and that, and without preconditions being met. That's beyond naïve. And it's beyond bad judgment.

Couric: Are you saying Henry Kissinger …

Palin: It's dangerous.

Couric: … is naïve for supporting that?

Palin: I've never heard Henry Kissinger say, "Yeah, I'll meet with these leaders without preconditions being met." Diplomacy is about doing a lot of background work first and shoring up allies and positions and figuring out what sanctions perhaps could be implemented if things weren't gonna go right. That's part of diplomacy. [emphasis added]

Actually, Kissinger has explicitly stated that we should meet with Iran's leaders "without conditions."  Four other Secretaries of State, including James Baker and Colin Powell, recently came out strongly in favor of direct negotiations as well. 

This admittedly very experienced and ideologically diverse group fails to grasp the nuances of diplomacy the way Sarah Palin does, however.  But then, they've never seen Putin's head rearing into their airspace now have they?

Comments

[Jesurgislac]

Actually, Kissinger has explicitly stated that we should meet with Iran's leaders "without conditions."

But Sarah Palin never said otherwise, Eric. She just said she'd never heard Kissinger say it. Probably because Palin is the kind of person who only listens to the local news.

[Ugh]

When's the Veep debate again? And what's the McCain camp's ploy for getting it canceled?

[ral]

I can think of a lot of words to describe Henry Kissinger but "naive" would not have been on the list.

[RD]

Palin and airspace. There has to be a joke in there somewhere.

[DrDave]

Sarah Palin is in so far over her head that she cannot even recognize how over her head she is.

She suffers from unearned confidence on a Bushian level.

[tomeck]

Was she looking at her notes when she said that?

Off topic: Why was John Edwards National Enquirer affair story picked up by the MSM but not Sarah Palin's? Double standard here?

And no, I'm not a big fan of the NE, but what's good for the goose should be good for the moose.

[RD]

Sorry about the multiple posts! Still trying to figure to use this Internet thing-a-majig.

(Hmmm...note to self: "RD2012"!)

[Warren Terra]

Parts of Alaska are in the dark six months of the year. Others, apparently, even more.

[Eric Martin]

RD: I pruned the hedges.

[Mike Schilling]

leaders like President Assad and Ahmadinejad ... leaders around our world who would seek to destroy America and that, and without preconditions being met

"First, we insist that you not destroy America during the meeting."

[Eric Martin]

First, we insist that you not destroy America during the meeting.

(me laughing out loud uncontrollably causing secretary to peer in office quizzically)

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

The scariest thing about Palin is not her ignorance, it is her ignorance about her ignorance. She really thinks she is capable of the job, and more, of stepping into McCain's shoes. She thinks all of this 'governing stuff' is really pretty simple, and just can be handled by 'common sense' which she thinks she has. (She's wrong about that too.)

I don't see the comparison with Bush, who did, up to a point, understand how difficult a job being President was -- he had his father as an example. His 'self-confidence' was really braggadocio, coing, I keep insisting, from his need to say "Daddy, see, I'm not as dumb as you always thought I was."

But Palin is like someone I know who thinks that, if she just reads the Merck manual and the Drug Book, she knows as much about her medical problems as any doctor, and if they tell her something she doesn't want to hear, she just tunes them out or assumes they are wrong. The fact that they spent seven years of post-graduate study learning about medicine (not to mention $100,000 -- or whatever medical school costs these days) just doesn't register as important with her.

Palin treats government that way. It isn't 'repeating talking points' the world is that simple to her -- and if there's something she doesn't get, well, as Pastor Muthee told her, she was God's chosen and he will provide for her and protect her.

[hairshirthedonist]

Parts of Alaska are in the dark six months of the year. Others, apparently, even more.

It's dark everywhere for six months out of the year. Just not, like, you know, all at once.

[Jay C]

"First, we insist that you not destroy America during the meeting."

POTD.

Eric: you have a secretary?

[RD]

Eric, thanks!

After taking into consideration our obvious ability to work together and our immediate rapport (and after much thought, of course), I've reached a decision.....

RD/MARTIN 2012

[xanax]

hilzoy: "But then, they've never seen Putin's head rearing..."

Nor vice versa.

[Carleton Wu]

I like how she thinks that "no preconditions" means not thinking about positions or talking with allies beforehand. Is she hearing that statement as "without preparations"? Otherwise, I can't make sense out of her response.
She's either a lousy BSer or she really doesn't understand the question.

[Margarita]

She's either a lousy BSer or she really doesn't understand the question.

I call false dichotomy.

[Eric Martin]

Eric: you have a secretary?

I'm a lawyer in a law firm. Standard issue. Although I admit I'm still not comfortable with the arrangement. Lucky for me she's laid back, funny and we can just shoot the breeze about books and music and movies while cracking wise on everyone else. She's an avid reader, and I try to let her pursue her pastime as much as possible throughout the working day.

MARTIN/RD 2012

There, fixed that for ya.

hilzoy: "But then, they've never seen Putin's head rearing..."

I've been called worse.

[RD]

For those of you planning to watch the debate tonight...don't bother. IT'S OVER!!!!

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/09/mccain_wins_debate.html

[freelunch]

Maybe Palin doesn't realize that "preconditions" are just a pompous way of saying "conditions" and thought that Henry was talking about something else. Still, it's a better bet that she had almost no idea who Kissenger was when she was introduced to him.

[RD]

Eric,

My friend, despite the exhaustive vetting process that you've endured it has recently come to my attention that you, my friend, are a lawyer(read:EDUCATED)with a secretary(read:ELITIST). As a result, it is with great sorrow, my friend, that I withdraw my offer to join the ticket.

