Negotiating with Iran

It is good news that the U. S. is willing to talk to Iran, the first time in 27 years.
Only if egos and State ambitions are set aside will any meaningful results pass.

Of course we will never know what went on in the negotiations. We will be told something of the negotiations, but we will never know the truth. Negotiations are the private property of the Executive, with very few checks and balances. The voters have no say in the negotiations for war, or no war. We have no say in the matter. Nor do we have any say in negotiations for peace during war! If negotiations fail, each side will spew forth with how intractable is the other side. Somewhat like business and labor negotiations that fail. The arrogance and hubris, or the reasoned humility, of the two leaders will never be known.

Could thousands of lives have been spared if the United States had negotiated a peace agreement with Japan before the invasion of Okinawa? I think so. But men must have unconditional surrender! For men to sit around and reach a civil agreement would make them look feminine.

The negotiations should be open for public viewing. That way the masses could see which leaders bargained in good faith.

Randolph Bourne said in, "War is the Health of the State", "Good democrats are wont to feel the crucial difference between a State in which the popular Parliament or Congress declares war, and the State in which an absolute monarch or ruling class declares war. But, put to the stern pragmatic test, the difference is not striking. In the freest of republics as well as in the most tyrannical of empires, all foreign policy, the diplomatic negotiations which produce or forestall war, are equally the private property of the Executive part of the Government, and are equally exposed to no check whatever from popular bodies, or the people voting as a mass themselves."

Charles Tolleson
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Iran, U.S. to discuss Iraq this week By KIM GAMEL, Associated Press Writer
The United States and Iran have set a date for ambassador-level talks in Baghdad on the deteriorating security situation in Iraq - the first such meeting since late May, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Sunday.The two sides will sit down together on Tuesday, according to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and U.S. Embassy spokesman Philip Reeker, amid U.S. allegations that Tehran is supporting violent Shiite militias in the country. Zebari told The Associated Press by telephone that the discussions would be at the ambassadorial level and would focus on the situation in Iraq, not U.S.-Iran tensions.Iraq's fragile government has been pressing for another meeting between the two nations with the greatest influence over its future,and Iran has repeatedly signaled its willingness to sit down.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said last week that Washington was also ready to hold new talks with Iran on the security situation in Iraq.The May 28 meeting marked a break in a 27-year diplomatic freeze between the U.S. and Iran and was expected to have been followed within a month by a second encounter. But following that meeting,Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other U.S. officials said Iran had not scaled back what the United States claims is a concerted effort to arm militants and harm U.S. troops.

Tensions also have risen over Tehran's detention of four Iranian-American scholars and activists charged with endangering national security. The U.S. has demanded their release, saying the charges against them are false. At the same time, Iran has called for the release of five Iranians detained in Iraq, whom the United States has said are members of Iran's elite Quds Force - accused of arming and training Iraqi militants. Iran says the five are diplomats in Iraq with permission of the government.