The (lack of) Communications of Fear

One of the scariest tenets of the modern right is their inability to rationally talk with anyone who disagrees with them.  We see this on a micro, intra-party level when Pam Geller of Atlas Shrugs launches verbal bombs against Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs.  I also thought LFG was among the heaviest wingnut blogs around, but when Geller rants "Charles Johnson - poster boy for the left," you'd think the man just had the highest recommended diary on Daily Kos.  What is Johnson's crime?  Offering up criticism of Glenn Beck's insanity.  That's just too much indifference for righties like Geller, who demand carte blanche obedience.  Shorter Geller: Don't like Beck? Well, I don't talk with you, Obamabot!

We see many examples of this anti-social behavior on a macro level, too -- the most recent example is Obama's handshake with Hugo Chavez.  As is wholly predictable these days, this handshake has caused the right to go apoplectic.  Malkin asks if anyone smelled sulfur during the handshake; after calling it a "terrorist fist bump," Tom Maguire quips "When socialists salute!"  Etc., etc.  Apparently, there has to be a purity test world leaders must pass for us to talk with them -- somebody tell that to the King of Saudi Arabia!  Oh wait, the right only cared about Obama's meeting with Abdullah because they could scream about the supposed bowing act -- the fact that Saudi Arabia continues to be a leading human rights violator, not an issue.  Clearly, in their eyes, heads of state can be shitty, oppressive people as long as they're not socialists as well.

Not to digress on the hypocrisy too long (once you start, it's tough to stop), but the point of this post is just how scary this asocial behavior is.  Could you imagine the world today if this obedience-first, anti-social style of Republican occupied the White House in the post-WWII era?  We didn't have that, of course.  Despite the fact that the Soviet Union was more fearsome and brutal than Chavez could ever hope to be -- with a massive nuclear arsenal and ICBMs, too -- the Republican Eisenhower administration kept diplomatic lines open with them.  When the impromptu "Kitchen Debate" took place in 1959, Vice President Nixon had a direct, face-to-face meeting with USSR president Khrushchev.  Reflecting on politics today, let that sink in for a moment...  Could you imagine former Vice President Dick Cheney meeting with any one of today's lesser enemies while he was in office?   Now that just sounds silly.

The direct correspondence between Khrushchev and the White House continued into the Kennedy administration, and not only was present during the Cuban Missile Crisis but played a key role in averting total nuclear war.  Robert McNamara, Kennedy's Defense Secretary, discussed the cabinet meetings and tense diplomacy during the crisis which ultimately led to its resolution:

McNamara: Kennedy was trying to keep us out of war. I was trying to help him keep up out of war. And General Curtis LeMay, whom I served under as a matter of fact in World War II, was saying "Let's go in, let's totally destroy Cuba."

On that critical Saturday, October 27th, we had two Khrushchev messages in front of us. One had come in Friday night, and it had been dictated by a man who was either drunk or under tremendous stress. Basically, he said, "If you'll guarantee you won't invade Cuba, we'll take the missiles out." 

Then before we could respond, we had a second message that had been dictated by a bunch of hard—liners. And it said, in effect, "If you attack, we're prepared to confront you with masses of military power." 

So, what to do? We had, I'll call it, the soft message and the hard message.

At the elbow of President Kennedy was Tommy Thompson, former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow. He and Jane, his wife, had literally lived with Khrushchev and his wife upon occasion. Tommy Thompson said, "Mr. President, I urge you to respond to the soft message." 

The President said to Tommy, "We can't do that, that'll get us nowhere." 

Tommy said, "Mr. President, you're wrong." Now that takes a lot of guts.

Kennedy: We're not going to get these missiles out of Cuba, probably anyway, by negotiation.

Thompson: I don't agree, Mr. President. I think there's still a chance.

Kennedy: That he'll back down?

Thompson: The important thing for Khrushchev, it seems to me, is to be able to say, "I saved Cuba, I stopped an invasion."

McNamara: In Thompson's mind was this thought: Khrushchev's gotten himself in a hell of a fix. He would then think to himself, "My God, if I can get out of this with a deal that I can say to the Russian people: 'Kennedy was going to destroy Castro and I prevented it.'" Thompson, knowing Khrushchev as he did, thought Khrushchev will accept that. And Thompson was right. 

Now think about that for a minute.  Not only did the Kennedy administration have direct communication with the USSR, but in the cabinet meeting Kennedy had somebody who knew and formerly lived with President Khrushchev.  Given that the stakes were nuclear war, it's no exaggeration to suggest that the world would be a much more different, desolate place today if the US/USSR direct diplomacy of the Cuban Missile Crisis didn't exist. 

Talking with your enemies brings peace.

Of course, one person sitting at that cabinet meeting thought Kennedy and everyone else were full of shit, and that's General Curtis LeMay.  A hardline Republican then, LeMay is analogous to what the Republican party has become today.  Had Kennedy listened to LeMay, none of us would be sitting here today, blogging about it. 

The LeMay factor of today's Republican leaders is what scares me the most about them; and if this wing of the party ever takes power again.  They don't want presidents to talk with anyone who doesn't pass their political litmus test.  If these anti-social Republicans were in power in the 1960s, or even the Eisenhower Republican era of the 1950s, we wouldn't have had diplomatic communications with the Soviet Union.  We wouldn't be here. 

Compared to such a bleak future, I hardly see where Obama shaking Chavez's hand is a mistake.  I'm more scared of not talking to him, or any other world leader.