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Appeasement as Policy
May 30th, 2008These are the times that try men’s souls. Which is why Howard Dean appears so placid - he lacks one.
A recent installment of rhetorical inanity erupted when George Bush, while in Israel, mentioned that appeasement is a bad idea. He cited history, alluding to the the worst practitioner of foreign policy in modern memory.
No, not Jimmy Carter, though he is a close second.
Bush spoke of Neville Chamberlain and his negotiations with Adolf Hitler. Hitler had already engineered the assassination of one Austrian Chancellor leading to annexing the joint. Perplexed by naked aggression, Chamberlain traveled to Munich to negotiate an agreement that called for Hitler to quit acting like Hitler. Chamberlain returned promising “Peace for our time”.
Then Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia.
So Bush brings up these nasty memories while speaking in Israel. Call me ignorant if you must, but the choice of topics for that audience was appropriate. His point was that haggling with an aggressive enemy is rarely a smart strategy. With characters like Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promising to wipe Israel off the map, the topic seemed mildly appropriate for an audience of resident Jews.
What made the whole episode amusing was the reaction of Barack Obama, who took Bush’s analysis personally. For all I know Bush was poking a political finger in Obama’s eye. It wasn’t the poking that was dangerously hilarious: it was Obama’s knee-jerk reaction. Even more hilarious — by being intellectually bereft — were his fellow Democrats who compared Obama’s stated desire to negotiate with known, practicing terrorists to Ronald Reagan talking to Mikhail Gorbachev.
Let’s evaluate these three scenarios:
- Chamberlain was weak and passive. Hitler was strong and aggressive. Result: Millions of people died.
- Reagan and the U.S. were strong. Gorbachev and the Soviet Union were collapsing, and Gorbachev had already blinked, showing signs of compromise. Result: the evil empire vanished.
- Obama is a policy-free, knee-jerking neophyte. Ahmadinejad/Hammas are radicalized theocratic war mongers who have stated plans to kill an entire nation. Result: death to the west.
You tell me how that will end. The road map has been drawn once before.
‘With characters like Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promising to wipe Israel off the map,’
Maybe wikipedia has a more balanced and less sensational way of saying things -
‘One of his most controversial statements was one in which, according to some translations, he called for Israel to be “wiped off the map,” but interpretations of this statement vary widely.’
If I called you ignorant I’d be a hypocrite.
‘..haggling with an aggressive enemy is rarely a smart strategy.’
But I think there is a big difference between ‘talking’ and ‘negotiating’. Surely there is nearly always common ground between people and this can be found through talk. In my expereince it is better to talk than harbour resentments and misunderstandings.
It seems to me - and I’m probably wrong - that a lot of problems are caused by a simple lack of communication.
At least President Ahmadinejad made an effort to talk to america - http://mwcnews.net/content/view/16983/42/
The trouble seems to be when talking becomes exaggerated and sensationalised spin, which is misunderstood by the ignorant.
Chamberlain talking to Hitler is one example in history, but every situation is different.
Maybe it’s just my imagination, but it seems to me that one can’t say anything insulting about the jews without immediately being pounced on, as being anti-semitic, which is somehow taboo.
Yet one can slander muslims, the british, the french, chinese, americans quite readily.
It just seems that the jews are very touchy and insecure.
Of all the people I met in India, the israelis were by far the most insular and arrogant, and this was obvious to everyone.
And from what I can gather in germany, they were very unpopular money-lenders.
I’m not anti-semitic but here’s one point of view -
‘He actually blames Jews for everything (of which he is obviously one), not feminists and hippies, he believes feminism and the counterculture are creations of the Jewish elite to further their cause of total world domination. His message is Jews have been behind every social system and major movement and have manipulated and greatly profited from most of the wars of the last 300 years. He believes movements like feminism are designed to break down families, weaken our communities and further isolate us from each other. As far as he’s concerned a new world order is being constructed and has been in the pipeline for hundreds of years, the British and American empires have been Jewish conspiracies, the Jewish elite own all the banks, invented fractional banking to enslave governments, intermarried with European monarchies, bought up all the major corporations, dominate world media and use their institutions and secret societies like the Freemasons to initiate Goyims into positions of power where they further the cause of Jewish hegemony and Zionism.’
You believe that everyone has a right to a gun, but who decides which countries are allowed guns ?
‘Chamberlain was weak and passive. Hitler was strong and aggressive. Result: Millions of people died. ‘
Millions might have died anyway -
‘Most historians believe that Chamberlain, in holding to these views, pursued the policy of appeasement far longer than was justifiable, but it is not exactly clear whether any course could have averted war, and whether the outcome would have been any better had armed hostilities begun earlier, given that France, as well, was unwilling to commit its forces, and there were no other effective allies:’
‘alluding to the the worst practitioner of foreign policy in modern memory.’
Maybe one of the worst foreign policies was the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, considering that other people were already living there.
Your views are so extreme I feel they must be coming from a ’stawman sockpuppet’.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_sock_puppet#Strawman_sockpuppet
Either that or this is a wind-up, best descibed as ‘bunkum’.