Negotiation is NOT Appeasement! (George Bush is an Idiot)

In a speech to the Israeli parliament Thursday, President Bush took a swipe at Barack Obama for his willingness to negotiate with evil regimes. "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," 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."

But if there is anything that has been discredited by history, it is the argument that every enemy is Hitler, that negotiations constitute appeasement, and that talking will automatically lead to a slaughter of Holocaust-like proportions. It is an argument that conservatives made throughout the Cold War, and, if the charge seemed overblown at the time, it seems positively ludicrous with the clarity of hindsight. The modern conservative movement was founded in no small part on the idea that presidents Truman and Eisenhower were "appeasing" the Soviets. The logic went something like this: Because communism was evil, the United States should seek to destroy it, not coexist with it; the bipartisan policy of containment, which sought to prevent the further spread of communism, was a moral and strategic folly because it implied long-term coexistence with Moscow. Conservative foreign policy guru James Burnham wrote entire books claiming that containment -- which, after the Cold War, would be credited with defeating the Soviet Union -- constituted "appeasement."

Conservatives even applied this critique to one of the most dangerous moments in human history: the Cuban missile crisis, during which the United States and the Soviet Union nearly came to nuclear blows over Moscow's deployment of missiles 90 miles off the American coast. When President Kennedy successfully negotiated a peaceful conclusion to the crisis, conservative icon Barry Goldwater protested that he had appeased the Soviets by promising not to invade Cuba if they backed down. The Soviets withdrew their missiles in what was widely seen as a humiliation to Khrushchev, but Goldwater believed that Kennedy's diplomacy gave "the communists one of their greatest victories in their race for world power that they have enjoyed to date." To Goldwater, it was far preferable to risk nuclear war with the Soviets than to give up our right to roll back Fidel Castro.

Ronald Reagan, whose election in 1980 was seen as the culmination of the conservative movement, dubbed SALT II "appeasement" as well, but the trope would come back to bite him. Although Reagan pleased the right enormously during his first three years in office with his military expansion, his call for rollback and his advocacy of missile defenses, conservatives reacted with horror once he began serious negotiations with the Soviets. When he and Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987, which for the first time eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons, Buckley's National Review dubbed it "suicide." The Conservative Caucus took out a full-page newspaper ad saying "Appeasement is as unwise in 1988 as in 1938." It paired photos of Reagan and Gorbachev with photos of Neville Chamberlain and Hitler.

Containment, negotiation, nuclear stability -- each of these things helped protect the United States and end the Cold War. And yet, at the time, conservatives thought each was synonymous with appeasement. The Bush administration has been little different, refusing for years to talk to North Korea or Iran about their nuclear programs because it wanted to defeat evil, not talk to it. The result was that Pyongyang tested a nuclear weapon and Iran's uranium program continued unfettered. (By contrast, when the administration negotiated with Libya -- an act that its chief arms controller, John Bolton, had previously derided as, yes, "appeasement" -- it succeeded in eliminating Tripoli's nuclear program.) Alas, John McCain accused President Clinton of "appeasement" for engaging North Korea, instead calling for "rogue state rollback," and now he dismisses the idea of negotiations with Iran. Given conservatism's historical record, Obama's inclination to negotiate seems only sensible. When will conservatives learn that it is 2008, not 1938?
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-scoblic17-2008may17,0,...

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[lilmissnewyork95]

Take the teleprompter away from obama and he wouldn't know what the f*** to say......uuhhhmmmm.......uuuuh­hhhmmm

[Pjphoto]

Obama=all the rest of the elitist main stream media

[pileon1999]

Great. Obama engaging in dialogue with murderers is characterized as neutral. This moron couldn't negotiate a shoe sale. 

[beginization]

Obamas appeasement has not worked well with Iran, 2 yrs later still no talks and they have nearly finished building their Nuke, obama allowed this to happen by preventing Isreal attacking the sites in the beginning. Who ever Bush considered a threat Obama has accepted they must be friends and allies ignored and sold out.

Obama is about to sell out Englands atomic weapons program and stock secrets to the russians which the USA learnt about in past relationships, obamas historic all right, evil

[72Yonatan]

Most nations find that the existence of Israel is a "problem" which needs solving by weakening Israel into dhimmi status. They will all break their heads against the flint of Jerusalem.

[Re5Publica]

How are negotiations going so far? It seems to have only made them more hostile. Obama's apologizing to Muslims has only been met with more terrorist plots, and attacks in 2009, than from 2001 to 2008 combined. The more Obama acts unconfident the more america's enemies ramp up their activity. This is something that could be learned from over 2000 years of historical precedence.

Islamist fanatics are simply waiting him out, they're patient - they believe this war has been going on since 600 AD.

[MrGilles1990]

@FreshMount You actually believe soviet records you are really stupid nazi!

[techieatwork]

Obama is the latest Majestic's L17's new puppet! He didn't leave middle east. His army (your fellow dear soldiers) is getting annihilated over there, and he doesn't care, OR he can't convince his masters to do it. He is just a sweet talker, and convinced us all!! Any new puppet will continue running the war business: "let's continue selling them weapons for them to kill each other, distracting them from every corner, while we (the puppet's masters) laugh at them from the Bahamas!"

[robopad]

Obama is pissed, because Greece is now, where he beleives America should be.

[MSM4U2POM]

@FreshMount

"When Mikhail Gorbachev unsealed the Soviet" etc.

LMFAO!

You lot always cry foul when new evidence comes along, but all of a sudden you've found something genuine - from Russia!!! What are you telling us now - that all documents in Western archives were doctored, but those sent to the Soviet Union (the second Israel, if you are to be believed) were left untouched?

Bush ain't the only idiot here.

[FreshMount]

when Mikhail Gorbachev unsealed the soviet records it showed that the communists had knowledge of only 76,000 jews who died during WW2. Six million is a total farce which was promulgated by the zionist?s to satisfy a bogus prophesy about when the jews would be empowered to return to Canaan. 85% of the jews who stole Palestine in 1948 were atheistic khazar jews disguising themselves as biblical jews.

[Hosshin]

talk talk talk.......the only language that is international under stood is unfortunately violence , i hate this pussy shit harden the fuck up and keep ur sword arm strong, as u shake the hand of ur enemy make sure u squeeze it firmly