{"id":109923,"date":"2017-12-04T15:43:00","date_gmt":"2017-12-04T15:43:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2023-01-08T10:56:22","modified_gmt":"2023-01-08T10:56:22","slug":"the-engagement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cvnextjob.com\/index.php\/2017\/12\/04\/the-engagement\/","title":{"rendered":"The Engagement &quot;Myth&quot;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div><h3 class=\"post-title entry-title\" itemprop=\"name\"><\/h3>\n<div class=\"post-header\"> <\/div>\n<p>Today&#8217;s reading assignment, from Joel Himelfarb of the <em>Washington Times<\/em>, at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.opinionjournal.com\/federation\/feature\/?id=110009346\">Opinion Journal.com<\/a>  He reminds us that successive U.S. administrations have &#8220;engaged&#8221; both  Syria and Iran since the late 1970s, without much success.  In fact,  Damascus and Tehran have often responded to American overtures with  actions that undercut our interests in the region. <\/p>\n<p>Cases in  point: Syrian complicity in the 1982 assassination of Lebanese leader  Pierre Gemayel (which followed intensive U.S. diplomacy aimed at ending  that country&#8217;s civil war), and the 1979 seizure of our embassy in  Tehran, which followed talks in Algiers between National Security  Advisor Zbignew Brzezinski and Iranian Prime Minister Mehdi Barzagan.     <\/p>\n<p>Mr. Himelbarb&#8217;s last paragraph sums it up nicely:<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 85%;\">&#8220;Based  on the historical record, the advocates of U.S. engagement with these  regimes are delusional. The record, from Carter to Bush II, strongly  suggests that neither regime has any interest in cooperating with us in  Iraq, and are more likely than not to view the Carter-Brzezinski-Hagel  approach as a demonstration of American weakness.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s reading assignment, from Joel Himelfarb of the Washington Times, at Opinion Journal.com He reminds us that successive U.S. administrations have &#8220;engaged&#8221; both Syria and Iran since the late 1970s, without much success. In fact, Damascus and Tehran have often responded to American overtures with actions that undercut our interests in the region. Cases in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvnextjob.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109923"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvnextjob.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvnextjob.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnextjob.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnextjob.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cvnextjob.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109923\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvnextjob.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnextjob.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnextjob.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}