Talking to Enemies

GW Bush, McCain, and Hillary all agree that we should not talk to hostile leaders without preconditions. Obama disagrees. He is right and they are wrong.

This can best be seen by turning the issue around. Consider the case of Suu Kyi, an opposition leader in Burma/Myanmar. The burmese government (a repressive dictatorship) refused to meet with her about the recent unrest unless preconditions were met, such as "she renounce widespread calls for international sanctions against the military regime".
Here is a news item.

Surely renouncing sanctions should be a result of negotiation, not a precondition. Otherwise what motive does the junta have for giving any concessions at all?

Predictably GW Bush insisted (correctly) that the meeting should take place without preconditions.

Such hypocracy arises when one takes the attitude that our people are good and the other side are evil people who need to be controlled. I will not argue that those who are hostile to us are not evil, but asking them to implicitly accept that categorization for all to see by submitting to preconditions is not going to work, for obvious reasons.

Here's another analogy: in a hostage situation, imagine the police refuse to answer the phone when the hostage takers call, claiming that 'taking hostages was wrong and so they should release the hostages first, before we talk'.