There he goes again… Posted by Shawn Brimley

In addition to the derailment of McCain's Straight Talk Express (cho-cho!), President Bush has equated diplomacy with appeasement… again.

President Bush used a speech to the Israeli Parliament on Thursday to denounce those who would negotiate with "terrorists and radicals" — a remark that was widely interpreted as a rebuke to Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential contender, who has argued that the United States should talk directly with countries like Iran and Syria.

Mr. Bush did not mention Mr. Obama by name, and the White House said his remarks were not aimed at the senator, though they created a political firestorm in Washington nonetheless.

In a lengthy speech intended to promote the strong alliance between the United States and Israel, the president invoked the emotionally volatile imagery of World War II to make the case that talking to extremists was no different than appeasing Hitler and the Nazis.

"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Mr. Bush said. "We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all 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."

So if those recommending that we actually use diplomacy as a tool of statecraft are to be labeled as appeasers, I guess that means that Colin Powell, Brent Scowcroft, James Baker, Henry Kissinger, and Richard Armitage qualify as well. Is that really what you meant Mr. President? Right…

UPDATE: And another thing, are we therefore to label General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker as appeasers for talking to Iranian officials over the last few months?

And what are we to make of our multi-year effort via our heroic diplomat Chris Hill to negotiate with North Korea? 

And what are we to make of Secretary of Defense Gates' speech TODAY, in which he said of Iran:

"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."

In the meantime, Gates told a meeting of the Academy of American Diplomacy, a group of retired diplomats, "my personal view would be we ought to look for ways outside of government to open up the channels and get more of a flow of people back and forth." Noting that "a fair number" of Iranians regularly visit the United States, he said, "We ought to increase the flow the other way . . . of Americans" visiting Iran.

"I think that may be the one opening that creates some space," Gates said.

Give me a break! 

Comments

[Jeb]

Related:
http://fpwatch.blogspot.com/2008/05/long-unfortunate-shadow-of-munich.html

[peace]

I'm sick of the Munich analogy being used over and over again in foreign policy disputes. Bush and his advisors really like LBJ and his advisors in the sixties in their refusal to talk to the Chinese in negoitating a settlement in the Vietnam conflict because Johnson's advisors like Rostow and Bundy thought any type of negoitiation was appeasement. Bush and the neo-conservatives seem to reuse to talk to Iran because the don't to appears as Chamberlain. Obama should mention that Vietnam is the real allegory for Iraq.

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