John Carlson in discussing talks with Iran refers to what he calls “the false comfort of appeasement.”
He says talking with enemies is “discredited by history.”
No, John, history teaches that many lives can be saved by talking without preconditions. As a World War II combat veteran I know that refusal to negotiate with enemies can be terribly harmful. The boys in my high school class of 1943 were decimated on the battlefield in 1944 in Germany because of the Roosevelt/Churchill “unconditional surrender” demand.
In July 1944 the German military leadership was so unhappy with Hitler that they tried to assassinate him. There were those in the Allied camp who said we should negotiate with the German military but Roosevelt and Churchill stuck to their “unconditional surrender” position and so the war went on for another year with thousands of Americans killed in Germany including my cousin.
At that time I was on Okinawa preparing for the invasion of the Japanese homeland which everyone knows would have been the worst bloodbath in American history. I owe my life to the willingness of President Truman and Gen. MacArthur to negotiate the issue of surrender of Japan with retention of the emperor. He was a war criminal who deserved to be hung but MacArthur worked with him and the safety of American soldiers in the occupation of Japan was well-protected.
This in contrast to the occupation of Iraq which has been worse than the invasion itself. The decision of the Bush neo-cons to dissolve the Iraq army instead of negotiating their cooperation in the occupation is universally agreed to have caused the present situation in which Americans are not safe on the streets and which John McCain intends to go on indefinitely.
Lawrence D. Greene
Kent
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