Here is Pat Buchanan rambling on about the utility of talking to dictators.

He somehow contrives to say that Poland brought Hitlerian disaster on itself by being a bit too "proud, defiant and heroic", albeit egged on by "insane" British guarantees.

All this and more is meant to cast in a bad light President Bush’s powerful speech in Israel warning against extremist ideologies:

There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain away their words. It’s natural, but it is deadly wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemn responsibility to take these words seriously. Jews and Americans have seen the consequences of disregarding the words of leaders who espouse hatred. And that is a mistake the world must not repeat in the 21st century.

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.

We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.”

We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history. (Applause.)

Buchanan snipes at this from various viewpoints. But the very example he builds his case on – Poland – refutes it.

Is he saying that if only Poland had given Hitler what he wanted everything would have been a lot better? If so, would there ever have come a point when Poland had to tell Hitler ‘No’, and deal with the ensuing carnage?

In any case, Stalin went along with Hitler in a Buchananish way. And look what happened then.

From the point of view of Negotiating Technique, the real problem in ‘talking to extremists’ is not that it is morally wrong to do so – you have to deal with what you have to deal with.

Rather it lies in betraying and marginalising more moderate voices. Why should anyone in the Middle East stand up against terrorists for ‘moderate Islam’ if vicious Hamas-style Islam carries the day and gets to the Top Table?

In case you were wondering what vicious Hamas-style Islam sounds like, here is the Hamas Culture Minister in full flow. Someone likely to bring to any senior negotiating table a measured sense of give-and-take?

As the joke I heard in Poland has it:

All the word’s problems are caused by Jews! And bicycles!

Huh? Why bicycles?

Why Jews?