Bush Proves Yet Again He Just Doesn’t Get It
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Bush, Democrats, Hillary, History, McCain, Military, The War On Terrorism, The World, War
After a foreign policy that has resulted in more enemies instead of fewer, Bush actually has the gall to suggest that talking with some of the more high level foes is akin to appeasing Hitler.
“Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,” said Bush, in what White House aides privately acknowledged was a reference to calls by Obama and other Democrats for the U.S. president to sit down for talks with leaders like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.“We have heard this foolish delusion before,” Bush said in remarks to the Israeli Knesset. “As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American Senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of 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.”
Because fighting pre-emptive wars and spending hundreds of billions of dollars has worked out so well and made us so much safer…
And by the way, just because you attempt to engage in diplomacy doesn’t mean that it leads to appeasement. But I can see how Bush would think that given he has really only engaged in diplomacy with North Korea. And since they were the only ones, that sent the signal that if a nation has nuclear capabilities, we’ll talk to them.
Yeah, great strategy…way to use our leverage effectively.
Obviously, Obama has a response…
“Instead of tough talk and no action, we need to do what Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan did and use all elements of American power — including tough, principled, and direct diplomacy – to pressure countries like Iran and Syria. George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the President’s extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel.”
The White House then responded that Bush wasn’t talking about Obama…
“I understand that when you are running for office sometimes you think the world revolves around you. That is not always true and it is not true in this case.”
Okay, so Bush was talking about somebody else who proposed a diplomatic policy shift that doesn’t align with either Hillary Clinton or John McCain, right?
Let’s see, who else is there…hmm…
Also, remember this passage from the first blockquote? “[...]White House aides privately acknowledged was a reference to calls by Obama[...]“
Moving on…
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May 15th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Justin, how do you know this was a swipe at Obama, and not at someone like Jimmy Carter, whose recent trip to meet with Hamas made huge headlines throughout Israel? Interesting how Obama automatically gets defensive and assumes it was him that Bush was speaking about.
Imagine if we fought a pre-emptive war against the Taliban, or the Nazis for that matter. Think of how many billions of dollars and human lives we would have saved. Blanket statements about pre-emtive wars are naive. If Israel didn’t fight a pre-emtive war in 1967 there would have been another holocaust. You have to pick your battles wisely and hind-sight is 20/20. If we had fought a pre-emptive war with the Taliban before 2001, all the Bush-haters would have said the same things they do now about Iraq.
May 15th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
I cited why in the story. It’s at the very end.
Jimmy, the problem with preemptive wars is that you can’t know. And Israel’s wasn’t preemptive…they knew that those nations were going to attack them. Our evidence, on the other hand, was cherry picked and
Sorry, but “What if ” and “Woulda shoulda coulda” are only used by people trying to justify current policies built on incredibly specious arguments. Also, there’s such a thing as learning from history, and likening this situation to the Nazis is a lousy comparison at the very best. At worst, it’s a suggestion that Obama and his fellow Democrats would let tens of millions of Jews die because they’d rather talk than fight. That’s nonsense.
May 15th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Exactly.
But they hadn’t attacked them. It could have been one big bluff. Like Saddam’s deliberate posturing and planting of evidence that he had WMD.
In toady’s world our enemies do not fuel-up jet fighters on the tarmac, or blockade ports of entry with naval vessels, or amass thousands of troops at the border, and yet our enemies today are just as dangerous, if not more so. Therefore, we must rely on intelligence gathering which is always flimsy and roughshod in the context of any conflict. It sucks, but thats the reality.
No, you are wrong. They are also used by people who have been victimized by egregious actions from evil men, such as the Jews who suffered through the holocaust and Americans who were traumatized by 9/11. What if we acted sooner? – they say. We shoulda done this, we coulda done that and we might have stopped the 9/11 terror plot or prevented the Holocaust. It is perfectly legitimate, and necessary to ask these questions in order that we learn from history.
In today’s world of terrorism, it has become all the more tempting to offer concessions, or to hold negotiations without pre-conditions, because warfare is conducted through guile and deniability, and terrorist-supporting regimes on the surface can present themselves as being innocuous, nonthreatening, or “containable”- or even victims of western aggression.
There are significant voices advocating appeasement all over the world and in the United states, and whether Obama interprets himself to be included in that group by President Bush, it doesn’t make the speech any less relevant. The Obama campaign’s waffling on their positions regarding Iran makes me believe the House aides have a point.
May 15th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
[...] Bush apparently doesn’t know. [...]
May 15th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
[...] exactly does Bush explain his speech when his own defense secretary’s opinions seems to place him in the “appeasement” [...]