For a change of pace, I'm going to talk about something from real life instead of CN. I'm an American, and one of the many issues that came up in our elections was the idea of talks without preconditions. I hadn't even heard of the idea prior to this, so it was news to me that there were people that actually supported it.

Preconditions before talks is exactly what it sounds like - before we talk to a country, we demand they meet so and so conditions. Before we even talk. The excuse given is that if Obama talks to Ahmadinejad without forcing him to follow terms, we're going to be 'legitimizing' his 'regime'. While it's true Iran's nowhere close to a true representative democracy, both because the religious factions have superior authority to the elected one, and because they have limited ballots, it doesn't mean it's on the U.S.'s shoulders to legitimize governments.

That's true arrogance to me. It's the equivalent of if someone was elected in FARK and no one considered it legit until someone else acknowledged it. No one has the authority to legitimize a government but the people living under that government. I look at Iran as someone who believes in consent in the governed, and I don't see massive riots and demonstrations in the streets calling for revolution. You know when Iran saw that? When the U.S. had a puppet in charge of the country.

I guess my point is this - the U.S. will never regain our respect internationally if we continue along with a failed standard operating procedure, which "preconditions" is very much a part of, and that it's arrogant to state our opinion means spit when it comes to someone else's government. We're like the meddling old man, except we're not old.