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Today, while speaking at the Knesset in Jerusalem, President Bush proved that there is no level to which he will not stoop. Breaking long-standing American tradition, he took a cheapshot at a domestic political rival while on foreign soil. Bush compared those who would engage in diplomacy with America’s enemies to Nazi appeasers.
More than a cheapshot, it is so blatantly ignorant and hypocritical as to be comic. Only this morning the Washington Post reported that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates thinks we need to engage Iran diplomatically.
"We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage . . . and then sit down and talk with them," Gates said. "If there is going to be a discussion, then they need something, too. We can’t go to a discussion and be completely the demander, with them not feeling that they need anything from us."
Does that mean the man Bush chose to replace Donald Rumsfeld falls into the category of ‘Nazi appeaser’? What about Bush himself? Has his administration not been engaged in diplomacy for several years now with North Korea - a nation Bush himself designated a member of the ‘Axis of Evil’? I guess that makes Bush an appeaser as well. Doubly so when you consider that his administration negotiated with Muammar Gadaffi, responsible for the terror bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, in order to get him to give up his nuclear weapons program.
Even more distressing is that Bush and those who lend credence to his vacuous argument have no idea what they are talking about when it comes to the meaning of appeasement. Neville Chamberlain is not known as an appeaser because he engaged Hitler diplomatically. Chamberlain’s great error was not talking to the Nazis. His mistake was in ceding territory - specifically, half of Czechoslovakia - in an mistaken attempt to satiate Hitler’s expansionist appetites. It wasn’t engaging Hitler diplomatically that emboldened him. It was the show of weakness by Chamberlain in acceding to Hitler’s desire for new territories that led the Nazi regime to believe it could take what it wanted unopposed.
The long and short of this story is that, once again, Bush is engaging in his typical election year politics of fearmongering. "Vote for a Democrat and die!", Bush threatens. Nevermind, we are told, that President Bush’s policies have made us less safe and our enemies stronger and more numerous. Nevermind that Bush has said repeatedly that he doesn’t want to become the ‘Pundit in Chief’ by injecting himself into the 2008 election.
President Bush, you, sir, are a putz.
Gates: U.S. Should Engage Iran With Incentives, Pressure
