Here's the part of what Bush said in Israel that I think needs more precise and developed comment now and as the general race unfolds.

"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all long." [Emphasis added.]

I notice that many of the pro-Hillary commentators and Hillary herself have the above narrow view of diplomatic relations, reminiscent of an authoritarian style they are steeped in. Hillary's father, she has said to the media, was the ultimate threatening, condemning parent, as was Bush's and Bush's grandfather. Their view is moralistic, or judgmental and profoundly cynical about humanity. Their method is to lecture and threaten enough that our opponents change their tune.

This view and method is at the root of what's known as the Realist School of International Relations. They think they're realistic, because, unlike wimpy, soft-hearted guys like Obama, they know with certainty that foreign radical opponents are like sociopaths--they are not amenable to reason and empathy. Their realism, it has to be said, is only a theory, but to them, it feels like the ultimate truth because it's so thoroughly imbedded in prevailing morality.

The realist perspective truly is the archaic view represented in prevailing morality, in which even most lefties are still locked. On the cutting edge is the now highly developed view in the social sciences that our old view of even sociopaths is, well, just mistaken. When you stand outside of moralists' dire warnings against considering "relativist" views, it becomes obvious that the old view has to be mistaken, because it's based on the patently tautological, primitive view that people do bad things because they're bad. And, giving the Devil his due, if they're bad through and through, of course, opposition is our only course. If that cornerstone of morality--that estimation of what's going on in peoples' minds--is valid, then the Realists should be in control. Their entire position is based on a psychology, albeit a pop one that's so widespread that it's difficult to imagine an alternative But it's obviously way off the beam.

Missing form morality's reductive equation is humanity's vulnerability to maltreatment and the distortions it generates in its victims. Based on the evidence-based view, proof now has been gathered that even career criminals diagnosed Anti-Social Personality Disorder, or sociopaths, are suffering from mind-numbing levels of humiliation and the torment it generates, not bad. That's what motivates their criminality, not an evil nature. Conceived of as horrifically suffering people whose suffering is repressed and disguised in an uncaring persona, they are amenable to profound expressions of respect and caring.  

In Wilson's Ghost, the leading exponent of the alternative school of international relations, which I provisionally prefer to call the School of Realistic Empathy, James Blight of the Watson School at Brown U., provides the international relations analog to the above empathic view that is emerging in the psychotherapy especially. He explains that you've got to take a lot of time and care getting to know your opponent. Instead of lecturing, you ask questions and listen. And you try to hold their feet to the fire not by making threats but by bringing to meetings all the witnesses and documents and summaries of them you can to make certain that you and your opponents agree on the facts. The point is not at all to condone or appease or anything of the sort. Thinking mechanistically for a moment, the point is to learn enough about the inner workings of the machine to be able to fix it or operate it or dismantle it. This is what Obama did with conflicted groups in Chicago, and this is what he will attempt in the Middle East.

Study realistic empathy, I say. It's our frontier.

My only quibble with the School of Realistic Empathy is that its proponents eschew sympathy. The supposed maladaptiveness of sympathy in social science work has become a shibboleth. But unless you've evoked sympathy for your opponents in you and in them, you've not empathized thoroughly enough to solve the most intractable problems. You may solve some problems without getting to that point, but the sine qua non of empathy is the feeling of profound caring it evokes.

We know this in ordinary life situations. For instance, when I learn that my middle-aged wife screamed at my son partly because she had to stop taking estrogen, has no serotonin in her brain, and so on, I feel for her. I don't just understand mechanistically as a basis for correcting the problem.

That feeling deepens the resolution of our family problem by making my and my son's concern and good will more believable and genuine. The more profound the problem, the more profound the empathy, the more profound the caring. Ultimately, love, as the Song of Solomon says, is more powerful than death. Empathy is what evokes it. Or, it cooks. Love is the food that sustains and heals us.

Imagine Obama teaching us this stuff and then going to the Middle East and expressing profound, extensive feeling for the victims of the Iraq war. Imagine him describing empathically Bush's motives, the forces driving him and the neocons. It would take a lot of explaining for this measure to be convincing. But that's just what he is capable of doing, along with the help of people like Blight and other social scientists bursting at the seams to have a leader who draws the best and the brightest conflict resolution folks to him for the sake of the world.

See why my friends call me "Preach'"