Condi Rice has been hiding her light under a bushel all these years. Apart from all her other vast accomplishments (including but not limited to her enormous expertise in the interpretation of intelligence), she is also an economic thinker to be reckoned with, specifically in the area of pricing. In fact, she may have single-handedly founded a new economic discipline (which, of course, is the kind of thing for which they like to hand out Nobel prizes in Economics), what we might call political price theory.

She informed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday that the US should not talk to Syria and Iran about Iraq under any circumstances, and she invoked political price theory to explain why. Simply put (something Condi is temperamentally incapable of doing), we can’t afford to. The price is too high.

If we try to engage them on Iraq, they will insist on talking about other things too. Iran will bring up our opposition to their nuclear program. Syria will bring up “the loss of (their) position in Lebanon”. Desperate as we are to achieve progress in Iraq, allowing Iran and Syria to bring up these topics is, in the analysis of Dr. Rice, “a price that we cannot pay”.

A lesser mind might be tempted to think that human lives needlessly lost and human beings needlessly maimed should count as a greater price than allowing Iran and Syria to bring up certain topics for discussion. That’s why they’re lesser minds.

Besides, these lesser minds presumably do not already have more than half a million lives on their “conscience”. Once you’re already in the dock for that much, what are another few hundred or few thousand lives? Whereas allowing Iran and Syria to attempt to subject us to “extortion” is another matter entirely. It might actually cause loss of face, depending on how we handled it. And we have precious little face left to lose. So exposing ourselves to the prospect of losing any of it is definitely too high a price to pay. Everyone should be able to see that.

To our eternal shame, none of us saw it before Thursday. But, luckily, we have Dr. Rice to help us along.

(Lesser minds might also conjecture that we may be unwilling to talk to Iran and Syria for other reasons, as well. For example, the fact that they may have absolutely no incentive to listen to us, to do anything other than string us along while they continue to do exactly what they are doing now. Or the fact that asking them for help on Iraq at all will be enormously humiliating, coupled with the certain knowledge that they will squeeze as much depraved enjoyment from our obvious discomfiture as possible.

Or how about the possibility that they might actually come up with the brilliant masterstroke of agreeing to unconditionally help us out in Iraq, thereby making every single assumption this administration has ever made about Iran and Syria, every single aspersion they have ever publicly cast upon them, look totally and incredibly misconceived? How much face Dr. Rice would lose then doesn’t even bear thinking about.

No, we definitely can’t afford to take the risk of asking them for help.)