McCain Said We Should Talk To Hamas

John McCain now criticizes Obama because Ahmed Yousuf, chief political adviser to the Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh, said “We like Mr. Obama and hope he wins the election.”  Ignoring that it was a Hamas member who endorsed Obama, not the other way around, McCain went on to say he’d be Hamas’ “worst nightmare.” McCain’s supporters even put out this video to try to capitalize on this.

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But two years ago McCain told former State Department spokesman Jamie Rubin that “a new reality” dictates that we’d have to deal with Hamas. Rubin recounts the interview in Friday’s Washington Post.

I interviewed McCain for the British network Sky News’s “World News Tonight” program. Here is the crucial part of our exchange:

I asked: “Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?”

McCain answered: “They’re the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it’s a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that.”

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Given that Obama’s position is that he would talk to Hamas only if they “renounce terrorism, recognize Israel’s right to exist and abide by past agreements,” McCain is, to use the language of our president, much closer to the position of appeasers.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.