A Rush of Blood to the Head

Had a conversation a while back with one of my best friends. We were talking about different things, when we got on the subject of the presidential elections and he brought up Obama's statements about talking to certain foreign leaders.

This brought up the subject of negotiations with terrorists. I wish I had saved the conversation. I wish that I could copy and paste it here so you could get his argument as well as what I'm about to say. But a few days after we had the conversation he sent me an attachment titled "why I don't negotiate." It was a quiz he had made, with questions about who had commited certain acts of violence against the United States and its citizens. And the answer to each and every one of them was obvious:

"Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40"

His main point being that there are people you can't negotiate with. There are even groups of people that you can't negotiate with.

It's a good point. There are people in the world who have closed their minds and hearts to words. Who only communicate in violence.

I just don't want the United States government to be one of those groups of people.


Ruling out conversation severely limits options. It prevents us from hearing complaints and requests that can be legitimately dealt with. And it keeps us from hearing complaints and requests that can make us look critically at ourselves.


Shutting the world out is easy. Shutting people out is easy. Deciding that you are right and everyone else is wrong is easy.

Hating is easy.

Loving is hard.

Letting the world in is hard. Letting people in is hard. Hearing all the sides and learning that there are things that you have done poorly in the past and are doing poorly now that you need to change is hard.



Being willing to talk to them doesn't mean that they will talk to us. It doesn't mean we'll get the chance to talk. It doesn't mean we'll get the chance to listen. It doesn't mean they'll stop hating us.

But not being willing to talk doesn't even give us that chance.

It doesn't mean that talking is our only option. but it means that talking is one option. It means that we haven't set a precedence of shutting ourselves off. It means we haven't set a precedence of hate. It means that if in the future a group of people emerges from the middle east who we can negotiate with...we can.

I just want conversation to always be an option.
I just want love to always be an option.


am I wrong? what do you think?