tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163441833245663827.post5667762865042597742..comments2024-03-28T10:49:14.510-05:00Comments on Horizons: What Conventional Wisdom Gets Wrong About Biden's Approach to Foreign PolicyNancy LeTourneauhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12614317154146836694noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163441833245663827.post-86149227800586997912021-03-02T17:51:30.740-06:002021-03-02T17:51:30.740-06:00Hate to say it, but the "no comments" on...Hate to say it, but the "no comments" on the Biden post led me here, apparently to comments for the Obama/Lewis post. <br /><br />Wonderful post. For a minor example, people are leaping on Biden's handling of the Saudis. I fully sympathize with the complaints. I admire a foreign policy with room for human rights, as Susan Rice has advocated, rather than the self-defeating "realism" of Henry Kissinger. I hate the fulsome praise for a brutal leader from Thomas Friedman in the NY Times. (He's since tried to distance himself from that position, on the dishonest claims that he was demanding from that man a choice all along between tyranny and reform.) <br /><br />Still, first, it's important to place Biden's response within a context of prefering, rightly, talk to confrontation. If Nixon could go to China, surely he can pick up the phone now. And second, and this doesn't apply only to foreign policy, we really have to give him time. Already he's distanced himself from Trump's toadying to Saudi Arabia and arms sales. (As ever, Trump was easily manipulated with praise and vague promises of property deals, without, I think, grounds for blackmail, and his relationship with Russia had similar motivations.) Biden may just be sending that initial signal and then considering his next move. Or he could be waiting to see what kind of concerted response he can make, depending on Europe's leaders. JohnHhttps://www.haberarts.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163441833245663827.post-77853967831402507772021-03-02T17:40:48.896-06:002021-03-02T17:40:48.896-06:00I don't have an opinion on what to make of Dr....I don't have an opinion on what to make of Dr. Seuss's books or what to do about them. I don't have children and can't remember them from childhood. And sure, I'm aware of the limits of PC. But thank you for a wonderful reminder of what matters.<br /><br />May I ask something, though? You are kind in having a commenting mechanism that requires identification but not logging in through Google, WordPress, and the like. (Logging in via Facebook in particular has in the past compromised people's accounts.) But I do wish it remembered a log-in to a degree. I don't mind entering my data each time, but even within the same session it requires Captcha all over again, and this site's version of Captcha is particularly time consuming and unforgiving. JohnHhttps://www.haberarts.comnoreply@blogger.com