How are they going to play? This is how they’re going to play.
In a particularly sharp blast from halfway around the world, President Bush suggested Thursday that Sen. Barack Obama and other Democrats are in favor of “appeasement” of terrorists in the same way U.S. leaders appeased Nazis in the run-up to World War II.
“Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,” said Bush, in what White House aides privately acknowledged was a reference to calls by Obama and other Democrats for the U.S. president to sit down for talks with leaders like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
“We have heard this foolish delusion before,” Bush said in remarks to the Israeli Knesset. “As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American Senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of 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.”
The remarks seemed to be a not-so-subtle attempt to continue to raise doubts about Obama with Jewish-Americans.
It’s cheap; it’s ugly; and it’s beneath of office of the President of the United States. I vaguely recall a time when American political figures felt honor-bound not to attack other U.S. leaders while on foreign soil. Regrettably, we’ve learned that the words “honor” and “Bush” don’t belong in the same sentence, unless separated by the phrase “doesn’t have any.”
The irony, of course, is that just yesterday, Bush’s own Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, talked openly about embracing an Obama-like approach to engaging Iran in some kind of diplomatic “discussion.” Bush, in other words, seemed to be inadvertently accusing his own administration of appeasement.
Lest there be any confusion about the target of Bush’s smear, White House aides acknowledged to CNN that the president was attacking Obama over his willingness to meet, under certain conditions, with Iranian leaders.
The president of the United States, in other words, flew halfway around the world to honor the 60th anniversary of the birth of Israel, only to deliver a cheap and foolish shot at the likely Democratic nominee. Bush sure can act like a sad, little man sometimes.
For what it’s worth, the Obama campaign didn’t waste any time hitting back.
“It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel’s independence to launch a false political attack. It is time to turn the page on eight years of policies that have strengthened Iran and failed to secure America or our ally Israel. Instead of tough talk and no action, we need to do what Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan did and use all elements of American power — including tough, principled, and direct diplomacy — to pressure countries like Iran and Syria.
“George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the President’s extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel.”
I’d just add that the right-wing rhetoric on Iran, in relation to a comparison to Hitler, is more than a little insulting. As Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria explained a few months ago: “Iran has an economy the size of Finland’s and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century…. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?”
Josh Marshall added what should be obvious.
It’s almost an insult to what the world faced in the late 1930s. Germany, industrial powerhouse, with arguably the most powerful army in the world, at the forefront of technology, overawing and invading neighboring countries. Iran, minor economic power, second or third-rate military power, which may get a couple of small nuclear-weapons compared to the couple hundred high-end nuclear warheads in Israel’s arsenal (plus, a robust second strike capacity, as Fareed notes) and the many thousands we have — and our blue water navy, satellites, air force. Please. Time’s running out for us? We’re going to look back on this 50 years from now and see the non-podhoretz-loons as the Chamberlains of the day? I don’t know what to say.
What are Dems up against this year? A desperate Republican candidate, an unhinged GOP machine, and a humiliated Republican president who has no qualms about abandoning political norms.