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Bush 'Appeasement' Uproar
by Dave Keating | May 16, 2008 at 07:32 am | 182 views | 1 comment
Bush's comments to the Israeli Knesset yesterday has generated an uproar back home. Speaking to Israel's parliament on the occasion of the country's 60th birthday, he compared those who wanted to engage in diplomatic talks with Iran to those who appeased Hitler in the run-up to World War II hoping to avoid a war.
The comment was clearly aimed at Barack Obama, who has said he would engage in one-on-one diplomatic talks with Iran if he were elected president in order to resolve the conflict over the country trying to get nuclear weapons.
Bush's comments have generated a fury in the US both because of teh inappropriateness of a sitting president criticising another US politician to a foreign parliament and for its historical inaccuracy. The Caucus's Ariel Alexovich sums up some of the reaction below:
Seems like everyone had something to say about President Bush’s comment to the Israeli Knesset today, when he seemed to imply that an Obama presidency would be akin to appeasement of terrorists.
Among among all the reactions, Senator Joseph Biden, former presidential candidate, offered quite a few colorful words that stood out among the jammed inboxes.
Mr. Biden’s initial reaction, when a group of journalists approached him on Capitol Hill today, was to, well, swear. Mr. Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called the president’s statement “bull-expletive,” then “malarkey.”
Dick Durbin, the Senate Whip and big Obama supporter, brought back another retro adjective, telling Politico it’s “baloney” that the White House is claiming President Bush’s comment wasn’t a hit on Mr. Obama.
Later on a conference call with reporters, Mr. Biden said he should have just stuck with malarkey as his descriptor, not the cuss word, but he still was visibly peeved with the president’s “outrageous” statement.
For President Bush to call people who want change “appeasers is truly delusional, and to do it from abroad is truly disgraceful,” Mr. Biden said, also noting that Democrats are “not going to tolerate this long-distance swift-boating here.”
The comments are considered by many to be all the more outrageous because they directly contradict what Bush's Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has been saying for weeks:
The United States should construct a combination of incentives and pressure to engage Iran, and may have missed earlier opportunities to begin a useful dialogue with Tehran, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said yesterday. "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.
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May 16, 2008 at 07:32 am by Dave Keating, 182 views, 1 comment
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Comments (1)
at 14:56 on May 16th, 2008
Whatever Bush dislikes I like. Whatever he thinks is bad judgement is actually good judgement. Whatever direction he would choose we should go with the opposite. Whoever he wants as an ally should be shunned. Whoever he thinks is the enemy we should talk with right away. Whatever he believes we should assume the opposite to be true.
That anyone pays attention to anything he says at all is terrifying in its implication. He should be locked up post haste before he does more harm. Then let's throw away the key and save his wife, kids an the rest of his family the humiliation of having to associate with and stomach more of him.