The headline from Gallup's latest poll reads: Americans Favor President Meeting With U.S. Enemies: 6 in 10 think it's a good idea to meet with president of Iran.

Hopefully, sound U.S. policy will be based on sound judgements and strategy, as opposed to opinion polls.  This specific poll, however, asked the wrong questions and is of little value.

The headline from Gallup's latest poll reads: Americans Favor President Meeting With U.S. Enemies: 6 in 10 think it's a good idea to meet with president of Iran.

Hopefully, sound U.S. policy will be based on sound judgements and strategy, as opposed to opinion polls.  This specific poll, however, asked the wrong questions and is of little value.

According to the poll: "Large majorities of Democrats and independents, and even about half of Republicans, believe the president of the United States should meet with the leaders of countries that are considered enemies of the United States. Overall, 67% of Americans say this kind of diplomacy is a good idea."

Specifically, the poll found "high public support for presidential-level meetings between the United States and Iran."

"About 6 in 10 Americans (59%) think it would be a good idea for the president of the United States to meet with the president of Iran. This includes about half of Republicans, a majority of independents, and most Democrats," the Gallup poll found.

But what question did they ask?
 

More problematic is that they asked "generally speaking" rather than a meaningful question such as:

Do you think it is a good idea or a bad idea for the president of the United States to meet with the president of Iran without any preconditions?

Presidents don't meet other presidents just for the sake of sharing coffee cake - even if they are friends.  I'd have no problem with the American president meeting with Syria's Bashar al-Asad if he closed down the terrorist offices of Hamas and the other Palestinian terrorist factions, stopped supporting Hizballah, left Lebanon alone, and demonstrated beyond tired and used rhetoric that he was seeking "a peace of the brave" with Israel.

There are many ways of conducting negotiations and many levels of contacts one can employ.  Sending the president to meet our enemies and be made a public fool out of may make for good theater, but it's not good statecraft.

Sometimes, Americans and Westerners generally forget that the Middle East is a completely different culture.  Sometimes, the arguments are not over a misunderstanding but of disagreement.  It's not that we need the president to fly to Tehran to explain nicely and slowly that we'd prefer they didn't have nuclear weapons over a cup of Persian tea; it is that they understand that and disagree.  The question should be, what comes next?

Unfortunately, nuclear weapons are a zero-sum game.  Like pregnancy, where one can't be "a little pregnant," either a country does or does not have nuclear weapons.  U.S. policy is currently to prevent Iran from gaining the weapons; Iranian policy is currently to get nuclear weapons.  There is no misunderstanding - we just disagree.  The idea that any president would go to Tehran and meet with Ahmadinejad and convince him that America is great, Jews are wonderful, Israel shouldn't be destroyed, threatening their neighbors is bad, is just laughable and naive.

Generally speaking, it is preferable to resolve problems diplomatically which requires meetings and discussions.  But the U.S. has many tools in our diplomatic and military arsenal and we are failing to be credible with both as far as Iran is concerned.

This poll would be more useful if Gallup asked about preconditions for meetings rather than "generally speaking."

It is good that average Americans are nice and would prefer to talk before throwing punches.  But sometimes, there is a reason that our enemy is our enemy.