"I would be a foreign policy velociraptor. Grr." (Steve Marcus/Reuters)
It was Herman Cain's
speculation that he would be willing to consider negotiating away Gitmo prisoners in exchange for hostages, if al Qaeda demanded it, that started the mess. And no, Cain never really explained away the mess, although it might have had something to do with the difference between apples, oranges and other various fruits: it is hard to keep track.
But when Ron Paul lobbed that lovely stinkbomb about Reagan trading arms for hostages, during that last debate, the momentarily frozen non-reactions of the other candidates were something to behold. It was Santorum who first took Paul on, since of course Reagan must be defended (because Santorum clearly had figured that the only way he was going to still be allowed to talk in these debates is if he just butted in and did it, and even though all right-thinking Republicans can agree Ronald Reagan was in hindsight a dirty hippie, but is still an object of conservative worship for some reason). Santorum botched the obvious answer, which was easily given by Newt Gingrich afterward: Ronald Reagan was a great guy, but of course he just didn't know about this thing happening right under his nose, because he was also a celebrated idiot. Instead, Santorum chose the yeah, but the hostage-taking Iranians weren't that bad approach:
SANTORUM: That’s not — Iran was a sovereign country. It was not a terrorist organization, number one. [...]
They’re — they’re — they’re a sovereign country ...
PAUL: He negotiated for hostages.
SANTORUM: There’s — there’s a role — we negotiated for hostages with the Soviet Union. We’ve negotiated with hostages, depending on the scale. But there’s a difference between releasing terrorists from Guantanamo Bay in response to a terrorist demand… then — then negotiating with other countries, where we may have an interest, and that is certainly a proper role for the United States, too.
As Think Progress points out (bless them for having some poor soul listening to Fox News all the time: I hope it is at least a rotating duty, since most health insurance does not cover suicides), Santorum took only a single day to pull a Romney, reversing his argument completely:
Asked by Bret Baier what President Santorum’s Iran policy would be, the former senator concluded:
This government will not and cannot be negotiated with. They are radical Islamists. They are theocrats. They are mullahs who believe it is their destiny to fulfill the prophets and the 12th Imam’s vision of having global control of the world for radical Shia Islam.
So they were a legitimate government then, but radicals who cannot be negotiated with now. Reagan was therefore right, and/or ignorant, but he would be wrong now. Those who overthrew the American-backed Iranian government and held Americans hostage were a sovereign country; the government that resulted is not a sovereign country. Or something.
I continue to by surprised by how fungible the principles of conservative foreign policy are. Whether an action is good or bad changes with the winds; whether a figure like Gaddafi is a human-rights-abusing monster or someone reasonable that can be bartered with (see: John McCain) depends on whether we want their oil or their money. Whether Iran is a sovereign government that can be negotiated with or a pack of barely-human monsters who would just as soon eat you as look at you depends on the specific point you are trying to make on any given day. And it can change back right away, of course. There is the distinct element of farce to it all: when Herman Cain muttered about not caring who the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-stan-stan might be, it was the most honest answer of any of them: who cares, indeed?
Given that all of GOP foreign policy currently exists as ritualized meat-tossing for the base, I suppose that is better at least than the outright delusional approaches favored by Bush and his merry band of diplomacy-loathing diplomats. For now it is all just a campaign exercise in hating the right people in the right proportions, then navigating the minefields that result from the things you haven't quite thought through yet. Points will be given by the media not for the rationality of your positions, but in your finesse in dodging their implications.