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Jimmy Carter's Magic WordsShould we talk to our enemies?

By Shmuel RosnerPosted Tuesday, April 29, 2008, at 5:13 PM ET

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Jimmy Carter and Bill Gates Sr. filed a series of "Dispatches" from Africa in 2002. Christopher Hitchens declared, "Almost always, when former President Jimmy Carter opens his big, smug mouth, he has already made the psychological mistake that is going to reduce his words to absurdity." Steven E. Landsburg explained what Carter has in common with Henry VI.

Carter is defying them all, and he is trying to erode international support for isolation. "This policy" he argues, "makes difficult the possibility that such leaders might moderate their policies." The hope of eventual moderation is another easy argument made by proponents of engagement, who fail to recognize that in some cases, moderation is not a reasonable expectation. Here, Carter is guilty not only of miscalculation but of hubris. He apparently believes that by the force of his personality and powers of persuasion, he can make Hamas change a deeply rooted ideology. Unfortunately, he can't.

Carter goes on to add Syria into the mix. He claims, "Israel cannot gain peace with Syria unless the Golan Heights dispute is resolved." That is probably true. He also uses the "desire of high Israeli officials" to negotiate with Syria to show that the U.S. government's stance against such talks is counterproductive. (Conveniently enough, Carter listens to Israelis' desires only when they bolster his arguments, but that's another story.)

But what Carter fails—or, more likely, doesn't want—to explain is why the Bush administration is reluctant to encourage Israeli engagement with Syria. Reading his article, you might think that preventing bilateral peace talks is the reason—that Washington is somehow opposed to peace between Israel and Syria. This makes no sense. Why would the administration oppose a peace agreement—any peace agreement?

Again, it is those damned details that skew his reasoning. The Bush administration does not oppose an Israeli-Syrian peace accord, but it does oppose an accord that Syria will interpret as a license to keep meddling in Lebanon's affairs or an accord that will let Syria off the hook with respect to its unhelpful Iraq policies.

There's no moral virtue in talking to one's enemies. Engagement is a tool, but so are disengagement and isolation. Both are effective, if used wisely; both can be damaging if used in haste. Talking to one's enemies is a tool—as is complaining about one's reluctance to talk to one's enemies. This is the tool now being used by Hamas and Syria—assisted by Carter—as they try to escape and counter the isolation being applied to them. Making the case for engagement helps them achieve their strategic goal.

Carter's bouillabaisse of Hamas, Syria, and the Maoist guerrillas of Nepal, whom he uses as a positive example of his approach, allows him to offer a one-approach-fits-all solution: Get Carter on board, engage, solve. This should come as no surprise to the people following his diplomacy in recent years. Professor Kenneth Stein, who worked with Carter for more than 20 years—until he chose to break their ties over the controversial book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid—wrote in the Middle East Quarterly that throughout the book Carter "allows his premises to supplant the facts."

He "possesses missionary zeal," Stein wrote of the former president. Last week, writing about Carter's visit to Israel for Ha'aretz, I revisited this zeal and "the fundamental hypocrisy which is the basis for the political partisanship concerning Carter." Why is it, I asked, that people who have attacked a president such as Bush for "distorting facts in order to push a political goal" have no problem with Carter's book? Why is it that people suspicious of the religious faith that serves as the foundation of Bush's political actions have "no problem with the same religious motives of Carter's messianism"?