My friend!

[Eric Martin]

RD: Would it help if I bought a faux ranch in Texas and started adopting a twang?

[RD]

Eric:"faux" ranch..
Are they similar to "Alpacas"?

"adopting a "twang"?
Do you really think that you would be taken seriously as a VP candidate if you gave your child such a silly name?

[Eric Martin]

Do you really think that you would be taken seriously as a VP candidate if you gave your child such a silly name?

Guess I better stick to the safer picks. Hmmm, I'm having a tough time deciding between Bristol, Piper, Track, Willow and Trig.

[Anderson]

This is, actually, unfair.

At least I think it is, because I don't think that Kissinger called for Obama to meet personally with Ahmadinejad.

Which is what she called "naive."

But yes, she is a dingbat.

[xanax]

"adopting a "twang"?
Do you really think that you would be taken seriously as a VP candidate if you gave your child such a silly name? RD @ 4:05

Depends, doesn't it, on where Twang was adopted from. If the Palins adopted little Twang from some Bible-thumping Tennessee rednecks they met, the name would be perfect. If, on the other hand, they pulled an Angelina Jolie and picked up baby Twang from Malawi or Namibia... not so much.

[geographylady]

track, trig, and twang
like that family with 18 kids whos names all start with J
rotfl
but i dont have a secretary to hear me

[henry]

Does Palin understand that it's beyond naive for her to be using a term like "beyond naive"?

[Gary Farber]

"His 'self-confidence' was really braggadocio, coing, I keep insisting, from his need to say 'Daddy, see, I'm not as dumb as you always thought I was.'"

Oliver Stone's version should be interesting.

[Eric Martin]

Anderson:

I've never heard Henry Kissinger say, "Yeah, I'll meet with these leaders without preconditions being met."

But Kissinger has said that he would - that people of at least his rank (Sec of State) should.

Palin wasn't really making that fine a point.

[nadezhda]

James Fallows, who predicted the Palin meltdown within hours of her VP announcement, dissects Palin's various Katie-specials clips. He writes:
After thirty years of meeting and interviewing politicians, I can think of exactly three people who sounded as uninformed and vacant as this. All are now out of office. One was a chronic drunk.

Then he discusses not just the "oops" like the Kissinger absurdity, but what's the underlying wrongness of her responses -- on the bailout, Russia and, for me the worst of the lot, on unvarying support for whatever Israel thinks is a neato-keeno idea. (Come to think of it, I wonder if she agrees with Boot et al exception to the "Israel rules" rule -- that it's OK for the US to overrule the Israelis when they want to talk with Syria, since she knows who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.)

Anyway, Fallows concludes with:
At face value, this [the bailout/budget gobbledygook] is incomprehensible. More than that, it suggests a person whose previous two decades of life have not equipped her to absorb the briefings she is no doubt receiving about the big, obvious issues in the campaign: the market crash, health care proposals, tax plans.

Two natural reactions are: to laugh at the "Putin rears his head" part, and simply to avoid concentrating on the rest. But given her candidacy for national office, neither of those is enough.

I am not aware of any other current figure in national politics -- by which I mean any member of the Senate or House -- who would do a worse job under questioning. There could be some I don't know about. But they're not on a national ticket.

And as we've seen with some of the House Republicans this week, that's setting a pretty low bar!

It's not just that she doesn't know about this stuff enough to come up with vaguely plausible answers. She's never thought enough about any of this to even have a clue what the questions might be.

[Dan1967]

Henry Kissinger says in this article that he does approve of direct talks with Iran. Below is an excerpt from the article and the Link is here: http://deseretnews.com/article/content/mobile/1,5620,695261802,00.html?printView=true

"One should be prepared to negotiate, and I think we should be prepared to negotiate about Iran," Kissinger, who brokered the end of the 1973 Yom Kippur war and peace talks with the North Vietnamese, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. Asked whether he meant the U.S. should hold direct talks, Kissinger, 84, responded: "Yes, I think we should."

VOTE FOR BARACK OBAMA AND LETS GET A DEMOCRAT WIN IN NOVEMBER!

[Dan1967]

Henry Kissinger says in this article that he does approve of direct talks with Iran. Below is an excerpt from the article and the Link is here: http://deseretnews.com/article/content/mobile/1,5620,695261802,00.html?printView=true

"One should be prepared to negotiate, and I think we should be prepared to negotiate about Iran," Kissinger, who brokered the end of the 1973 Yom Kippur war and peace talks with the North Vietnamese, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. Asked whether he meant the U.S. should hold direct talks, Kissinger, 84, responded: "Yes, I think we should."

VOTE FOR BARACK OBAMA AND LETS GET A DEMOCRAT WIN IN NOVEMBER!

[russell]

Oliver Stone's version should be interesting.

W a la Hollywood. Who knew.

What's next? Will there be a "W" Happy Meal?

Feh.

Thanks -

[LKSB]

Is there any possible way that this woman could be sandbagging? I mean, Come On!! Maybe she's playing the ding bat in order to lull Biden into a false sense of security, or make everyone who is really embarrassed by her go into shock by kicking Biden's a** in the debate. Then we would feel like maybe we really are sexist for being completely humiliated by having this put forward as the first female VP.

I just keep thinking about how the Reps used Harriet Myers to get everyone off their backs about women/minorities so they could return the Supreme Court into a all-white male bastion. One down, two to go there. Why do they insist on putting forward dingbats?

Really, I work 12 hr. rotating shifts and even I have been able to keep up enough to know about the "5 Secretaries of State" talk. I smell something fishy going on here.