The morons of the right forget who the Appeaser-In-Chief really is

Yes, assclowns, I’m talking to you: Kit Lange, “TA”, Susan Duclos, Jim Hoft, Mike and Curt, and all you other ignorant wingnuts… there’s not a one of you who knows or understands history.

George W. Bush, speaking before the Israeli Knesset, made the following statement:

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. 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.

First off: The act of talking to another state, even an enemy, is not ‘appeasement’. It’s called ‘diplomacy’. Any discussion of ‘appeasement’ in the context of Nazi Germany inevitably brings to mind the actions of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Chamberlain did, indeed, employ appeasement in his dealings with Hitler — but not in the act of talking to Hitler. The actual act of appeasement was the signing of the Munich Agreement, which ceded part of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany. It’s a good bet that Bush and the yammering herd that adore him have no real grasp of this historical reality.

Let’s see who has been appeasing terrorists in the last several years:

Appeasement is surrendering vital interests to bullying and threats. That is what George Bush did in early 2001 when he removed the US Navy from Bahrain when intelligence had picked up al-Qaeda chatter suggesting attacks. That is what he did when, having received the report that the prior attack on the USS Cole was al-Qaeda directed, he decided (if one believes this testimony is even plausible) “not to swat at flies” as National Security Director Rice described their policy of not retaliating for that attack. At all.

Having thus appeased al-Qaeda by scadaddling from Bahrain because of cellphone chatter, and by leaving unaddressed the USS Cole attack, bin Laden must have viewed Bush as the “Appeaser-in-Chief”. When he mustered no response to pre-warnings about an attack on the United States — contrasted with the Clinton Administrations attention to millenium day attack threats that they thwarted — bin Laden had freedom to operate.

And, then Bush proved himself to bin Laden as a complete patsy by not sending 600 Army Rangers to capture bin Laden when they had him surrounded at Tora Bora.

Ooooooo, appeasement bad… unless it is Bush doing it.

There will, of course, be those poor souls, bereft of the skill or critical thinking, who insist on confusing diplomacy with appeasement. Well, if we adopt that standard, who has been engaging in ‘appeasement’? That’s right… George W. Bush:

Actually, as it happens, there is a glaring inconsistency in Bush’s rhetoric about negotiating with terrorists. Leaving aside his negotiations with “evil” North Korea, Bush’s only tangible accomplishment in the Middle East is the U.S. breakthrough with Libya. Bush’s people secretly negotiated with Colonel Gadhafy — a long-standing state-sponsor of terrorism — and convinced him to abandon Libya’s nuclear weapons program. This is a matter of public record — I’ve heard the full story myself in detail from the mouth of Gadhafy’s son, Seif al-Islam. An American embassy is open again in Tripoli. Gadhafy is busy building luxury vacation resorts rather than nuclear bombs. If that’s appeasement, maybe we need more of it.

Another case is the one that concerns the Palestinian group Fatah and its late leader, Yasser Arafat. When Bush took office in 2001, he chose to abandon Clinton’s policy of mediating the Israeli-Palestinian dispute or dealing with Arafat. The next six years saw some of the worst violence in the history of the conflict and the rise of the Islamist group Hamas. After all that damage was done, Bush decided to engage Fatah once again — launching the intensive last-ditch Annapolis peace process. After all the tragic dead-ends, it seems Bush decided that negotiations were worth pursing after all. For his part, McCain is eager to show his disdain for including Hamas in talks. He ridicules Obama for having been “endorsed” by Hamas — an unworthy cheap shot distorting sympathetic comments expressed by a Hamas official. Yet the idea is a far cry from appeasement. In a Haaretz poll in February, 64% of Israelis themselves said they favored talking to Hamas.

Then there’s the case of Iran. Bush calls Iran’s leaders part of the “axis of evil” and with McCain’s chiming in with support suggests that Obama is another Neville Chamberlain for indicating that he would talk with them. Maybe Bush forgot that he has sent State Department envoys to negotiate with Iranian counterparts on several occasions, related to the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. In addition, Condi Rice has officially offered Iran high-level negotiations with the U.S. on one condition: it halts its uranium-enrichment program.

Woah. George Bush is just an appeasin’ machine. Where’s the outrage, wingnuts?

UPDATE 05/21/08 7:31 AM EDT: Over at HoosierArmyMom’s, “TA” provides still more amusement with another clumsy lie. He claimed a few days ago that Barack Obama “blatantly stated he HATES AMERICA”, and of course I challenged him to back up his claim.

In a post from yesterday, TA whines that his reply never appeared. Actually, it did, but then it got flagged as spam and removed. I am still trying to figure out why this happened. That comment has been restored:

Meatballs—do intelligent people have to walk you thru life holding your little hand, telling you everything to do?

You’re so stupid, all you have to do is Google “Obama Hates America” and you’ll find 100’s of news links and bloggers who would prove you wrong.

If you can’t do that by your little self, please tell the world you are not smarter than a 5th grader…grin…

TA claims that he “posted a response with a link requested”. See any link in his comment? Nope, neither do I.

Imbeciles of TA’s stripe simply cannot construct an argument without at some point resorting to lies and distortion. It’s not in their skill set. But TA does demonstrate once again that lying wingnuts provide fantastic entertainment value. Thanks for the laugh, dimwit!