Michael Barone had this to say about President Obama’s speech to the United Nations last week:
"Much of the speech seemed to be an exercise in what Sigmund Freud called ‘projection,’ assuming that others think the way you do. Obama spoke as if the mullahs of Iran, the Kim Jong Il clan of North Korea, Vladimir Putin and his gang of oligarchs, and the rulers of China had the same gripes against the Bush administration as Obama and the liberal Democrats in Congress. Hey, if we just close Gitmo, they'll realize that we're all in sympathy now."
Which is exactly how Democrats handled those portions of the Vietnam War they were in control of (i.e., from January 20, 1961 or whenever you want to say it started {whichever is later} through January 20, 1969 and from Richard Nixon’s resignation {or slightly before that} through the end).
They always thought that the North Vietnamese thought like we did; that the North Vietnamese would understand the signals we were giving them in only gradually escalating the bombing and then, at appropriate times, stopping the bombing to encourage negotiations. Except that the North Vietnamese didn’t think like we did. We wanted to negotiate a compromise solution; they wanted to win. They did, however, understand what our signals really meant; i.e., that we were more interested in negotiating than in succeeding
I hope we do not have a similar disconnect today with countries like Iran, etc., but I fear it is possible.
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