On Tuesday morning, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared that Iran was busily installing 6,000 new centrifuges for development of nuclear material. Further, Ahmadinejad stated, Iran would begin testing a new type of centrifuge that works five times faster than ordinary centrifuges.

On Tuesday afternoon, Democratic presidential front-runner Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., declared that the U.S. should engage in a "diplomatic surge" in Iraq. In particular, he said, America should embrace talks with Iran. "I do not believe we are going to be able to stabilize the situation without that," Obama told Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker. "I continue to believe that the original decision to go into Iraq was a massive strategic blunder, that the two problems you pointed out — al-Qaida in Iraq and increased Iranian influence in the region — are a direct result of that original decision."

Never mind the unbelievable arrogance of a foreign policy boob like Barack Obama, lecturing the two most knowledgeable on-the-ground figures in Iraq on the best military strategy for Iraq.

Barack Obama's scariest characteristic isn't his ego, though its sheer size threatens to shift the globe out of orbit.

Obama's scariest characteristic is his puerile belief that everything can be solved by talking with dictators.

He seems to believe there's nothing to be lost by sitting across the table from murderers, thugs, Holocaust deniers and genocidal maniacs. "I will meet not just with our friends but with our enemies, not just with those we agree with but those we don't," he blustered in February.

Obama, more than any politician of the past fifty years, should understand the power of words and gestures — his entire campaign is based on them. Yet, he doesn't seem to understand the simple truth that America's enemies see negotiation as a sign of weakness.

Evil leaders always see negotiations without preconditions as surrender.

Neville Chamberlain's shilly-shallying at Munich emboldened Hitler. Yitzhak Rabin's agreement to the Oslo Accords encouraged Yasser Arafat. April Glaspie's statement to Saddam Hussein that "We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait" gave Hussein the green light to touch off the first Gulf War.

Obama likes to compare himself to Ronald Reagan. Reagan, Obama says, negotiated with the USSR. Naturally, Obama neglects to mention that Reagan only negotiated with the USSR after placing missiles in Europe, funding Star Wars, joking about bombing the Soviets and calling the USSR an "evil empire." Obama's meetings would be more like an Oprah interview than a Reagan negotiation.

It's not surprising Obama is willing to have coffee with those who hate America. After all, he allowed an America-hater to preside over his wedding. He sat in the pews while his spiritual mentor railed against Israel. He's used to Ahmadinejad-like rhetoric — he went to a church full of it for two decades.

Obama has no problem chatting with the world's bloodiest butchers or sitting in racist churches because he "understands" everyone. Back in November, I wrote that Obama was running as "The Man Who Understands ."

"I know, I have seen, the desperation and disorder of the powerless," he writes in "Dreams From My Father." That understanding leads him to excuse Islamic terrorism as a function of poverty; it leads him to compare black teens on the South Side of Chicago to jihadis in Indonesia. It leads him to excuse scumbag preachers and to kowtow to sadistic tyrants.

There's clearly one thing Barack Obama doesn't understand: the nature of evil. That's why he continues to coddle evil men in both his personal life and his politics.

Ben Shapiro, 23, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School. He is the author of the new book "Project President: Bad Hair and Botox on the Road to the White House," as well as the national bestseller "Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth." To find out more about Ben Shapiro and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

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