The lost art of diplomacy
With the Decider on a tear again, glibly tossing out phrases like "a new era of confrontation" toward Iran and North Korea while striking his best gunslinger pose, the words of professor Kathleen Reardon at today's HuffPo couldn't be more timely. She writes:
There is a vast difference between acquiescence and skilled negotiation, which is about seeing what you can get while giving what you can afford to let go. George Bush and all the short-sighted, puffed up, barely functioning around him are oblivious to the fact that skilled negotiation more often than not results in outcomes far superior to not negotiating. In other words, it's more frequently a process of gaining than of losing. When skillfully done, there may be accommodations but not the capitulation, acquiescing, and humiliation this administration keeps erroneously and gratuitously associating with negotiation...Is anyone on Pennsylvania Avenue listening?
Emphatically and repeatedly asserting that the U.S. will not negotiate with world leaders unless and until they first do as they're told is not only a policy of extraordinary arrogance but also one of paralyzing myopia. And that's a nice way of saying it.
posted by Bob P @ 7:34 PM
2 Comments:
Just started reading your blog, and this is not a comment on your content by any means, but I wish you didn't feel the need to "bold" the most important (or I assume what you feel is most important) sentences on your blog. We're not stupid, we can read emphasis into what you are saying. No need to clock us over the head with it. It just makes it hard(er) to read on an already hard to read template. Just a suggestion.
The intent of the Republican conservatives is to deconstruct the Middle Class in America. Ronald Reagan gave the conservatives an enormous boost in that goal by eliminating the air-traffic controllers unionIn order to eliminate the Middle Class you have to eliminate the conditions that create that class and the unions definitely help to elevate Americans to that economic level."No Child Left Behind Act" is just a veiled affort to destroy the Teachers Union. This Act gives the government the option to remove or demote a teacher regardless of tenure if they do not maintain the standards set by the government. How devious to create a law that is suppose to be helping the education of Americas youth that is really just a means of destroying one of the strongest unions in America and the irony of the situation is that teachers who are suppose to be educated chose to vote for the Republican conservative party who is working to destroy their job security. Several weeks ago this Republican controlled government created a policy that redefines the work status of the nurses inthe United States. If any nurse has to give instructions or information to any other nurses or employees then that nurse is reclassified as a manager and is disqualified from joining a union. Another step in the objective of destroying unions and the middle class. If anybody watches the news, reads the paper or magazines, the clues are there. Many of the Republican Conservatives agenda become apparent. They want to destroy the Middle Class and it can be done by eliminating unions and job security, eliminating Social Security, and creating economic situations like the enormous rise in fuel prices to push the Middle Class downward. At the same time the conservatives are allowing the wealthy to become richer by eliminating or dropping the tax burden on the richest people in America. The amazing part of this entire transition is that the Republican conservatives are using the poor and the middle class to create a two-class society, the rich and the poor. So whenever you find yourself struggling just to keep your family fed and your kids in clothes, if you voted for the Republican party then you have none to blame but yourself.
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