Bush’s Clumsy Appeasement Smear

Taking a not-to-subtle swipe at Barrack Obama — who has previously indicated a willingness to negotiate with Syria and Iran — while addressing the Israeli parliament today, Bush described such a notion as a “foolish delusion” and the “false comfort of appeasement which has been repeatedly discredited by history.” In doing so, he invoked a famous quote from Sen. William Borah who, on hearing of the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, lamented: “Lord, if only I could have talked with Hitler, all this might have been avoided.”

A couple of things Bush didn’t mention… First of all, Borah was a Republican (he made a failed bid for the party’s nomination in 1936, losing to Alf Landon) and leader of the “Irreconcilables” whose resolute opposition to the League of Nations led to the Senate’s ultimate rejection. And second, far from being indicative of Borah’s “appeasement” the remark could actually be construed as a repudiation of his own long-standing policy of isolationism and aversion to entangling alliances in foreign policy and involvement with European power politics in particular. In the past, Borah had said, “America has arisen to a position where she is respected and admired by the entire world. She did it by minding her own business.”

Update: It should more accurately be called “Retarded Thinking Unabridged” if Luca Manfredi honestly believes that simply talking to regimes such as Iran and Syria and other so-called “enemies” of the U.S. is a form of “appeasement” on the same level as that which enabled Hitler to solidify his position in Europe prior to WWII by various means.

Luca’s prerequisite that “Negotiating involves two parties in full possession of common sense and willing to come to an agreement” is beyond laughable. One wonders who will be the arbiter of “common sense” in this regard, and since when did achieving “an agreement” become the sine quo non of diplomacy?